Time now for another episode of the African Chronicles!!!
(Music, Fanfare> and rolling drums) Brought to you by the weird and wacky people aboard the SS Wilson.
Well, it looks like next Tuesday we will arrive in Texas to pick up our next load. It appears however we may be delayed for a time before we can leave to shore. Three days ago, despite our best efforts at searching the ship upon leaving each port, we have found two stowaways.
They claim to have boarded the ship 8 days before they were discovered, they claim to have had no food and no water and the say they were hiding in our starboard life boat. None of there claims have been valid so far as we can tell. When they were found they were laying out on the #2 hatch cover and were seen coming down from the bow (we were underway 3 days already).
This hatch is way forward of the house which carries the lifeboat. They both looked healthy, not like they have been without water for 8 days or food for that matter. We did another extensive search and found tarps in the forward rope locker that look as if made into beds. The two are now locked in a cabin, but there are suspicions that there are others aboard, but we sure can't find them. Stowaways on this vessel have been known to hide in air ducks and other places only a skinny person can fit. Unfortunately we were to far from Africa to turn around and take them back, and the company had no other ships heading near us to transfer them to. This means we have to take them home with us. It may mean that when we get back to US waters we may be detained by the Coast Guard, Homeland Security, INS and who knows who else.
Rumor has it we could spend as much as two weeks at anchor before we can even dock, but it is possible everything can be taken care of in a day. It will be interesting to see what happens. At very least we expect dogs to search the entire ship we return. We gave up searching for the others (if their here), we will let the dogs find them.
On another note: Hold cleaning is in full swing now. Joy and I have formed our own team to clean the holds. The AB's, 3 of them are the other team. Today we finished #3 and we will skip forward to #5 in the morning. Chances are the AB's will never leave the one they are working in. I tried helping them the 1st day, but when they insisted on using buckets to empty water from the Rose boxes* I gave up. I hauled up about 30 buckets of water by rope (expecting more like 5), I suggested a pump about 3 times to those idiots, but they wanted to use buckets.
Are people born that stupid or is it environment? Hummm..... Well Joy and I use pumps in our holds LOL, were kicking some ass.
What is a rose box you ask? Well, the holds have several levels to them. One stage of cleaning is a fire hose wash down from the top level working all the way to the bottom. The goal is to get all the loose cargo (wheat, sorghum, rice etc..) off of the overheads, bulkheads to the bottom of the hold.
The Rose Box is the lowest space within the hold, so the water and some cargo flow to this box. If you have enjoyed the Scent of fermenting and rotting wet wheat then you may know the irony of calling it a Rose Box. This stuff STINKS!!!! Funny though, the wheat grows in nothing. When we first loaded the wheat we had a downpour in Texas, some grain rolled with the water to the gangway area and the next day we had a lawn on the deck. Now down in the holds I was sweeping, I lifted a hatch lid that was set to the side. Under the lid all the grain sprouted, I was looking at a 20 pound patch of wheat sprouts (the sprouts stink too). So far I found wheat needs no soil and no light to grow. A little rust and water works fine. So here is another question.
How is it that Africa cannot grow this crap? Surely they can find some rust and a little water somewhere! Now your probably saying "Jesus, Jesse's got way to much time on his hands!"
LOL okay, I think it's time for Ice Cream then bed. I will write again soon. Miss ya'll
Jesse
No comments:
Post a Comment