Nomad Mariner: Aboard the William E. Bright

The first day aboard a vessel is always long and hectic so I was not surprised that when I finished my watch at 2000 I felt the immediate need for the bunk. A quick shower and a short moment to think about what jobs I had completed, what jobs I still needed to get on with and what areas of the ship and in particular the bridge equipment I still needed to learn. While I had spent five weeks on this vessel before, it was some time ago and since then a lot has changed. One big change is the introduction of a Dynamic Positioning computer (DP). DP allows for a vessel to be driven by a computer which is interfaced with all of the vessels engines. The two main engines and the three thrusters which can push the vessel sideways. The DP computer gains its references from many sources but usually it is from a corrected Global Positioning System or from a fan beam which is a laser targeting a reflective device mounted on the rig or what ever you wish to station off of. The equipment installed is a Nautronics JS 5000, it is a basic unit but more than enough for what we want to use it for. I have been a DP Operator for seven years now but due to the vagaries of the company I have been rarely placed aboard a DP vessel and so my knowledge is good but rusty. It usually takes me a few days to get back in to the swing of operating a DP. This one is slightly different as we do not have a separate station to operate the unit but a small consul which is mounted at the aft steering station in front of the driving chair. I like it, it is easy to use and simple.
As is always for Chief Mates, my watch is from 4 – 8 morning and evening, I was called at 0330 to give myself time to wake up and get ready for the watch at four. The ship was steaming from Broome to Scot Reef where the rig was located so it was all open water steaming with only a few minor course changes. Makes for a boring time but in this industry boring means you can relax a bit. On watch with me was one of the seaman, Colin (Spud) and we spent the four hours pleasantly talking about life in general and getting to know a bit about each other and our pasts. Just before Spud departed the bridge at 0600 to go below and start cleaning we got into talking about shares and options. It came out that the both of us had started off with Jamie Mcintyre’s Free DVD and book, which is available on my website www.wealthynomad.com.au . we both had also moved on and taken up the home study pack provided by Nik Halek that is an intensive and well designed study on how to do technical analysis so that you can trade shares or options. No doubt we will be talking more about this over the next few weeks as we share the watches.
While Spud was down below doing his peggy work I took the opportunity to spend more time exploring the bridge and getting to know where every thing was located. The need to know where manuals and files are is important as with a job like this information overload is a real thing and being able to find the information source quickly means less of a need to memorise. I also wanted to read up more concerning the DP as I have not operated this model and was curious as to what its capabilities are.
The watch ended at 0800 and I handed over the Charlie, he informed me that we would be having our weekly safety meeting and drills at 1100. This meant a short sleep as I had to get up early enough so that I could become familiar enough with the fire and emergency drill that I was going to run.
At 1100 I was down in the engine control room (sheltered work shop) talking to the engineers when the muster alarm was sounded. Needless to say we all jumped as it is particularly loud in the engine control room, I guess it needs to be in case the engineers are wearing ear protection. Or most likely it is because most engineers suffer from industrial hearing damage.
All crew mustered on the main deck and we went about the drill. Safety meeting was held in the mess room and it was all wrapped up in an hour so that we could all head to lunch.
Our arrival at the rig was to be 1720 right in the middle of my watch, which is good, this would give me a good opportunity to get up to speed driving the new boat and setting up at the rig. So to prepare for this and knowing it was going to be a long night I made sure I put in a few hours with my head down.
We were on location at 1710 and the rig wanted us in straight away to discharge our deck. There were certain items they wanted immediately the obvious priority was the food containers we had aboard. Once they were off we set the vessel up using the DP and sat on location very comfortably while the rig crane proceeded to pluck the cargo off as they required. That’s the beauty about DP, there is no constant work driving the vessel by hand. You just have to be there monitoring the computer being ready to take over should anything go wrong. Most importantly you can monitor the action on the deck and ensure that no dangerous situations evolve.
By the time 2000 hours came up and Charlie arrived to take over the watch I was ready to hand over. The short time on the bridge was intense but educational and I felt that I was back up to speed on most of it. Charlie informed me that if we were to be working through the night then he would like for me to come up on watch at 0200 and monitor the second mate for half of his watch. This was purely a precaution as we had never sailed with Chris and even though he had a DP licence, we just needed to ensure that he was up to speed with it all. We needn’t have worried.