A Day In The Life Of A Cargo Ship Deck Officer | Life At Sea

[Applause] it's 3 30 in the morning just woke up and took a shower and now i'm changing we're stuck in charleston since last night we had to cancel our outbound transit due to fog so i just wanted to take you through a day in the life of a watch officer so it's almost quarter to four and that's the time to turn over to the watch we don't want to hold them up so i'm guessing we're probably going to turn over on the bridge since we're not doing cargo [Music] so yeah we're fogged and thick here still yeah still pretty thick 10 a.m [Music] all right let's go walk out on deck and go check the lines [Music] [Music] looks like they're doing early morning crane repair or maintenance so i like to check the lines about once an hour they're all in auto tension which is nice so with the change in the tide the lines will automatically pay out or even on their own so the winches on this ship are hydraulic [Music] a lot of the newer ships or you have switched to electronic motors which in my opinion are much nicer and you can see here the auto tension is really just a pin that gets stuck here and it keeps the handle pulled back slightly so it keeps a little bit of hydraulic pressure on it the entire time the fog can cause all kinds of delays in the port so not only can we not leave to go to sea but ships that are trying to come in are forced to go to anchor and wait until the fog clears out so we just walked up the inboard side we checked the lines of the bow now we're gonna walk on the outboard side the starboard side and go check the stern lines you can really see how dense the fog is on the outboard side here can't see anything i mean there's there's a bridge right over there that has some lights on it that's completely invisible you can see the cranes they're raised up they're disappearing into the fog as well sometimes the fog would be so bad that they will actually have to stop cargo operations because the crane drivers can't even see from the crane down to where they're loading or discharging cargo let's see the pilot ladder down to nowhere back on the stern now let's take a look at this behind us here first they were the last ship to come in last night before the channel was closed due to the fog so now we'll check the aftomorin lines again these are all in auto tension so we're just ensuring that the auto tension system is working properly and that the lines are tight this is a safety bite so in case we lose all the hydraulic power there's one line that's a stove that's called stovepipe in it up on the uh bit here so again if we lose the hydraulic power at least one of the lines we'll be able to keep the ship from falling off the dock so the lines are checked and again since we're not doing cargo right now we're just waiting for the thought the fog to clear up the channel to reopen i'll just be checking lines about every hour and my watch is from 4am to 8am and then again 4pm to 8pm and depending on what time we get out of here i'll be working uh on the bridge as well for our departure out of charleston it's just after six a.m now so some of the cranes are starting to work down those are the yard cranes that pick up the containers and then they put them on the trucks right there which then drive underneath the gantry cranes and then are loaded onto the ship and it's now 6 53 so i got about another hour of watch fog's starting to burn off now you can see the bank on the other side of the channel and the don holtz bridge right there on interstate 526 fog is definitely burning off a little bit more now just a couple hours ago you can barely see the ship right here stern of us let alone much of the container terminal here okay it's 7 20. so the gainway watch is making the wake up calls it's a 30 minute call out and we'd like to turn over the watch 10 minutes before the hour so our release will take over the watch at 7 50. we're in the cargo control room now and i noticed we have a little bit of a port list so i just started pumping water to starboard you can see there's a half a degree port list and we correct that using the number five saltwater ballast tanks which are the healing tanks so essentially removing water from the port side you'll see that slowly coming down all the way to the starboard side here and we like to keep this in auto most of the time when we're in port working cargo because as they're loading and discharging cargo if it's not being done directly on the center line then it'll create a list and the auto healing system will automatically move water from port starboard or vice versa to correct that list so we're almost level here once it gets to zero degree list i'll stop the pump there we go we're stopped and then i'm gonna put it back into auto usually the auto heal pump will pump water when there's about a half half a degree to a full degree of list so we're back up on the bridge now at the end of watch and we're required to do log book entries at the beginning and end of watch as well as any other pertinent entries we need to make throughout the watch so at four o'clock this morning i had signed in basically saying that i assumed to watch the vessels idle and we're awaiting the fog to clear not really much had happened over the past four hours so there's no other entries i need to make but i will sign out the lights the lines in the gameway are tended marcia level one security is maintained vessel idle awaiting fog to clear and pilot boarding and then we leave another entry in all u.s ports no discharge in violation of vgpc vgp meaning the vessel general permit that's just a walk around the deck and ensuring that we're not polluting any any type of oil or other pollutants over the side we need to do weather information so we have a computer here that takes readings from various sensors outside including a barometer and a wet and dry bulb for uh air temperatures 10.9 celsius is the dry bulb the wet bulb is 10.5 and it's 10 13.2 millibars for the pressure and we are fog port side to earth the sea temperature we can get from the engine control panel here 11.6 and the wind northeast 11 knots this is recorded in beaufort scale so that's a force four from the northeast and since we're in the harbor here don't usually uh record any uh c's or swell information okay so my morning watch is now over the log book's completed the watch is turned over to third mate and i'll go get breakfast and then i'll be uh just kind of hanging out until they call us for all hands once the fog clears up the pilot's on board and we'll be able to start heading out of charleston here on our way to houston all right breakfast time got pancakes some syrup some fruit scrambled eggs a little more coffee good eating on mars montana back in my room just uh waiting on standby here enjoying my nice view of a container so we got pizza for lunch french fries peas salad a bunch of comfort food for foggy day here in charleston it's 12 15 just got the all hands call so that means we have 30 minutes to report to our stations and i report up to the bridge so i have to be up there before 12 45. the ship that was docked to stern of us is now heading to the turning basin before heading outbound the channel to see [Music] so [Music] uh we are now underway outbound the channel under pilotage and i've been relieved by the second mate as the officer of the watch okay [Music] i'm off the bridge now i just finished my part of the undocking maneuver so i was standing in for the second mate who was on the normal watch schedule but he was up on the bow untying the ship and uh once he finished that party came up and relieved me and now i'm off duty until 4pm and then i'll be back up on the bridge until 8pm and then we fall back into the normal watch cycle routine so um passing by some of the ready reserve fleet here these are great holds military cargo ships and right now in their ros reduced operating status so they're just waiting to be activated such as a time of war to carry military cargo here from charleston to a war zone still pretty foggy not nearly as bad as it was early this morning and even last night so thank you okay it's 1800 halfway through my night watch i'll be up here until 200 8 pm and um then i'll be off duty on my during my rest hour that's my watch partner over there frank [Music] so i'll check in after watch here and before i turn in just a little bit of a view of the bridge here at night ugh close my blind so we don't disturb the bridge just got back in my room it's eight o'clock at night so i'm officially done for the day and uh every day is a little bit different but a lot of days are very similar you kind of get into this same routine as a watch officer and you know the days all start to kind of blend together and they go by pretty quick after you've been out here for a little bit so hope you enjoyed a day in the life as a deck officer on a cargo ship and then merchandise

Channel: Bryan Boyle

Views: 326,985

Rating: 4.947495 out of 5

Keywords: cargo ship, container ship, containership, maersk, day in the life, maritime, deck officer, merchant marine, merchant navy, watch officer, charleston, day in the life on containership, day in the life on cargo ship

Id: igzsA315pok

Length: 17min 8sec (1028 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 02 2021