Ocean – Thank you!

Written yesterday, before leaving the ship.

As mentioned before, one day, when M asked me about going on a ship journey, I had no idea what to expect. What intrigued me about the container ship journey was that we would not be treated specially – we would be living alongside the crew.

Today, is our last day on the ship. Yesterday was the last day in the deep ocean. I leave my heart behind with this new family that I have found. I have proved I am a water sign – there is nothing I love more than staring at water all day. It distracts me from everything else.

I sit here, on the bridge, on a table that can be folded down and hung.

I am looking at a ship at the horizon while waiting to approach Montevideo. I have just witnessed one of the most breath-taking sunrises we have had since we left and just crossed two cruise ships for the first time – clearly we are coming close to big cities – Montevideo and Buenos Aires.

I just want to summarize our journey, sitting here on the ship before I leave. There are some blogs that are still being written, especially about the different places we stopped at in Brazil – those I had suspended in order to experience the last full days to the full. These will come later.

Starting the journey in Singapore:

• The anticipation or the fear of taking such a long journey, starting in Singapore after which there was no port to get off in case we did not like it – there are days we have laughed about this while on the ship. How could anyone fear taking this trip?
• Shopping for all ready to eat vegetarian food for the fear that there would be no vegetarian food. Now, knowing A and J1 the messboy, we did not have to fear – they would have never let anyone starve, even keeping a watch over us about what we like what we do not and adjusting when possible (most of the time)… There is just this macaroni with cheese that had a Vanilla flavor that I could never adjust to – luckily, I had that only twice – M had it more number of times. The best was when the French technician came on board and put one mouthful in his mouth and… Apart from this, everything else was delicious! Of special mention is a dessert Pan de Coco – I will die to eat this again and again. Another special mention to the baked desserts that P used to bring to the bridge much before lunch time – initially, I used to resist them, but I no longer could!
• Reaching the Singapore port and crossing the immigration – with two huge suitcases and seeing two passengers come into immigration with two suitcases. We were carrying these back to Germany as we would need them in our next trip to move our smaller things back to India.
• Being told that we would not be able to take pictures at the Singapore port… arriving at the ship and seeing the ship but not being able to take pictures.
• Seeing the gangway and wondering how we would take the suitcases up when A cam bounding down and carried the first one, J came a few seconds later for the second one – later, we would find that J is the 2-nd officer – there is no hierarchy here. (Now we will carry them down ourselves gingerly down the gangway).
• Entering to meet a strict Chief Officer who told us that this is not a hotel – later, we were to find him the most fun of the Chiefs smiling and joking with everyone. What you see initially, is not what you get. Wait a bit. A couple of days before, one of the jovial A’s told me, when you first come onboard, leaving your home and family behind, you are your most grumpy self – later, when you get closer to leaving, you can see a complete change – you are the happiest and the most pleasant. You can identify people going home just from the change in their behavior.

The journey itself:

• The changing ocean colours as the day passes by, as the days pass by, as the weather changes, as the tides change
• The changing texture of the sea – the smooth calm sea, the choppy sea, high waves, lower waves, just small little white waves
• The changing sky colours, starting in the morning, depending on the clouds, the effect on the water both in colours and in texture (when the rain falls on it)
• The coming up early morning to see the sunrise, trying to beat the sun as the time kept changing and as we kept moving more to the south (that meant earlier sunrise)
• The coming up after each meal to see how the ocean has changed
• The rocking motion of the sea, like a mother rocking us to sleep – I am sure it is something I will miss for a long time
• Spotting the birds in the middle of the ocean one fine day – the increase in the number of the birds as the day passed by
• The meeting of the Atlantic and the Indian ocean – the change of colour, weather, waves and then as soon as we are deeper into the Atlantic, how it all looked similar to the Indian ocean again
• Sighting of the land at South Africa, sighting of Brazil, two completely different feeling – one was just tinged with a bit of sadness that two weeks were over but more joy of “Land Ahoy” while the other one was that of sinking heart that the deep ocean was now gone. At South Africa, there was and promise of two more weeks – the first two weeks were bonus that we had not planned originally. In Brazil, there was the realization that this was not forever.
• Spotting the what might be whale – perhaps a baby one with jets of water fountains coming up but not being big enough to qualify as a whale.
• Going from spotting a few dolphins one day, to spotting what we thought was half a pod of dolphins to spotting a whole pod of spotting and twice missing seeing them!
• Spotting ships, being encouraged to start with binoculars but not doing so because I do not like binoculars, to being able to spot them around 20NM initially without them. However, losing this skill after a spate of cloudy days and then trying hard to get this back only to realize, that on cloudy days, I must resort to binoculars. Learning to use those binoculars…
• And there are so many more … and yes! The one single storm we passed – calm sea and storm from the skies.

