Note to self

It is not advisable to buy tubes of toothpaste and face cream which looks very similar to each other. Trust me, it isn't pleasant to apply toothpaste on your newly washed face. Fortunately, I didn't manage to try the other combination. Yet.

The very last voyage for the ship Lisco Gloria

Lisco Gloria with tug Claus

Sometimes you see amazing things at sea, things that blow your mind, or things that are so beautiful that you know that it will just end up as half beautiful and half overwhelming as a photograph. This is not one of these occasions. This is very sad and take your breath away because of completely different reasons. This is not how a ship should look. As a seafarer on a Ro-ro-ship of the same sort, our meeting with the Lisco Gloria made you think of the importance of safety. How it could end up very wrong very fast if you got fire on deck. Because, what you see, is a ghost ship on her last voyage to the ship yard.

Look how you can see right through the ship's hull. This is not how a ship should look like

The story about Lisco Gloria goes like this: She was built in 2001 at Stettin Wharf Stocznia Szczecinska (in A. Warskiego). Her first name was Golfo Dia Coralli, her second name Dana Gloria. Under her third name Lisco Gloria, and under lithuanian flag, she sailed the route between Klaipėda and Kiel. On 9 October 2010 in the Fehmarn belt, under her way from Kiel to Klaipėda, an explosion sounded from the car deck. The fire spread rapidly and soon the fire had engulfed the entire ship. All the crew and passengers where brought into safety, three persons suffered of smoke related injuries, but there where no deceased.

We met Lisco Gloria on her final journey to Klaipėda, where she is to be completely scrapped, in the southwest Baltic sea, just some miles north of Rostock. The german tug Claus are towing her. More information about her last voyage can be found here: http://www.kn-online.de/lokales/kiel/218239-Die-letzte-Reise-der-Lisco-Gloria.html (in german).

Listen to: Globus – Sarabande Suite or

Gordon Lightfoot – Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald

Colours!

Today we had a tremendously cold morning, but the sky was clear and the red light of dawn coloured Rostock port in amazing shades. After the sun went up, it started to feel like spring in the air. Even though we had minus five degrees Celsius according to the outside thermometer, the sun heated up both us and the deck. The ice which the night had left on the deck started to melt away and suddenly the summer didn't seemed too far away. I was longing for the true colours the other day, and today I got them. Just see for yourselves:

Deck covered with ice covered with sunshine

And if this wasn't enough with colours, the wheelhouse (the bridge) has turned into a greenhouse after the captain's decision of implementing a palm to the port bridge wing. A very much appreciated decision!

The newest member of the bridge team

Listen to: Abbey Road – Here Comes The Sun

(Preferable you find the original version by Beatles, unfortunately Spotify doesn't provide music from geniuses like them)

How to destroy your arch enemy

Time for revenge on the nemesis

This old school alarm clock has been the arch enemy for two of the ABs onboard. Its constant tickery-tack it has kept them furiously awake many nights in a row. The problem wasn't so easily resolved since the clock was locked into a third AB's locker in the cabin, but after a while they managed to get it out. And then it was time for revenge...

One of the unaccompanied units we transport are chassis. In principe, a chassi is two TEU's (containers, 20 ft long) on legs. It is a Trelleborg port invention, these chassis, and they are heavy, really heavy. Therefore, the optimal revenge onboard for the clock was to place the clock under one of the chassi's legs. Game over for the clock, satisfactory revenge for the AB's.

When the chassi met the clock

Close up of game over/sweet satisfactory revenge

Compressed clock

Listen to: Hans Zimmer – Time if you are in a silent calm mood,

or listen to: Justice – Genesis if you get the part about revenge.

Both songs from movies, the first from Inception, the second from The Punisher: War zone

Viva vuvuzela!

Meh.. funnier in swedish version of Colreg, Appendix IV, however, in case of emergency, do as follow:

"The following signals, used or exhibited either together or separately, indicate distress and need of assistance: ...

(b) a continuous sounding with any fog-signalling apparatus;"

Hence the Vuvuzela, nowadays an obligatory SOLAS life saving equipment on every bridge!

Listen to: Vicky Vuvuzela – Blow Your Vuvuzela - Radio Mix

Longing for the true colours

It seems like every blog post and every photo goes in the same shade of grey, I am truly missing the spring and the summer time now. The storm yesterday wasn't so bad, I slept through the waves and the only drawback was that we had to drift outside the port since the weather doesn't allow us to switch quays. After discharging the cargo from Rostock I took the opportunity to take some photos in the weak winter sun. The picture below shows the ship M/S Globia during cargo operation in Trelleborg port. I have some special liking for HDR this time of the year, it brings out the non visible colours and changes in the light and give the pictures that extra finishing touch that bring them somewhat to life. So, I hope that you can put up with my HDR fever. It will decrease as the days go by and the natural lights get better, I promise you.

