Life on an Very Large Container Ship

Guest Post From Zac Watson: Zac is a good friend who has sailed with me from Hawaii to Los Angeles and From Galapagos to Marquesas. He is in the process of completing his Maritime Academy Studies and currently doing a practical and internship aboard a Very Large Container Ship. I've always wondered what life is like on these monstrous vessels as the pass by on the ocean. Zac provides a nice perspective and insight into life aboard....


One hundred and five days. That's long enough to become accustomed every creak and groan of the ship's roll, to know the shudder she makes when she pitches forward and the prop comes near the water's surface. Long enough to only slightly wake when the engine goes into an automatic slow down, sending vibrations through the steel hull, or to know how to step when a wave breaks into the bow and in a revolt of momentum she bodily staggers and everything not fixed by at least two corners shifts.
My room is beige and has alternate layers of bleached white streaks where rags have been wiped across in a rush, black soot, and cigarette smoke stain. There are two outlets on every wall, so at no point are you more than an arm's length away from plugging something in, which I find handy, but a little strange. I have a rotary telephone that rings every morning at seven twenty and I answer with 'Cadet,' and the A.B. on watch tells me that 'it's zero seven-twenty' and I say 'Yes, thankyou.' And then I climb back into the warm covers of my bed and wait for my watch alarm to go off in ten minutes, and then I either lay there for a half hour rocking with the ship, or get up and brush my teeth, then head down to breakfast.
I have oatmeal almost every morning now, I've lost interest in trying to come up with strange things to have the cook prepare. I don't even know what eggs florentine are, but that's about the only thing I haven't ordered. I keep thinking one of these mornings I will, but I've taken a liking to my morning oatmeal.
I eat with the Chief Mate, Captain and Chief Engineer, and I don't say much at breakfast. They'll ask me things occasionally, but rarely do I engage in conversation, my brain is still idling and not at full temperature to engage the gears yet.
Then up to the bridge for coffee and to check our position on the world. I like having to look at a chart encompassing the entire North Atlantic to figure out where I am. This trip back we went through Pentland Firth, which means we went up and over England and through the Isles of Scotland. I didn't see any of it, crossing through the Firth at five in the morning there's only a few flashing lights to witness, but it's an interesting route on the chart and I like having been this far North. No iceburgs though.
Then I head down to the Chief Mate's room and ask him what the plan is. Every morning for the past sixty days or so I've done just that, knocked on his office door as a courtesy, step into the office whether he responds or not, and I yell into his connecting room “Hey Nick. What's the plan for today?”
Nine times out of ten it's simply to just go out and check the reefer temps. We carry about a hundred refrigerator units aboard and every morning we have to log the temperatures. That's my job, walking around with the log book and a mechanical pencil so I can write small enough to get the temps in the little boxes.
It takes an hour and half, and it's one of my favorite parts of the day. The idea of it makes me recoil and dread it. Putting on my carhartt jacket and red wool winter cap, lacing up my work boots and pulling the legs of my jeans down over them. It's cold and damp and the wind can snap back at you with malice, like it's angry I'm out here under the power of engine and not canvas.
And the containers all have strange smells, rotting vegetables mixed with transmission fluid and stale air. And the reefers all whir and are constantly in states of kicking on or shutting off and they spit water the wind whips up and pelts into your eye.
But it's me and Nick out there, and we inspect everything regardless of the weather. And I'll stop and look out, look up from from my log book with the broken left hander's handwriting that looks like a five year old filled it out holding the pencil in a fist, and I'll lose my breath in the horizon.
I forget where I am, the vastness of the ship and the duties required while working don't allow for much time to be outside looking at the horizon, and I'll go long stretches in the day where I don't look up. And then like a beautiful woman is walking by, my head lifts up and I follow with my whole being the contour of the horizon.
I really am too sentimental. Out here with all these rough characters, never read a poem in their lives and here I am, this tender hearted poet sailor who is overcome with the beauty of a horizon. I don't know why I chose these jobs. Its firefighting all over again. All these tough guys who see this tree hugging hippy with bags more full of books than clothes or work gear, and they all think I won't last a week. They thought that when I was a firefighter, didn't expect me to be able to work past the first fire. By the end they were calling me a badass.
Same out here. The captain at the beginning of the trip was only on for five days, and he said I didn't stand a chance. Three months later he came back from his vacation, and I'm still here, not only surviving, but thriving. He acted pretty surprised when he asked me if I was ready to get off and I told him I'd rather stay aboard than go back to school.
But I'm ready to get off. It's time to see the family, have a beer, wink at some girls, go snowboarding with my buddies.
I've been standing the eight to midnight watch. Standing in the light of radar screens telling stories with the AB and the third mate. Keeping quiet and watching the dark go by. It's been about twenty thousand miles since I've slept on land. When Frost wrote that he had taken “the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference” I have no doubt this is what he meant.

