Going up in the world, doing new things. And going through a strange and sad few days.

By Matthew LittleUncategorised

This post by Matthew Little was originally published at Diary of a Deckie: My experience volunteering on a hospital ship.

So, the last month period between now and last post started (or ended, I can’t remember) with another week of night patrol. Since then, I have done another week of Night Patrol last week, actually followed by nearly a weeks time off. I’ll get to that later. Thankfully, and somewhat sadly, nothing happened. I say thankfully, because nothing happened and sadly, because, nothing happened. Ambiguity.

After I finished that week about a month ago and after two days off, I returned to my normal schedule of day shift, to be pleasantly surprised that I would be starting my fireman duty. Didn’t you already do that in Texas? That was fireFIGHTER training. As in, fighting a fire if it were to ever happen. My new fireman duty training has been working with the Fire Fighting equipment officer to pretty much ensure that all the fire fighting equipment Never would have guessed the firefighting equipment officer’s job and fire related systems on the ship is where it should be/ working/ not broken/sufficient enough to pass inspection. Here is a brief glimpse of the jobs of the duty fireman.

  • Check the fire points around the ship 
  1. Check if the hydrant isn’t leaking or rusting, which could lead to leaking.
  2. Check if the hoses aren’t broken
  3. If the fire points have spanners to couple/decouple hoses
  4. (if they have them) The fire extinguishers are… I don’t know…. fine? (all I have done with the extinguishers is give them a dust) All though, the powder extinguishers need to be picked up, to check if the powder hasn’t caked at the bottom. By turning them upside down to see if the weight shifts to the top. Thanks, gravity. If not, I can hit them with a mallet to shift the powder. Not too hard that it breaks the extinguishers, creating a huge, dusty mess.
  • Testing the fire hydrants
  1. This is actually testing whether the hydrants are working. which can be fun on a deck with no access to the outside of the ship. So you have to lay a bunch of hoses up staircases and through passage ways until you get to a door.  
  • Weekly inspection of the Fire Lockers
  1. If all the SCBA bottles have enough oxygen in them
  2. All the firefighters have the right equipment on their hooks and right things in the right pockets (gloves, torches, mask,  etc…)
  3. Testing the dead man alarms, a component of the firefighters ‘set up’ (A very loud, motion detecting, shouty box. ’nuff said)
  • Testing the fire doors
  1. Speaks for itself.
  • Fortnightly washing of the SCBA masks)
  • Testing of Smoke heat detectors
  • Checking if the EEBDs (Emergency Escape Breathing Devices) have enough oxygen.
  • Checking if the Fire Dampers over the ship will open and close properly and if they have readable, not broken, labels.
Was that brief? I have no idea, guess it depends on the person.
In terms of the work as a deck hand I have been doing as a deck hand recently, that is pretty much all I have been doing for the last month or so. Besides from night patrol, and the odd garbage removal.

‘Should they stay or should they…. move… slightly…. out the way.? or something?’

So, the port is in the middle of preparing for dredging. Which meant we we were supposed to move away from our berth for approximately a few hours. We were going to move on Easter Monday, where I would have been on the bridge on watch whilst we move, I think. After I had finished getting dressed up in my watchkeeping…shirt. With epaulets! We got an overhead announcement from our last (and just left Captain) Jon, that the moved has been postponed. Jon is a veteran Mercy Ships Captain, whom I met at the ISC during OnBoarding. As I write this, on Saturday 27th of April, We were scheduled to have the new move today. I would have been on bellbook duty. This would have meant that I would have noted down the time of shifts from ‘Full steam ahead’ and ‘full stop’ and all those in between.

One of these!

That move was cancelled yesterday. But, in preparation of that, I spent of yesterday preparing for the move by helping to secure down bins and pallets on deck 8. then, in the afternoon, I did Pest Control.