M/S Globia loading grain

In order not to photograph through the portholes I had to step outside and go on the catwalk around the wheelhouse. I am not a big fan of heights, so my legs was a little bit shaky afterwards. As you can see, it is quite a distance down to the ground. 21 meters to be precise.

High heels

Listen to: Deine Lakaien – One Night

A necessary update

After many days in somewhat constant internet and telephone shadow, I have found my way back to the blog and to the internet reality. Our schedule doesn't suit my need for web surfing since I am at work during two arrivals/departures of three each day, and during the last mentioned, I am enjoying my beauty sleep. But today we have been moored in Trelleborg all the day, a circumstance which has given me some free time in front of the computer. Therefore, this will be a long update with some photos from the last week. Because, as you will see, even though I do not have access to the internet, I have done my homework concerning the photographing part. The weather has been mostly bad, just the constant wet gray tones which I have got really tired of by this moment, so instead of beautiful views over the sea and the harbors, I have focused on some documentation of the ship and the daily work.

2nd mate caught me working

Photo: Fredrik Schrewelius

The first picture in this blog post is one that I did not take by myself. Instead, the 2nd mate who was a designated camera holder while I was checking the railing's position in relation to the bow ramp while lowering the ramp/opening the estonia port, took the opportunity to capture me while working. As you can see, I'm wearing a comfy bodysuit (winter coverall) in beaver nylon, which is by far the most well invested money I have spent on a article of clothing the last months. Well, the coverall and my winter working boots shares the top position together, I hate to freeze.

The bulb bow in the frosty Rostock waters

As you can see above, the winter still holds us in its hands, and I can't see any change on that front in the foreseeable future. Tonight the weather reports has promised us storm with winds up to 28 meters per second, so I have to secure my cabin for the sea's temperament before I go to bed this night.

Before I leave the photos from the bow, I take the chance to show you one HDR photo I took from the inside. It was a little bit difficult to keep the camera steady for all the three different exposures, so I cheated a bit, but I think the result still turned out quite good.

HDR details from the bow

Among seafarers photography is a very common hobby. Don't ask me why, maybe it is because we tend to visit more exotic places than people do in general, or it is because of the fact that we don't have anything better to do with our spare time onboard :) One important detail in the camera bag as a photographing seafarer is a massive tele lens to capture all the ships and seabirds around you. Unfortunately, I am not in possession of one of those lenses, so I have to improvise and take photos through the binocular to get that 7 times zoom. Or I can just borrow the tele lens from one of the 2nd mates, that is way more easier. But, to be completely honest, I am not too found of the tele lens. It requires good weather with little or no particles and moist in the air, and it is hard to both focus, zoom and parry the camera at the same time as you change your exposure settings. It feels better to keep to my 24-70mm lens or to the wide angle lens which are known waters to me.

Another 2nd mate in photo action

I realized that I haven't post any photos of the ship herself yet, so in order to correct that faux pas, I give you two different photos of the ship. First, the shot from the day when the sun shined for the first time in many days:

M/S Huckleberry Finn in Trelleborg port

And then, the same ship, the same date, the same harbor but in night mode:

Trucks and their ship, view from M/S Peter Pan

A couple of days ago I experimented with my wide angle lens and tripod on the bridge. I wanted to capture all the small details that is just visible to you when your eyes got used to the weak lights. But in order to get the picture as I wanted it, we had to turn on the red lights. These are not usually used, it is like going into combat mode just turning them on (every time these lights are on I just think about the underwater scenes from "Das Boot", which is by the way the best war movie ever). I have used 30 second long exposure time, so the second mate sits really really still.

Red night watch

Before I leave you again for this time, I have one last photo to show. Last saturday I was ashore in Rostock with the ambition to capture the ship when she was at an unordinary berth, but the lights where too weak and I didn't thought that the photo would turn out good, so instead I photographed the main deck in an unloaded condition. The picture below shows "Combideck" (also known as deck 2 or Hauptdeck, the latter one in german), the view is from the bow to the aft. Every side has three files with space for eight long units in each file. In the middle there is the casing, where among other things, the entrance and the lift to the upper decks are located. This is one of our three cargo decks, as you can see the ship used to transport train sets before, but nowadays the tracks are filled up with plastic substance. Today we load trailers, mafis, chassis, LKWs (trucks) and sometimes PKWs (ordinary cars) on this deck instead.

The long and winding roads

Listen to: Johnny Cash – Unchained