Night Shift Duty
I brought my camera back onboard a little bit earlier than I expected. Well, one thing about night shift is that its dark. Really dark and it can get very difficult to see the navigational markers as well as the danger zones out at sea. It does not help that my eyesight is rather poor, both in daytime as well as at night. In addition, most of the time, many of the flashing signals of buoys and beacons can be easily lost with the tremendous amount of light pollution from the shore. It does not help that most navigational markers blink in yellowish orange, and that stray light from the shoreline is in a hue of orange too.
We've got this funky navigational compass onboard. It looks more like a decoration rather than a navigational aid. So far, most of the time, I've hardly ever used the compass, preferring to read things off the radar directly, else take a glance at a calibrated global positioning system electronic compass. But its fun though, I love the way it glows in this shade of red in the darkness. Yet generally, it serves as our backup just in case things onboard go awry. And indeed things have gone awry before.
Indeed, it can be really tiring sometimes just to keep staring at the sea and wave crests for long periods of time, just to see if there is any approaching motorised sampan conveying illegal immigrants into our waters. At the same time, we have to be alert just in case the malaysian coast guard or the indonesian customs boats try to be funny by deliberately cutting into our waters. Come to think of it. One is a lawless country and the other is a corrupted country. Only serves a good reminder how fortunate everyone really is in this region. I've sailed from the waters at marina bay, looking at people waiting to enter centro; and on the same night, head out many nautial miles to our borderline. Only to realise that just a few more nautical miles south of where our CBD is, it is all around rampant corruption, violence and poverty.
That's my treasured cup/mug that I bring onboard everytime I go for a patrol. I bough t it at mustafa center at a rip off price of 7.50. I think you might just be able to see the price on the price tag still stuck to the cup. It has served me well, has contained everything from hot milo all the way to cold ice blueberry tea. It comes equipped with internal stabilisation as well as improved slip-resistivity with anti-skidding grips. I'm just making that up. But so far, even in the most choppy waters that I've sailed into, this cup has stood firm, while everything else from thermos flasks and water bottles have toppled to the ground. The only thing that can topple it is a falling bottle of iced lemon tea. I know, because I've seen it happen before.
Only once when one of the crew onboard put my cup with water into the onboard microwave to boil some for hot cuppa did the plastic surrounding the metal cup inside actually start to melt. It was hilariously funny when my cup came out of the microwave oven slightly deformed. What is even funnier is that on the price tag, its written "Mac Beer Mug". A beer mug for macintosh computers? I don't know how the price tag ever got to look like that.
One of the great things about doing night shift duty is that, despite it being really tiring and all, and for the fact that its hard to even get an hour's time of quality rest. The sunrise is usually worth the night through the darkness. Somedays we get really beautiful sunrises, on other days, when there are too many clouds or when it rains, the sun starts its shift late. However, today was rather mediocre a sunrise. Nothing really special except for a strong red hue in the air as well as the fact that we could see the glowing orange orb of the sun for quite sometime before it became too bright to look at directly. This shot was taken off the waters of Changi - Sunrise on the right with one of the hills at the Malaysian coasts on the left. The hill is already higher than our "famed" Bukit Timah one - according to the chart, it stands at about 184m high.
Normally on any shift duty, I'll let my hands touch an interesting array of chemicals or items that will leave it really dirty or stained. For starters, there's always the fact that I will be in constant contact with the salt of the sea. The sea water drying off the outer shell of the boat will leave a good trace of salt on it. Handgrips, ladders, doors, will all be covered with salt. Sometimes I too do wonder what is the ill effects of breathing in heavy salt vapour over long period of time. The outer shell of the boat too has lousy paintwork, which so often leaves this hard to remove white residue on my palms whenever I touch it. Not that I mind, but when you need to eat and realise that it can't be removed so easily just by washing. It tends to get a little bit on the frustrating side.
The other thing that I touch very often that is really dirty are the ropes onboard. The fibres have everything from salt to disel oil to fume vapours from the exhaust, sea water and rope juice all in one. Nevertheless, while I don't mind getting my hands dirty, it can be really difficult to tie a boat to the jetty with an oily rope that has been soaked in diesel accidentally. Lastly the liquid that I touch most often is diesel since it powers our boat. It stinks, its very oily and its extremely difficult to remove even with strong soap. It takes a degreaser a few cycles of washing just to rid off the oil, but not the smell. Hence, we've devised a shortcut - to use newspapers to handle everything that is soaked with diesel. It works big time and so sometimes, we'll end up with things like:
An oily and greasy spread of one of the Newpaper's NewFace contestants! I acknowledge for the fact that at the age of 17, she just looks way too mature and pretty. However, inadvertedly, by chance or otherwise, this was the only remaining sheet left of clean newspaper onboard that was convienient enough to grab hold of to take into the engine room to for a check. Somehow, the word there "pleasure" gives the entire picture a 2nd degree pun photographic interpretation.
Of course, many things at patrol duty remain classified. So nary I can't say about it except for the bland details. Then again, I guess we can all be content with pathetic pictures of the sunrise for the time being. The odd thing to conclude everything else is that, I steer a boat faster on the sea, than do I drive on the land. The irony...
