We have reached the “roaring 40’s”!
I’ll explain, but I should back up my story a bit…. to the beginning.
I left Tokyo on January 5th on Qantas Airlines for Perth, Australia with a layover in Sydney. I would complain about my 30 hours of travel (Qantas is a great airline, but it doesn’t help when your outfitted like a metal detectors wet dream steel toed boots and up), but I’ll refrain only because Conors’ story of 48+hours of travel with four layovers makes me seem like a whiney child in comparison.
But I made it to Australia, and I was happy. Let me show you why.
Room with Shower, Couch, Flat Screen, and Kitchen
Awesome Pool
(Photo Credit Conor)
The Resteraunt/Bar at the Hotel
(Photo Credit Conor)
We got to Australia on the evening of the sixth, and we didn’t have to board ship until 20:00 the next day. This meant that we got a day to explore Fremantle, where Maersk Peary was harbored.
First things first, that morning we went on a quest for Target because Conor, of all things, forgot to pack his underwear. Dumba** Classic. But we did get to explore the surroundings of our hotel and found a few funny things here and there.
Where's Bart Simpson?
(PCC)
The Australian Captain
(PCC)
Asian Scuba Diver
(PCC)
In the afternoon we ventured quite a bit further, crossing the bridge to the other side of Fremantle and making our way to Port Beach to enjoy some Aussi Beer and the best Mojito I’ve had to date.
Who knew going to Antarctica meant getting a tropical vacation?
Conor digs Australia
Park
(PCC)
Port Beach
(PCC)
Oh, and then we got back to the hotel for dinner, where Conor discovered that he had packed underwear before leaving New Jersey. Dumba** Classic.
But our unexpected tropical vacation had to come to an end, and we joined the crew of the Maersk Peary that night.
My room with my own head, couch, desk, and hatch
The wonderful view from my hatch
To clarify what the "wonderful view" is...
green pipes
Photo taken the next day
(PCC)
The Maersk Peary currently has a 20+ crew, and to our pleasant surprise, there were two cadets from Kings Point on board. Our first day was spent filling out paperwork for the Master (aka Captain), running out to Fremantle again to buy an adaptor (why a ship built in Korea would have European outlets is beyond me), reporting to the Engine Room where we will be working for the most part, and going out to dinner with the KP cadets before the ship sailed away at 20:00.
Sailing out of port was enthralling, as the ship started to roll gently, and land disappeared behind us. That night, it was as if I was a baby being rocked to sleep, not that I had any idea what that was like since I’m sure we never had a rocking cradle…
Buh-bye Australia
(PCC)
Being out at sea is a wonderful thing, with a 360degree view of this.
The first two days of work were spent familiarizing ourselves with the Engine room, which meant tracing the various onboard systems. While schematics in textbooks make things seem logical and simple, when and you’re following a plain white pipe, intertwined with a hundred other plain white pipes, and they keep disappearing behind bulkheads and weaving up and down the four levels of the engine room (not including the stack), it gets pretty complicated.
Since graduating familiarization, we have been helping the rest of the engine crew in organizing the engine room. Being a recently bought ship, the engine room storage is a mess left behind by the previous crew. For us, this meant that sorting through thousands of nuts, bolts, and gaskets.
However, doing these tasks can be fairly fun. The sea’s have been getting rougher, which means the ship is rolling a lot more, especially since reaching the “roaring 40s.” (40 being the latitude) When sitting at dinner, it’s common for your chair to start sliding towards the salad bar while you’re still seated. This means that if you have a small tin can where a specific type of screw is supposed to go, and you try to drop it in, 3/5 times you’re going to miss. It’s a pretty fun game.
Even now I'm playing peek-a-boo with the ocean and the window next to me keeps shifting from full view of sea to full view of clouds....
Atleast the water's pretty
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