British Trader in America
by Deck Cadet Sam Phillips; 01 April 2007.
Deck Cadet Sam Phillips
On a passage from Point Fortin (Trinidad) to Cove Point in the United States, the British Trader experienced some particularly rough weather.
Being on the 4-8 watch and due to the time zone the vessel was in; it meant that the meteorology reports needed to be sent during my watch, allowing me to keep close tabs on the progression and movement of the weather.
At one stage of the passage there was a phenomenon which sent me rushing for my camera: sea smoke. Having been at sea on several other vessels on both sides of the world, I had never yet witnessed this. Shortly after, heavy rainstorms and flurries of snow followed. It was as though we were aiming for all the definitions of restricted visibility as defined in the Collision Regulations!
The gas engineer arrived on the bridge with some work permits and was discussing the bad weather when suddenly and out of the blue, a huge triangular block of polystyrene flew. I went outside to fetch it and bought it back to the bridge. After about 10 seconds its origin made sense to us; the 10cm radar scanner had literally exploded and threw its internals out.
The 3rd Officer quickly called the Captain and a PA was made for the electro-technical officer to come to the bridge. We turned the 10cm radar off and could only assess the damage briefly by looking from the bridge wing in case anything else broke away from it.
As the day progressed I returned back to the bridge for the evening watch, to see perfect sea state conditions matched to the Met Office's Guide of a Force 10 according to the Beaufort scale. It's very unusual when you go from scorching hot Caribbean weather of 30 degrees centigrade to the chilling 3 degrees centigrade of Cove Point within a few days.
After arriving in Cove Point and having completed a gruelling 6 hour pilotage, taking control of mooring the vessel aft, I got my chance to go ashore. I waited for the Engine Cadet to get to the CCR. We then grabbed our shore passes and photo ID's, made our way out to the accomodation ladder all raring to go, only to be met by a launch that looked like it was from the D-Day landings with a huge drop door at the front.
James and I looked at each other, shrugged and donned our lifejackets. By this time the Chinese Trainee Engineer had managed to catch up with us and made his way down to the launch. I sent the lifejackets back on the heaving line for the other crew getting on the next launch a couple of hours later.
After 45 minutes of a blistering 8 knots we reeached the marina, where the launch moored up and our taxi was ready and waiting. All three of us got in and asked the taxi to take us to the nearest shopping mall. It was supposed to be a relaxed chilled out shore leave.
However, before leaving the ship James and I had been given several large shopping lists by the officers, and a fistful of dollars to go with it. We rushed around Best Buy literally buying everything electrical, gathered the majority of Wal-Mart's sweets section, and $2500 dollars later we had most of what was asked for.
We made a quick stop at the Burger Bar where James insisted on going Supersize with his meal, and to our disbelief a US gallon drinking cup arrived overflowing with fries along with this half pound double cheeseburger!
As always we got the refill of the soft drinks and made out way back to Best Buy where we collected our previous purchases and had some time to buy stuff for ourselves. We got the taxi back to the marina, and after a 10 minute drive we boarded the launch. This time it was a properly kitted out with seats and tables!
Ten minutes later the rest of the crew arrived and we made our way back to the Trader. Fortunately there were enough of us to spread the bags out and take up the accommodation ladder. We all parted ways and retired to bed as it had been a very busy and very long day.