We have just finished our 3rd weekend in Hawaii. There’s only one left so we are starting to feel crunched. Do more things!! Be more tourist!!!!!!!
This week we mostly worked on the chief’s program, but did some interesting things in between.
You may remember that the ship has a molasses tank, formerly a swimming pool. While we no longer carry molasses after someone spilled it overboard a few years ago, there’s always the possibility we might start carrying it again so we have to keep the tanks and pumps in order. This means pumping water through everything every so often to keep it clean. The plan was to pump out the starboard tank through one pump, and the port tank through another. We started it up and the first pump worked just fine. (The molasses-ballast water mixture goes right overboard, so I don’t understand the fuss about that spill.)
Oh yeah, molasses-ballast water. Andy has a better name for it, but I won’t tell you what it is. Basically, take nasty scum water, mix it with a lot of sugar, add some rum gone bad, and you’re getting pretty close to the smell. It permeates everything. Also the bosun’s hose rigging had some issues and now the deck is molasses-y, so that helped.
Then it was time to pump out the other tank…except the pump wouldn’t start. Bruce the electrician has been on the job for a couple days now and apparently there are loose or incorrect connections everywhere. Yay! But we’re working on it. Also, 1st engineer Harry found a cargo hold spider in the molasses pump room and now he checks to make sure it’s doing OK every time we go down there. (It’s doing OK.)
Later, we went down to 3rd deck to look at the potable water room. It was interesting as normally the potable water should not accumulate on the floor of the room. I don’t know what was going on there. Even later, the potable water got shut off for an hour or so. That was a little scary, but they got all the kinks worked out eventually.
On Thursday, fire & boat drill day, Andy and I looked at the schedule the chief mate usually posts to see what the drill for the day was. To our surprise, we discovered that the cadets were apparently giving a presentation on lifeboat sea anchors and the theory behind them. This was interesting as we did not know anything about sea anchors. When we brought this up to the chief mate, he realized it was left over from the last time he did the drill, when he had an actual deck cadet who knew these things, so it was just an accident. But then he decided that since lifeboat sea anchors are pretty simple, we should go ahead and do the presentation anyway. He gave us a lifeboat manual and had us watch 5 minutes of Life of Pi and then we were good to go.
We also visited the chief mate for a little while so he could show us the Cargomax program, which is used to calculate the ship’s stability during loading by combining the weight of cargo, ballast and fuel with the weights’ positions. He had us each fill out a test case to see if it met the required GM conditions. (It did once we worked out that the molasses tank was treating the ballast inside as molasses, which has a much heavier specific weight than water, throwing everything off.) He also had me do a tank sounding since I had never done one before. (the potable water tank is full.)
We had our pre-Hawaii barbecue again on Friday, which was fun. Earlier in the week we also had an extra barbecue with the engineers. This particular chief engineer is fond of barbecuing, so he makes it happen every so often.
During this Hawaii stop, we decided the thing we most wanted to do was take a surfing lesson. We figured we would have time, since while the front office was stubbornly insisting we arrive at 2200, stay for a day, and leave at 0600 the next, that day in the middle happened to be Superbowl Sunday. Remember how many cargo operations happened in Hawaii during the last football game? That’s right, none. We got a very long Hawaii stay.
Also:
We decided that during this trip the thing we most wanted to do was take a surfing lesson. We had originally planned this for Sunday but then the weatherman predicted rain all day, so we put it off til Monday and went to the Bishop Museum instead. It’s Oahu’s natural and cultural Polynesian history museum, comprised of a main exhibit building, children’s science museum, planetarium, and a garden.
PS: guess what didn’t happen today.
Whoa look at those scary, scary rainclouds
Supercool dude lives here
I can’t believe I carried a raincoat around for this
We have seen a couple of these guys around but did not know that they were Small Indian Mongoose(s?) until today. Thank you, children’s science museum!
action mongoose
We also found skinks in the garden!
my camera hates skinks.
Other local wildlife include: that cat that jumped out of the bushes and caused Andy’s heat rate to increase to 500%
Later, we wandered back to Waikiki and around the beach.
Remember how I said the fancy hotels here have open-air lobbies and staff that don’t ask questions? We’ve been pretending to stay at the Hilton Hawaiian Village for 2 days now.
Diamond Head again.
wwwwwhooOOAAAAA
MINIATURE TIME
no I don’t know this guy but he wouldn’t move so now he is immortalized forever
After sunset, we went to get some dinner. Andy wanted to get dinner food like normal people but I had a strong IHOP campaign against which he could not win.
The next day we went back to Waikiki to pick up a surfing instructor. We had severely misjudged the time it takes to get from the terminal to the beach (shuttle + car + walking from free mall parking) so we missed the 9AM lesson, and signed up for the 1130 instead. There were no special arrangements or reservations involved, since there are a bunch of stands on the boardwalk with dudes who will teach you.
While we were passing time waiting for our lesson to start, it started raining.
Mr. Weatherman, I will find you, and I will have my revenge.
Actually though, surfing in the rain is super and I highly recommend it because
<![if !supportLists]>1. <![endif]>Nobody else shows up so basically you’re getting a private lesson for the price of a group lesson
<![if !supportLists]>2. <![endif]>You’re in the water anyway
<![if !supportLists]>3. <![endif]>LESS SUNBURN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We had only 1 other walk-up guy in our group, and 3 people to 1 instructor is pretty sweet. First instructorman (James) had us lay on the beach and pretend to paddle (we were made fun of) and then he took us into the water.
Did you know paddling a surfboard is really difficult? Like, REALLY. Especially when the board is significantly wider than your shoulders. I acknowledge myself as the worst surfboard paddler ever to paddle.
So this was our first surf lesson ever; we weren’t really surfing, more like paddling out and riding waves back to shore. That being said, IT WAS SO FUN!!!!!! The waves were actually perfect for learning, not too big but big enough to push you ALL. THE WAY. BACK TO SHORE, if you’re not careful. (Yeah, then you have to paddle back out. Don’t do this.) I highly recommend these people to all future Webbies on a Hawaii sea term. Find the people on Waikiki beach with the big water bicycle things with huge green tires. I don’t know what they are, but they’re distinctive.
So, that wraps up our vacation for this week. It’s back to Seattle now pretty much like normal, except for a few crew changes. First, Captain Idema actually left us in Oakland (no one mentioned this was going to happen, so we were very confused). We now have Captain Webster, who seems equally relaxed but does not share the former’s love for weather routing. Instead, we are going to get there, and we’re going to do it AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.
3rd Engineer Todd is gone, succeeded by 3rd Engineer Claudia, who was also one of the day workers we met in Seattle during the piston pulling. Chief Mate Duncan left as well and now we have Chief Mate Diana.
Andy has also taken over the spare room in our hallway and claimed it as Cadet’s Day Room. (“Everyone else has a day room!”) We’re working on having the sign made.
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