Ahoy PONL Colombo!! Off to Singapore - I

1st mar 2005 (01:37 hrs IST)

1st mar 2005 (03:57 hrs Somewhere in the middle of Indian Ocean Time!)

Port of Singapore Authority

Boy oh Boy!

35 berths!!

Dear Mummy,

Hope you had a great birthday. heard that Nunu had baked a delicious cake for you, which I missed on :-(. But it was lovely to have been able to wish you over phone from the middle of Indian Ocean. Its been really great fun and miss you all.

I am writing this from on the ship "PONL Colombo". To just give you a brief on what's it been like this past week:

Left Kolkata on the 24th. Reached Mumbai and was there till 25th. Flew for Colombo at 0345 hrs (what an ungodly hour! why can't airlines have better flying hours!). Reached Colombo at 0645 hrs Colombo is 20 min ahead of us. (Just to give you an idea of how time literally flies :-) we have already put forward our watches twice, by one hour each, since we sailed! And now we are 2 hours 20 min ahead of IST)

My colleague, Garima, who is the other management trainee on board with me, reached Colombo later than I did. We had just about 2 hours to go around Colombo. So we decided to board a local bus and went out for Sri Lankan supper/dinner at a local restaurant- Crescat. Enjoyed the meal and the music. Was extremely spicy!!

From the time we started sailing to now, its been 3 days on board the ship. She is 23 years old but has been sailing pretty good except for a hitch here and a hitch there.. (pssst...we were adrift for an hour in the middle of nowhere because of engine problems!!!) But overall has been a smoooth and reeeeally eggciting sailing...

Peek preview ??

dolphins...flying fish...
beautiful sunsets... amazing early mornings...

clear night skies...full of innumerable stars....absolutely clear..feels like heaven at times...milky way streaking across the sky...bright and white as milk, so appropriately named..

can stand on the sides forever, feeling the wind in my face...

looking at l'il white horses being formed out of small frothy waves...

see her cutting clean and clear through the waters...smoooooooth
Swanky and swift passenger liners...

Huge and Slow tankers...

Just like us cargo ships...and car carriers..

and yesss a YATCH right in the middle of the sea some 100s of nautical miles away from land!!

Bridge watch, plotting positions, setting course, using the sextant to find your latitudinal position, the gyrometer to get the Azimuth and even steering the ship :-)...
Engine room (hot and sweaty!), to the fore and the aft, portside and starboard side,

some 70 feet above water level on the bridge....and 15 feet below water level next to Ballast tanks and steering gear, propellers...

even sewage tanks eeeyuck!

logging reefers (refrigerated containers-they bring us a lot of money),under the deck, over the deck, hatch covers,
repair works...lot more.

Dutch officers ;-) and Indonesian crew
Baywatch :-P Bar, movies, free drinks and farewell parties...phew!

Using Gyrometer for measuring Azimuth

Johan-My Dutch Crush

But obviously not as swanky as cruises, after all this is a container cargo ship. . not a joyride aboard..but its fun to be right in the middle of nowhere for so many days (though can't imagine how the sailors manage for so many days like this. Must be quite boring if the trip is extended or a more frequented one)

Will berth at our first port of call after sailing from Colombo- Port Kelang, 3rd mar 0000hrs and reach Singapore on 4th 0100 hrs.

At Sea Me!

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