Planalto Cycles

The last information was that leaving would be 600 but at 400, I heard the engine turn high and a look out of the window showed the first movement. In the evening, I had tried to establish forwarding from gmail to skyfile, but the link with a code of confirmation didn’t arrive there. I had seen that internet had not worked and hoped it would work when we leave. So, I went to the office, and at least could see that email in general worked, because I had got one from Doron, but no code. I went back to my PC and tried to send it again as long my phone still gets some signal from Fremantle, but it didn’t work. The signal became weaker and I gave up, turned off internet, hotspot, PC, pressed “flight mode” on the phone and had again a farewell from Australia, this time on digital level. It took me a while to fall asleep again, but at 6:45 my alarm woke me up for another day on the ship.
At noon, the captain told me that we should arrive on 1^st of June at noon – this would be on time! They had got that order from the company. I went up to the bridge to get more details and the Cadet told me that they go with 80% speed, ~18-19kn.
I calculate 30t fuel more, that is 12000$ additional costs every day, the distance seems to be something like 3000km and when we make 820km every day instead of 640km, we can save a whole day. Well, in the end it again depends on the space in the port, so there might be another delay, but the harbour is big enough that there should be space at least within some hours.
Today I worked on the container-video. The raw material was 50min and by sorting out useless and too blurry material, I could reduce it to 13min. in a next step, I try to reduce it to 7 or 8 minutes maximum, this can be even more time consuming than the first step. But after that my PC will have 20GB more space again, because after making a backup, I delete all original material.
After lunch, I was tired, made a Feldenkrais session and laid down for a while. Later, I realized that even on this long ship passage, time runs out in a few days! Besides the never-ending editing story and the continuous diary writing, I had some other work on my list, like Uganda preparations, and checking some discrepancies in the numbering of my blog entries (some numbers doubled, others missing).
In the evening, Gilhan, the cadet, brought back the gopro I had lent to him. He had made a long video of leaving Fremantle this night and I was surprised abought the quality of the recording at night – much better than with my normal camera, and also abought the film itself: Gilhan had made a time lapse video and I wonder how he managed to do that with an unknown camera and German settings.

This was maybe the worst night so far, the ship was rolling from side to side and also in times when I was not frightened that it would sink, I couldn’t sleep, because the swell tried to throw me out of the bed (starboard side) or smash against the wall of the cabin (port side) and everything in the room that was not stable or fixed made moving sounds, even the curtain slid from left to right and back with every higher wave, contributing to that noise concert.
That is one of those days where I take some coffee. I don’t drink coffee (primally, because I don’t like the taste, but also because of the vast agricultural land you need for growing something that doesn’t nourish you what also applies to tea, tobacco or industrially grown flowers)
Later than expected, – no this is not true, I would have been surprised if we would have been on time! – we came to the port.

The captain, btw the first one who didn’t change to uniform when arriving at the port, had no problem when I was on the bridge, inside or outside, and so I could see some new details of landing but also a dolphin!

The officers of border control came late in the afternoon and so it was easy to decide to stay on board. I could upload all those videos I had cut so far and until 19^th of June, every day one clip will be automatically published, at that time I will be on my last and longest ship passage from Singapore to Duncerque.

After breakfast I met the chief engineer on the gangway, and he asked me if I still want to make a tour to the engine etc. Of course, I said yes but honestly, I must tell you that I had forgotten that date. Luckily, we had met on time and so it didn’t become embarrassing.
We went down to the engine-“Cathedral” and although I had seen that before (see day 105) it was impressing again. I learned that in 2020, the heavy fuel oil HFO with 3,5% Sulphur (~400$/ton) will be forbidden. ECA oil (Emission control area) that now is obligatory in some areas and ports has 0,1% Sulphur and costs around 670$/ton. So, the prices for the new oil will be clearly higher than now and he expects higher prices for consumers. But the new oil also has some advantages, for examples there is less pre-heating necessary. Now the oil must be heated up to 140°C to be liquid enough. From those technical and economic impacts, it was a small step to politics and so, we discussed Bulgarian history and Turkish, American and Russian influence on Europe, but it was more shouting than talking, because also in the engine control room it is very noisy.