Other things that happened over the last month

  • Fought another boss in Dungeons and Dragons….. Guess what it was, I’ll give a hint, it’s in the title of the game! But, before that, the party was tasked by a druid (I disliked this druid NPC. In case you were wondering) to clear out the map of zombies and Groots (not Dutchies, Twig-blights) Or the Forest of Cheem. Now there’s an obscure reference and a half. 
  • I finally bought and started to play Skyrim. My ‘Dovahkihn’ (Don’t shout at me if that is spelled wrong you nerds. Jk. I gave it my best shot from memory, alright) is a Breton. am going down the swordsman route instead of sorcerer. I want to stab and decapitate things, OK!? And I have sided with the Stormcloaks. 
  • I had my 19th Birthday.
    A bit of a tale of disappointment with this one. I had planned to go back to Kassa for another night away with my friends like last time again. This time, I was excited to go, I had done it before, so I knew the drill, and I didn’t have any anxieties about it. I did the last time. Like the last time, we were going on the Friday evening, so I was going to wake up, on my Birthday, on an island. Sounds fun? Except, even though I was ready to go in the evening, things went wrong, from the morning. It was the day of a dive. The divers are supported by two crew members in one of the rescue boats, with the nets for the side of the ship that is not adjacent to the dock. That day, we decided that we would test one of the other rescue boats and ‘take it out for a spin’. I went in this boat. What I didn’t expect, surprisingly, was how intense the sun would be on that day. I forgot to take a bottle with me, as I lost my Mercy Ships bottle the week before. And chilly bottles don’t store much water. Long story short…. I got sunstroke, as well as a splitting headache for the rest of the day. So, then, when it was time to go to catch the ferry, I decided “I have a headache caused by the sun. Not a good idea to go out into the sun again with limited water. I’ll stay on the ship to recover.” I spent the evening in the cabin drinking water to heal myself and went to sleep. Then, in the morning, on my birthday, I was pretty much fine. So I spent my birthday on the ship. But I played some Skyrim, and after a decade, I went back to updating my collection of Doctor Who DVDs (besides from the occasional Christmas Special and ‘Day of the Doctor’ DVD between 2009 and now) as my parents (and Hannah in New Zealand got me the Complete Specials (The last David Tennant specials from The Next Doctor to The End of Time) and Series 5 through 8 boxsets. So my birthday was a bit ‘ehh this sucks’ and ‘ehh this isn’t so bad’. I also have a few classics, Including ‘The Beginning’ boxset.
I also said goodbye to a few couple over the course of a few weeks, including Elizabeth, who was a part of the ‘Star Wars marathon’ group. OnBoarding Jen returned to the States for a few months. She’ll be back though. Miss you! Georgiy, our FFE Officer from the Ukraine left. He got us all waffles (The Deck department, not the entire crew!). I had three waffles withing one morning. and how many did I pay for?  None. I didn’t steal them. So I had one from Georgiy, but he bought a couple spares. So I took one of those. That was my second one. Then, as I went to get a snack (I had a day off because I was OnCall that weekend) Esther, from Sales and the Starbucks,  beckoned me over to offer me (and some one else) the last two waffles that Lizzie, one of the British crew,who was also leaving that weekend had bought for a bunch of people. So that was my third. Then both Octavian, our former Chief Officer from Romania, and Brian from the States left on the same day a couple weeks ago. 
That almost week off… Easter on the ship is MASSIVE. I was told that Easter is just as special as Christmas on the ship, and it was. We had things going on throughout holy week. Such as, the Queen’s Lounge decorated to become the Upper Room where Jesus shared the Last Supper with the 12, and the International lounge was decorated to become the Garden of Gethsemane, with a soundtrack of night sounds for the atmosphere. Then, on Easter Sunday, there was a sunrise service on Deck 8, pastries in the cafe, another Service, then Easter lunch. It was special, except… I wanted to be alone. Mainly because I had just come off Night Patrol on Saturday morning, and my Circadian Rhythm hadn’t gone back to normal yet, and I was confused on Good Friday, because it was a ship holiday, which just felt like a Saturday, and It was hard  to get through that last night from Friday to Saturday. I wasn’t myself that weekend. I was a bit sad and a bit grouchy, but I didn’t want to take naps, because I was still trying to reset my schedule. That was also due to everyone being there. I must have mentioned this before in a previous post, that even with a crew of 400+, most of the time, the ship feels empty. Until Easter Sunday, then it was like ‘Woah. OK. Everyone is suddenly… here.’ I couldn’t cope. Luckily, the week coming…. which was the week that has just gone. I had nearly a week off to readjust. So of course, there was Saturday and Sunday off, two days. Easter Monday was a ship holiday, so it was a long weekend. I was on night shift on Good Friday, but it was a four day weekend because ship holiday. After Night Patrol, I have two days off, usually Monday and Tuesday, but this week, it was Tuesday and Wednesday. Another two days. But then, I had Thursday off (Wasn’t supposed to happen, but it’s on the schedule soo….) So, 6 days off! Then back to work for one day before the weekend. Now.
And that’s about it. Thank you for reading, see you sometime soon!