Sea Life Chapter 13

Eagle Atlanta

30^th March 2006 to 19^th November 2006

I was suppose to enjoy my 5 months paid leave as promise by the company, but they use my friendship with Kenneth to get me to join one month earlier. Kenneth need to go back urgently to settle some legal paperwork on his property, but the company could not get replacement for him in the past few months. I happen to be enjoying my well earn paid leave during this period and I became an easy target as usual because of my soft hearted nature.

One of engineer which I had sail with once told me that our paid leave are not as good as we thought, taking into account of the Public Holiday and Weekends that we have to work it is only a reasonable compensation. The company did try to convince us to switch our tanker allowance to paid leave, but most disagree with it because it is just a delay payment which allow the company to earn more interest.

Same like AWS (Annual Wages Supplement), it is introduce when they change the weekly payment of salary to monthly payment. 4 weeks will come to 28 days, but other than February all the other months had more than 28 days. Taking into account of 2 to 3 days extra for each month and not counting the extra 1 day for the leap year which occur every 4 years, the AWS still short change you by 1 day as the extra days amount to 29 days.

I met CJ again and he is Fourth Engineer now, there is also China Third Engineer Fu Sheng who is always calculating his salary and bonus. I told him that if he would spend more effort on his job, he would have become a better engineer. But he still more interested in his paint business back in China, I am glad that his mentality did not affect the China Fifth Engineer Ming Fan.

There is an incident which happen on one of the vessel where an engineer got injure by the door swing out under pressure, the engine room is always maintain under positive pressure for all tanker ship to prevent toxic gas from entering. The company ask all the ship to start measuring the air pressure inside the engine room with various condition of door open and shut or fan running on ventilation or exhaust mode.

I remember when I was fifth engineer on Neptune Crux, we encounter Typhoon when going to Korea for loading. Whole vessel was down with sea sick, and when I go to control room for tea break I saw all the engineer laying flat on the floor. I feel a bit awark being the only one siting up, so I decided to join them and lay down on the floor.

Chief Engineer came down to see how we are doing in engine room, he open the control room door and saw all his engineer laying down on the floor. He thought we were overcome by toxic gases and he quickly shut the door again, after thinking for a while he realized that it is just sea sick so he question me why I lay down when I am not even sea sick like the rest.

I also encounter a few rough sea during my cadet ship, and it was so bad that only me and pump man were still standing. I keep watch in engine control room controlling the engine speed to prevent over speed while the pump man steer the vessel on the wheel house. I always make egg sandwich for Chung Hun and Eric whenever they got sea sick, and funny thing is that the Second Engineer always visit them in their cabin to ask if they had feel better so that they can go down engine room to work again.

Chief Engineer Patrick join later with his wife, he decided to on his honeymoon mode when he saw me onboard. The number of time he go to engine can be count with fingers on one hand and the numbers of time he went ashore with Captain cannot be count with both hand and feet.

Before I join the vessel we already had a lot of piping problems, Kenneth had requested for piping material and a welder for the repair but the material only arrive after he had sign off. The welder never came after a very long time, and we are also busy with main engine bearing job on top of a lot of oil major inspection.

The ship use a common telephone exchange system and some of the cabins are sharing the same line under the common server. I try to assist the Electrician on the issue when we encounter some issue with the system and found that only those with three connection will work well. We only have spare for those two connection type, in order to resolve the issue I had to replace one of the two phone in my cabin with the one with two connection.

As I am sharing the same line with one of the AB, I had to off the ringer for the bedroom phone to prevent them from waking me up when they call the AB for night duties. Then there was one occasion where the Chief Engineer cannot get me on the phone and he report the issue to the Captain and claim that I am irresponsible.

Got another occasion he was force to carry out the main engine bearing job with the China Third Engineer, the Third Engineer had done the job many time together with me and he should be able to handle it without any issue. But the China Fifth Engineer told me later that the Third Engineer was not familiar with the Special Tools and cause a lot of delay on the job.

I was really disappointed with the company as I had told them I am planning to get married after this vessel, they had promise to get a replacement after 5 to 6 months but they back out of their word. I had to cancel all my reservation and redo all my planning after I sign off after 8 months and I thought to myself it is time for me to leave this life behind.