In early evening Puccini made the turn from West to North which means that the swell reaches the ship from the side with much bigger effect than before. I am very glad that is didn’t get seasick so far, although I cannot say I feel completely fine…

During the night and most of the day, the swell was strong but most of the time coming from the front. The movement of the ship is impressive but less frightening than the side to side rolling that will start tomorrow evening when we turn around the South/West corner of Australia. Today, I managed to edit 5 videos and reduce my delay to 12 days. The hardest work ahead of me are the tons of “loading”-videos. First, I will try to sort out useless material (Still it happens that I press the video-button but only later see that I didn’t film when I wanted, instead of that I filmed afterwards, and this is mostly useless material). I had started to read the manual of the camera (30 out of 300 pages) and there is written that I should remove the battery when I don’t use the camera. This evening, I did it and laid the camera on the second bed in the cabin. But when I wanted to go from the table to the couch, I lost my balance and so I leaned against the bed exactly on the camera and broke the cover of the battery-slot.

A good day, some wind but not clouds and nothing distracting me from work until noon. I went to the gym and weight 77,6kg and after running in the treadmill the scale said 78,1kg, which just say how hard it is on a rocking ship to measure. I just wanted to know, how much I had lost by sweating and was surprised about this result. Then I cycled for a while and “lost” 2,2kg in 20min. At noon, the chief engineer started talking to me when I was about to leave the mess. There are 3 tables, I am sitting alone on the middle table, and the “chiefs” on one side and the 2^nd , 3^rd and 4^th engineers/officers/electricians/etc would sit on the other side or maybe in the crew’s mess if the are Sri Lankans, because I only see2 or 3 people sitting there. The other chiefs had been gone and so he invited me to sit down there. Btw, on the list with all the crew’s names, duties, nationalities and birthdays, I saw that he is the only Bulgarian and he, by one year, is the only one on the ship older than me.
So, we talked for a while and he told me some things about cargo ships and that business. I had asked why the tap water is a bit yellow, if this is because of the water treatment procedure or just rust. And he told me that it is rust, but there is no use to repair this, because the ship will be thrown away in about 5 years and the repair would cost ~1mio. Such ships are used only for about 20 years by the company and after 10 years there is the break-even point.
He suggested that I should go to the bow of the ship in the later afternoon when thee sun is less strong, but better today, because the next bad weather is about to arrive. He loves that place, with less noise, best view and best air on the ship.
After that nice and interesting talk, I went to the bridge, because I wanted to know when we would come from the South side to the East of Australia (tmw around 1700). The captain told me about some things that must be taken into consideration. One is the swell. Now it is about 3-4m and comes from the front. But when we turn, it comes from the portside and the ship can start rocking, even getting amplified when the length of the swell fits to the dimensions of the ship. Then, for safety of the cargo, he would decide to go in zick-zack lines, which of course takes longer. Originally he was asked to reach Fremantle on 24^th around 1800, but for that he would have to go at high speed, around 25kn and consume 90tons of fuel (instead of 45tons at 15kn!) and when there are problems like the swell, he wouldn’t be there at time and would have burned tons of fuel for nothing. So, we get the next time slot on 25^th at noon. Fremantle is a smaller port with space for only 3 vessels and if another vessel would also be delayed or a crane has a problem and only 2 instead of 3 must charge clear, we can have good luck and can arrive before that vessel or would have to wait even longer until the space is free. So, there is always a triangle of information flow from company, port and vessel and often the different costs must be taken into consideration – is it more expensive to have a delay with some cargo, or preparing everything at port for landing and not be on time or going on higher speed + consuming much more fuel?

