Sea Life Chapter 9

Eagle Boston

4^th November 2002 to 4^th May 2003

I join this vessel in New York, but I did not get any chance to visit New York. The only place I get to visit is Philadelphia, and when I join the vessel my luggage was detained by the airport security for inspection and it arrive later with some damage on the locking arrangement. The vessel had very good voyage of going between America and Canada, and I had the worst Chinese Food in my life when I went to the Chinese Restaurant to have dinner in Canada.

The vessel went to Portugal for docking toward the end of my contract, and we encounter a lot of issues with the System Monitoring and Alarm Panel after the docking. I had notice abnormal low insulation with the 440 volt electrical panel when the yard side connect the shore power supply, they have their cable soak in the water and even after bringing up the issue to Electrician, Chief Engineer and Superintendent with no result.

As the panel is very sensitive to the current, abnormal defects start to happen after we complete the docking repair, I help Electrician troubleshoot and isolate a few of the control card in the server unit. I also had to savage some part from old computer to fix the work terminal, the only part lacking is a very old type of network card which they manage to found it in Russia after I sign off.

The Superintendent is my previous Chief Engineer Firoz, nobody are able to stand his Donald Duck voice nagging. I am not sure why he like to chat with me so much, got once he told me he wanted to get the Inert Gas Fan Casing de rust and coated as I had open it up for survey inspection. He was thinking whether to use hardener paint or epoxy for the coating, before he could make up his mind I had already completed the job with his initial instruction of using epoxy.

He told me that I should not have carry out the job myself and should have ask one of the junior engineer to do it, I told him that all the other engineers are also busy with other jobs and it doesn't really take much time to complete the job. Chief Engineer Paul was doing the docking with me, he later became the Superintendent for Bunga Kelana Satu after Superintendent Ang left the company.

I join Bunga Kelana Satu later when Superintendent Ang challenge me when I met him on Eagle Atlanta, I thought I had seen so many difficult ship in my life how difficult can Bunga Kelana Satu be? I was wrong when I board the vessel later in my life and I found out that 70% of the machinery are not working and they had been discharging cargo without Inert Gas System.

The vessel was handover by Malaysia Company when our tanker fleet was brought over, the vessel was only 8 years old but it was much worst than 30 years old ship which I had encounter later when I did a FPSO conversion project in Indonesia. The first Second Engineer resign after three months, the other Second Engineer emergency sign off after three months too and I took over.

Actually the Malaysia Port Authority rejected my application due to their requirement for Senior Officer with at least a year experience. My sea time was just short by two months, and the company was suppose to take me out when the temporary permit for three months expired. The office was surprise that I am able to last so long on that ship without requesting for signing off, so they decided to keep quite about the whole incident until the Malaysia Port Authority discover that I am still serving onboard after 5 months and threaten to impose a very heavy fine on the company before they told me I had to sign off at the next port of call in America.

I was suppose to attend the court case of the Austin Incinerator Incident in America after I sign off, but due to Visa requirement I would need to fly out of the country first and return back on a Tourist Visa instead of Seamen Transit Visa. The company actually arrange for me to fly to Canada for the reentry but after speaking to the company lawyer on the phone they think that I present is not require and I fly back to Singapore direct from America after that.