Wednesday 27 October 2010

Picton Castle alongside at Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu; Wednesday 27 October 2010 בס"ד

Woke up in bed and there were almost a dozen people crashed out on my floor, sleeping on cushions from the patio furniture from the gazebo. After they took off, discreetly returned the cushions, and checked out. I got my bill for “Mr. Fred,” which I thought was pretty funny. Went back to the ship on the water taxi at 0845. Once aboard, we weighed anchor with the 8-12s, which was a great workout since we had so much scope paid out. Then the Picton Castle moved to the commercial wharf, where we moored alongside. The 8-12s were stood down, and we took the watch. My first job was to sand the rescue boat, which could be done from shoreside since it hung in the davits over the wharf. After sanding it, painted it with some toplac white. WT taught me the scaffold hitch, which is pretty much the same knot as the alpine butterfly except done around the staging, when we rigged up the staging so Tiina could paint the anti-fouling stuff on the bottom once the tide rose so she wouldn't fall in the drink between the ship and the wharf. I put on some chinese fingers over the chafe gear on the mooring hawsers, and at 1130 Ollie officially departed the ship's company to return home to begin his new gig in a TV show called “The Killing,” so everybody who hadn't already done so said their farewells. My next job was to put some epoxy paint on a welded patch in the starboard well deck break, which became a bit of a fiasco. You can't mix epoxy in plastic, so I needed a metal can, but there were no metal cans. I searched the ship for a while, with no luck in finding a metal can. I had asked the galley team a few times if they had any, but no, they didn't. Seeing my frustration, Clark went to his bunk, and got a can of peanuts he had, opened it up, and started spreading them around, just so I could have a can. What a guy. So I got the can, and was about to mix the epoxy, when I was stopped and told that there is actually an epoxy paint. I was going to use regular epoxy, and “paint” it on, since I thought that epoxy painting was a technique, not a product. So then I got epoxy paint, and mixed its two parts 1:1, which is a different ratio than the regular epoxy. Anyway, the fiasco was over, and I painted the patch both on deck at the break and below in the hold on its other side. I then was sent into the skiff to give Tiina a quick hand, and on my way out I banged my knee right in the soft spot real hard on the deck box. Dammit, it hurt a lot, and that's a statement because I bang pretty much every part of my body into something pretty much every day. Right after, we had an up and stow, but I just couldn't go aloft because my knee hurt so bad still. While everybody else was aloft stowing, Tiffany (the waitress from the French restaurant) and her father and brother came by, and so I gave them a tour since I was good for little else at the moment. After the tour, during which they took countless photos of the ship, me, the ship and me, them and the ship, them and me, them and me and the ship, etc, the fuel truck arrived. I was put on fuel hose guard when the fuel line was run out to port side across the deck (the ship was starboard to shore) and made sure that nobody that had to get by got by without stopping and carefully stepping over the hose to avoid tripping. Human error causes the majority of fuel spills, and so my job might have seemed a bit ridiculous standing by a hose and stopping people over and over, it was necessary nonetheless. Plus I couldn't do much else with my knee banged up and throbbing. After that, it was dinner time, and then I was put on first watch at 1900. Nothing of note, then stowed my bunk for sea and went to bed.