It was a working day outside and inside. Inside not continuously, because of outside: I wanted to catch some moments, for example the fixation of the containers. But I missed two of those moments in the morning, because I was concentrated on video editing. And so, I was less concentrated in the afternoon and often looking through the window or running down to the bridge or down to A-deck. The result: 10GB video, together with my container loading videos from Sydney and Melbourne even 30GB. That will be hard to look through and bring in an order that is useful for a video.

At lunch and dinner, I had a new strategy, I gave a smaller plate to the messman. The result was not too convincing in two ways: He tried to put the same portion on the smaller plate and when I checked my weight in the gym, I saw one kg more. That doesn’t say too much, because it was after dinner instead of before lunch, but still I take it seriously.
Today, we left on the set time, but still we will see which delay will sum up until leaving Perth and what the captain (and the company) will do then – speed up like on the way from Taiwan to Sydney or arrive in Singapore some days later?

Bad dreams – why? Is the rocking shacking, trembling and rumpling inspiring them? Do I have contemplation to go through stressful moments and deal with them?
It rained heavily many times, you could see the dark clouds hanging down to the sea and when we were through we sometimes even had sunshine for a few minutes before the next rain started, and every time, water came through the window (and ran down through a hole obviously designed for that.

I was editing the video from day 266 “going to Adelaide (+Kangaroo Island)” on the way to Adelaide.
At 18:30 it changed back again to 1800, but I didn’t need to eat a second dinner
Passing Kangaroo Island around that time,

I “filmed” the light tower, just a blinking light in the black, but for me a memory. We should reach Adelaide near midnight but only with less wind, because the passage is dangerous otherwise.

At 5:50 I heard the alarm rang with the sound of my phone, only at lower volume. So first, I thought I would have covered it, but then I remembered that this is impossible, it was directly beside me and then I realized that the sound came from outside, apparently the captain or the chief engineer used the same sound (we are the only persons sleeping in level F-deck). At breakfast I heard about the next delay: we will stay in Melbourne until 1400 (except of leaving in the morning), because at the port, they don’t have enough workers to fix the containers on board (loading cargo has been finished at night).
Today, we got typical Romanian soup with cow stomach and I was taught what else is necessary: tons of garlic, heaps of sour cream and enough vinegar. For dinner, as a rule, the soup of lunch is served a second time and the big pot was again completely full. (Soup and salad are taken individually, the main course comes on a plate) Even if everybody (around 10 persons) would have eaten a big portion, that would have been less than half of it. So, I asked the capitain what would happen to that soup. He said it can be served again tomorrow, if I like it. We talked a bit about that and in the end, it was clear that normally the soup would be thrown away. In the evening, I also saw one officer who always eats only a third or half of the dish, now eating bread with butter after leaving the unfinished plate aside. I wonder how people can act like that. Do they think we are in the land of milk and honey, don’t they know no one who had been hungry because there was no food available? I think Romania so far was not the land of milk & honey and poverty is ubiquitous, so why can’t they connect this to their own behaviour?
This lunch, we got a yoghurt and I wanted to keep it for the afternoon, if I feel hungry. I didn’t. Still I get too much too eat, because the messman wants to do me a favour, maybe because I am a bit friendlier than the average here? I wonder, if I soon can manage this better, or if I even will gain weight instead of losing some. At least, I do something every day. Today in the gym, I asked someone if there is a place for practising pull-ups and he showed me a construction on deck.

Last July at Kieser, I could do 9-10 in the slow way of 4sec pulling up, holding 2sec and going down again in another 4sec. Today I could do only 7 “normal” ones. So I guess that those +5kg are even more, because I will have lost muscles and exchanged them with another portion of fat. I’ll keep you updated ?
The ship really left at 1400 and I filmed the way out, because it was the reverse direction to my arrival exactly 2 months before.

Tomorrow I will ask for details about the arrival in Adelaide, now I just guess it is 1000km, that would be around 2days of going.