Monday 19 April 2010

Picton Castle at Lunenburg; Monday 19 April 2010 בס"ד

Busy day today. Woke up with a terrible chest pain that worsened after breakfast. After discussing it with some shipmates, I've diagnosed it as bad heartburn, which I've never had before. Anyway, that didn't stop me from working hard all day. After breakfast, I was on domestics; then I helped load frozen food from Z into my truck and take it into the PC hold. Then used my truck to take a load of lifesaving equipment and other things to PC, where we stowed them in their respective locations. Then we did a cool operation of hoisting the old batteries out of the hold, onto the dock, and into my and CM Mike's trucks using block and tackle. We then drove them to an auto garage in town and exchanged them for newer, heavier-duty batteries, returned and hoisted them into the hold, and placed them in the battery locker (basically a massive swap which was no easy task). Afterwards, I worked on some chafe gear for mooring lines and learned the “chinese fingers” technique. Throughout the day there were also miscellaneous tasks, of course. After work ,went to the Banker to have a coffe and check the internet for the first time. I saw Liam's blog, which is very well-written. Came back to PC for dinner, then returned to the Banker to set up my own blog, which will be the contents of this daily log. Came back to the PC, uploaded pictures to my computer, and started typing up this log so that I can just copy it to my blog when I get online again. Today was Yom HaZikaron, so I did have a minute of silence and now it is Yom HaAtzma'ut, which is cool. Can't really celebrate it too much, but it's good to know. Also, something I hadn't noted before; while it is quite tricky to keep kosher on board (and by kosher I mean my 1/2kosher kosher), Donald is great and makes sure that if there is pork, shellfish, or mixed meat and dairy I have an alternative, which I appreciate immensely. Anyway, just chugged some Diovol and hope I don't wake up with heartburn again. Almost forgot; at the end of the work day we did MOB (man overboard) introduction.