I brought my camera back onboard a little bit earlier than I expected. Well, one thing about night shift is that its dark. Really dark and it can get very difficult to see the navigational markers as well as the danger zones out at sea. It does not help that my eyesight is rather poor, both in daytime as well as at night. In addition, most of the time, many of the flashing signals of buoys and beacons can be easily lost with the tremendous amount of light pollution from the shore. It does not help that most navigational markers blink in yellowish orange, and that stray light from the shoreline is in a hue of orange too.
We've got this funky navigational compass onboard. It looks more like a decoration rather than a navigational aid. So far, most of the time, I've hardly ever used the compass, preferring to read things off the radar directly, else take a glance at a calibrated global positioning system electronic compass. But its fun though, I love the way it glows in this shade of red in the darkness. Yet generally, it serves as our backup just in case things onboard go awry. And indeed things have gone awry before.
Indeed, it can be really tiring sometimes just to keep staring at the sea and wave crests for long periods of time, just to see if there is any approaching motorised sampan conveying illegal immigrants into our waters. At the same time, we have to be alert just in case the malaysian coast guard or the indonesian customs boats try to be funny by deliberately cutting into our waters. Come to think of it. One is a lawless country and the other is a corrupted country. Only serves a good reminder how fortunate everyone really is in this region. I've sailed from the waters at marina bay, looking at people waiting to enter centro; and on the same night, head out many nautial miles to our borderline. Only to realise that just a few more nautical miles south of where our CBD is, it is all around rampant corruption, violence and poverty.
That's my treasured cup/mug that I bring onboard everytime I go for a patrol. I bough t it at mustafa center at a rip off price of 7.50. I think you might just be able to see the price on the price tag still stuck to the cup. It has served me well, has contained everything from hot milo all the way to cold ice blueberry tea. It comes equipped with internal stabilisation as well as improved slip-resistivity with anti-skidding grips. I'm just making that up. But so far, even in the most choppy waters that I've sailed into, this cup has stood firm, while everything else from thermos flasks and water bottles have toppled to the ground. The only thing that can topple it is a falling bottle of iced lemon tea. I know, because I've seen it happen before.
Only once when one of the crew onboard put my cup with water into the onboard microwave to boil some for hot cuppa did the plastic surrounding the metal cup inside actually start to melt. It was hilariously funny when my cup came out of the microwave oven slightly deformed. What is even funnier is that on the price tag, its written "Mac Beer Mug". A beer mug for macintosh computers? I don't know how the price tag ever got to look like that.
One of the great things about doing night shift duty is that, despite it being really tiring and all, and for the fact that its hard to even get an hour's time of quality rest. The sunrise is usually worth the night through the darkness. Somedays we get really beautiful sunrises, on other days, when there are too many clouds or when it rains, the sun starts its shift late. However, today was rather mediocre a sunrise. Nothing really special except for a strong red hue in the air as well as the fact that we could see the glowing orange orb of the sun for quite sometime before it became too bright to look at directly. This shot was taken off the waters of Changi - Sunrise on the right with one of the hills at the Malaysian coasts on the left. The hill is already higher than our "famed" Bukit Timah one - according to the chart, it stands at about 184m high.
Normally on any shift duty, I'll let my hands touch an interesting array of chemicals or items that will leave it really dirty or stained. For starters, there's always the fact that I will be in constant contact with the salt of the sea. The sea water drying off the outer shell of the boat will leave a good trace of salt on it. Handgrips, ladders, doors, will all be covered with salt. Sometimes I too do wonder what is the ill effects of breathing in heavy salt vapour over long period of time. The outer shell of the boat too has lousy paintwork, which so often leaves this hard to remove white residue on my palms whenever I touch it. Not that I mind, but when you need to eat and realise that it can't be removed so easily just by washing. It tends to get a little bit on the frustrating side.
The other thing that I touch very often that is really dirty are the ropes onboard. The fibres have everything from salt to disel oil to fume vapours from the exhaust, sea water and rope juice all in one. Nevertheless, while I don't mind getting my hands dirty, it can be really difficult to tie a boat to the jetty with an oily rope that has been soaked in diesel accidentally. Lastly the liquid that I touch most often is diesel since it powers our boat. It stinks, its very oily and its extremely difficult to remove even with strong soap. It takes a degreaser a few cycles of washing just to rid off the oil, but not the smell. Hence, we've devised a shortcut - to use newspapers to handle everything that is soaked with diesel. It works big time and so sometimes, we'll end up with things like:
An oily and greasy spread of one of the Newpaper's NewFace contestants! I acknowledge for the fact that at the age of 17, she just looks way too mature and pretty. However, inadvertedly, by chance or otherwise, this was the only remaining sheet left of clean newspaper onboard that was convienient enough to grab hold of to take into the engine room to for a check. Somehow, the word there "pleasure" gives the entire picture a 2nd degree pun photographic interpretation.
Of course, many things at patrol duty remain classified. So nary I can't say about it except for the bland details. Then again, I guess we can all be content with pathetic pictures of the sunrise for the time being. The odd thing to conclude everything else is that, I steer a boat faster on the sea, than do I drive on the land. The irony...
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