The End of a Quarter Century

I came back to the boat from Oslo and Western Pride was still in Dry dock. Our dry dock was a floating dry dock, so when our boat was out of the water it was still on the water and the dry dock could move. What happens is the sides of the dry dock fill up with water and the whole thing sinks. The boat then moves into the dock and slowly the water is let out of the sides and the whole dry dock rises up. Sadly I didn’t get to see Pride go into or out of dry dock, but the whole idea is pretty cool. Other dry docks work differently – some are carved into the land and work like a lock and get filled up with water.

Meanwhile – we came out of dry dock, and then had to start loading lots and lots and lots of gear back on board (and hopefully cleared out the mess while we were at it). This included loading everything that we had to take off so that the dock workers could safely access places they had to access (and so there would not be a fire hazard while they were doing hot work). I also worked on a lot of projects – I spent a lot of time trouble shooting the wiring of our new gun pressure monitoring display and alarm, I redid the day room complete with a new cabinet that we designed, new DVD cupboards, new carpeting on the riser, hanging instruments and a complete clean up. The change in the room is dramatic. Plus starting and stopping our computer systems a few times, due to switching between shore and ship power a few times.

Its also been a bit frustrating – things kept going a bit wrong. We were supposed to go to sea trials 3 times, with each time something breaking or going wrong. The pilot actually stopped coming on time, knowing that we probably wouldn’t actually go out.

At the moment we are still short one generator – due to the dock yard breaking one of ours. But thus is life. And I guess luckily or unluckily there has not been a job for us to go to, so we have been in no rush.

Some FAQ’s about being alongside (courtesy of questions from my dad and a few others)

1. When we are in Dry dock I do not work 9-5, but still a 12 hours shift. However, almost all of us are working together on a 7am -7pm shift

2. I do not get weekends off while in port – we still work the whole 5 weeks that we are onboard

3. Since we share cabins, I actually see my room mate, as opposed to usually we share, but are on opposite shifts. Its fun – its like being back at college.

Now we are at anchorage outside of Walvis Bay – waiting for a job. And there are seals everywhere. In fact we’ve had a few visitors coming up our gun slipway!

And finally to finish the quarter century – back when I was very young, the night before my birthday my parents would video tape me and ask me some questions about the previous year. About 5 years ago I resurrected this tradition for myself. And below are a few of this year’s favorites:

Favorite TV show: Seeing as though I have no recollection really of watching TV, I’ll have to go with the Nobel prize ceremony, that I watched. And watching The Office onboard.

Favorite mountain: Innerdalstårnet

Favorite food: passion fruit juice

Favorite song: Swedish drinking songs, seriously, I just think they are really fun

Favorite country: Norway

Favorite Animal: reindeer – they run ridiculously, whoever thought they might be able to fly? Or at least the reindeers in Finmark are uncoordinated.

Favorite word: abrigado – the only word I learned in Portuguese