And last but not the least, the people we spent a full month with.

The tribute for our love of the journey goes entirely to the crew who were very patient and who wanted us to love the journey. Special mention goes to:

• The officers on watch, you know who you are – J2, G, K! You have all become a family to me. You put up patiently with our questions and interpretations of the different navigation systems. Even when we ran like ants all around the bridge, your smile never wavered and neither did the humour. Thank you for explaining the different ships – especially G for the squid jigger and for looking up the pictures of the squid jigger to give me the feeling for it, J for the maps and K for all the infrastructure and music you provided.
• The ABs:
  • R who greeted me with “Coffee Ma’am?” every time I came on the bridge but I especially loved to hear this early in the morning. I am sure, I will miss this question for the rest of my life. Thank you for the skills to spot the ships, for helping with spotting dolphins and for the stories
  • E, who was so cheerful and full of stories and allowed me to freely accompany him to take pictures
  • M, for modelling – you get the price for the most photographed crew member.
• And finally P, who added the smiles, the seriousness, the professionalism I have seldom seen in an intern. The respect you gave, your openness to learning, your viewing corrections as a means of learning, I learnt a lot from you my dear. We are both very sure you will go places and are looking forward to following the trajectory of your life. Thank you so much for all those sweets while we sat “watch” on the bridge 😉 – Good Luck and enjoy your life!
• To J1, who stood watch over us three times a day and kept our cabin livable. J kept watch like an angel, looking at our changing expression as we kept food into our mouth, replacing food if we did not like it, remembering what each of us did not like and not bringing it in future, relaying the information back to A. From the morning’s “What would you like today Ma’am?” – to “yes, see you tomorrow Ma’am. Goodnight”, “Omelette sir?”, “Sunny side up Sir” to reacting with a laugh when we said “normal”, J1, we will surely miss hearing you and seeing your smile that starts our day.
• To A, who cooked up such a lovely fare that we did not expect at all. The suckling pig was so amazing – I have not had such a lovely stuffed animal before. On the table, the sweet and sour meatballs, the spaghetti, Pan de Coco, the cakes that you and J made for the birthdays, the chicken stew – I wanted to ask for the recipe and I forgot… so many dishes too many to mention! Oh!!!! I cannot leave without talking about Pizza… Thank you so much for those too! Finally, thank you for reminding that that whatever happened, there is a God taking care of us.  
• To Ale and Ale, the ETO and the reefer engineer, you brought in winds of energy into the bridge, humour into our lives – ETO, wish you a lovely mountain stay for a very long time – we have mountains in South India (where I spent my childhood) – so you are most welcome!
• To the rest of the crew, with whom I did not interact with day in and day out but just had fun with Bosun, OS1 for the TT, just passing by G floor and seeing you play with abandon, I think I will never to be able to cross a TT table without thinking of you and Ale the engineer…
• To the Engineers, Reefermen, other OS and oilers and fitters, engineer cadets we would not have had this lovely a time if you did not have a friendly word for us whenever we met, the fun moments I could photograph, you adjusting and telling me where to stand during drills and for making us feel like the family.
• To the first chief mate, thank you for the welcome you gave us, the cheer and for opening out completely – loved to see your smile daily in the dining room and the way you made everyone comfortable. (To the second Chief mate, we did not get to know each other well enough…)
• the Captain, who did not fetter us only to certain areas (of course we had to be accompanied by someone to some parts and inform/get go ahead if we had wanted to go to the upper deck), who explained everything in detail each time and made us more aware about the ship than we would have been otherwise. Thank you for taking care of the extra administration and for ensuring we were not incorrectly viewed as illegal immigrants. I hope you keep that fun spirit alive in you, together with your responsibilities, as well as that spirit of giving everyone freedom to explore. There are several things I will adopt from you into my style of leadership and from that perspective, perhaps it was the right time for me to have taken this cruise on your ship. You reminded me what real empowerment meant and showed me effective ways of dealing in case someone needed correction even without removing the responsibility.

To all of them, I just want to say Thank you for sharing your life so openly with us (and for letting me photograph them anytime). I hope every passenger responsibly uses this privilege and is respectful of the extra work we create.

I cannot stop this blog without saying Dear fellow passengers Ri, A and B – love you guys a lot and miss you. I cannot believe Ri and A that we will do another journey together – so looking forward to seeing you both in a few days! B, sending you loads of love for your Antartica journey!

Last but not the least, I cannot go without saying this – “Good Appetite”!

More blogs will follow – but I had to get this out before you guys sail out of the same city we are in, even while a huge stone crushes my heart at the thought of you sailing without me.