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I'm in Holland right now. Just spent the first part of October steaming across from Norfolk, and here I am tied up at the dock. Actually, sitting in a bar in Brielle, near Rotterdam.

This has been an excellent trip so far. I've put in a few days with long hours, but nothing bad. It's mostly doing paperwork and chartwork and that sort of thing, so it's not like it's exhausting or anything. But I get a call at 7:20 a.m. every morning, and then eat breakfast and get ready and am ready to work by eight.

The Chief Mate and I walk the decks checking lashings and temperatures for reefer containers, and that takes about an hour and a half. We carry containers, lots of them, back and forth between the U.S. and northern Europe on this 950 foot long ship.

It's a comfortable ride, even in some ten foot swells it doesn't rock or roll bad at all, just a nice gentle shift at most. It's warm, quiet at night, and full of reclining chairs in the lounge and good food and a refrigerator full of icecream whenever I want. It has a weight room and exercise bikes and a bowflex. It has an elevator that stops at all six decks including the engine room.

Really this is a posh ship compared to anything I've seen on the lakes. The guys aboard have all been good. I got a lucky crew in that the Chief Mate is a great guy who's good to work with from 8 to 11:30 every morning, and then I eat lunch. Then I head up to the bridge and work with the 2nd mate standing a 12 to 4 watch. We do chart corrections and plot positions and courses and calculate speeds needed and propeller efficiencies and take weather reports and stand around telling sea stories.

The 2nd is a curmudgeon who's been sailing for 45 years and is really a walking encyclopedia. He doesn't just know something about everything to do with ships, he's been there and used them and has a story for anything I've been able to think up to ask.

The 3rd mate then I only really see when we're each off watch. So far we've been playing basketball (yeah, there's a basketball hoop welded up on main deck) every night after I get off watch. He's just a few years older than I am, and we get along well. He bought a Wii at the last port in the states and we've been getting into some fairly intense tennis games. I'm afraid someone's gonna get hurt because we're both a bit competitive.

Life is pretty good. I've dabbled at my sea project, not doing as much as I'd like to be doing, but I'll get to it.
Not too long ago was a full moon in the middle of the Atlantic. It's easy to get lost in the beauty of this world. Maybe I'm a touch sentimental, but I get overwhelmed by how expansive and powerful and gentle this world can be. Soft moon glow lighting up the sea from horizon to horizon, reflecting and refracting so even the crisp night wind seems to be made visible in the luminance.

Whales and dolphins are as regular a sight out here as deer and squirrels are back home. I've seen a flash of something jump or a white spout every day I've been on deck.
And coming through the English Channel, we had a clear warm sunshine, which I'm told is pretty rare, and The White Cliffs of Dover were shining in the sun. I've always read about them and heard about them, watched scenes in movies with them, but they really are something special. France on one side of me, England on the other, wind ripping twenty-five knots tearing at my hair and clothes, I just felt envigorated and fortunate and excited to be alive.

But make no mistake, this is no pleasure cruise. It's a floating factory. It spews out diesel exhaust and soot and there's always somebody running a grinder on something, and it stinks of chemicals and toxic substances, and there's grease on every chain, turnbuckle, holding rod and deck shoe can see. Which in turns means there's grease on you, which means it's on everyone else, which means it's worked it's way onto and into everything on the ship. My shower handles have black grease on them right now. There's no getting away from it.

There's 23 men aboard and they all have jobs that require constant awareness and care. There's a professional manner projected at all times, and no one forgets that a mistake at sea means there's no doctors to help you, limited medical supplies to help you, and however many days of being in pain before we even get to a place where getting you to a hospital is possible.
Someone said they'd like to be in my shoes. Yes, I love where my shoes are and where they've been, but out here, I'm wearing work books and stomping around in rain, wind, sea spray, whirring container fans, clunking metal joints stressing and popping against each other, creaking turnbuckles that weight 25 pounds each, and however untold many amount of stuff to be careful about I can't even describe.

But it's a good experience for me. The knowledge and hands on experience is truly awesome, and though at times I'm really missing home and the fall colors changing, I'm out here with the wind and tides and I can't help feeling that all is as it should be.

Zac zacinthewind@yahoo.com