Day 5

Day 5 - Saturday, April 5 2008

There’s more to this sea-faring business than most of you probably realise. Contrary to popular assumption, we’re not just idling the time away - watching the waves passing or waving to the passing watches. Far from it. We’re now officially crew members (or ‘supernumeraires’ as the skipper puts it) and must willingly discharge all the responsibilities that come with the job.

More of that later, but first we had to get properly acquainted with the vessel. We have since traversed the Tosca from stem to stern, from the bilges to the masthead (well, almost). And what a vessel she is - just over 91,000 gross tonnage. The forepeak alone is a different world. Huge winches for hauling in the mooring lines, and even bigger machinery to control the massive anchor chain. Each link is about two metres long with a shank of roughly 30 cms diameter and must weigh several tons. The capstan pawl keeps the chain from slipping, but just in case, a safety hawser is doubled though the top link and shackled to the housing bulkhead. It wouldn’t do have that thing drop on your head unexpectedly.

Containers are stacked from the superstructure forward to the prow, and aft to the stern with capacity for 8,500 in different configurations - 40-footers, 20-footers, reefers, and drums. (Ah, Linda had to have ‘reefers’ explained to her - it’s just shorthand for refrigerated boxes, so don’t get excited about a renewal of the old China trade.) The contents of the boxes are still a bit of a mystery. So long as they’re cleared by customs, the carrier neither knows nor cares what’s in ‘em. The only exception is hazardous cargo - which must be specified. That’s where the airbags and chemicals I mentioned earlier come in.

Each container looks pretty much like the next, so the walk to the forepeak and back is not a scenic spectacular. That changes quickly when you go below to the engine room, though to call it an ‘engine room’ is a bit of an understatement. This is a vast labyrinth of machinery, control panels, double-door air-locks, miles of piping of all diameters, turbo-charger, and a thundering cacophony arising from all quarters. Ear-phones are mandatory, and not just because of prissy ‘health and safety’ regulations.

At its heart is the main Hyundai engine, in principle pretty much the same as you’d find in the saloon car of the same name, but on an immensely bigger scale. It occupies two decks - and no wonder. Each of the 12 in-line cylinders has a bore of 98 centimetres - and the piston travel is 10 metres.

The pistons drive a 30-metre long tail-shaft (about a metre in diameter) at a stately 85 rpm, but wait for this - the output is a staggering 80,000 horsepower! Not surprisingly, it’s hardly in the economy class for fuel consumption. It goes through 10 tons of diesel every hour - that’s 10,000 litres in more familiar terms. And that’s just at normal cruising speed of 25 knots. At full speed, it will gobble up 12 tons an hour.
Imagine 2,000 cars, each with a 50 litre fuel tank. That’s 10,000 litres. At average consumption of 10 litres/100km, each one would do 500 kays on a tankful. Together, they would cover a million kays before needing to top up. Tosca goes through the same volume of fuel every hour to do just 25 nautical miles!

Total capacity is 12,000 tons, giving us 1,200 hours or roughly 50 days between filling stations - a potential range of 30,000 miles on full tanks. Those of you who drive gas-guzzling 4x4s can feel less guilty after reading these stats.

And that’s just the main engine. There’s also an auxiliary on a slightly smaller scale, devoted to powering the rest of shipboard operations.

The engine room also gives access to one of Tosca’s most remarkable features. In the rest of the ship, you can’t go very far in a straight line - progress is broken by detours up, down, or sideways.

But down here, below the waterline, is an open corridor that runs uninterrupted for the full length of the ship - all 335-metres of it, to be precise. The skipper warned us not to be alarmed by what we’d see, for the corridor flexes substantially - ‘like a long piece of chewing gum’ as he put it. One moment, the door at the far end is in sight, before it slowly disappears round the corner! Then the floor bends upward or hollows out into a gentle curve. Of course, logic tells you that a ship this size must have some elasticity, but experiencing the reality of it is something else. We’re now in relatively calm waters, so the torsion is not quite so pronounced. It must be really brain-blowing in heavy seas.

Last stop was the aft deck, just above the water-line and the propeller, where you really get the idea of just how fast we’re travelling. The sea rushes away like a mill-race. Tosca is one of the fastest cargo vessels in service, so much so that we have to alter course and give plenty sea-room to the rest of the traffic. They can’t get out of our way quickly enough so we must make allowances for them. Hence the extra degrees of southing to round Sri Lanka yesterday. Heavy traffic inshore would have meant a lot of dodging, so the skipper took us further south for a clear run eastward.

For such a huge ship the response to helm is very sensitive, and on the aft deck you learn why. Massive hydraulic gear controls the rudder - all 17 tons of it, with a surface area of 72 square metres, roughly the same size as the wing on a big aeroplane.

The mechanics of this ship are just awesome and I could bore you comatose with more details, but I think that’s enough technical stuff for today.

We’re now heading for the Malacca Strait and the security lock-down begins tonight. We’ve just had news of a sister ship in the CGM-CMA line being hi-jacked off Somalia in the Gulf of Aden so everyone is doubly conscious of the risks. The weather forecast is still fair, but the sky is very overcast and we’re running into the occasional squall. Heavy swells are expected in the South China Sea but we’re still some distance off so that’s no great concern for the moment.

What is of concern is our cargo - or lack thereof. We’re only carrying about 6,000 boxes, well short of capacity, and many of them are empty. We’re running on ballast to compensate for the lack of weight, but this outbound voyage will not be very profitable for the owners.

Now that we have been co-opted as ‘supernumeraires’, we have to share some of the responsibility.

The skipper has instructed us that the best way to do so is to spend lots of money on booze and tobacco. That will at least help make up for the loss of cargo revenue. To which we can only respond ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ When Nelson signalled ‘England expects… ’ did the crews turn a deaf ear? Of course not, and that’s how history was made.

The Sassenachs among you will be proud to know that the Trafalgar spirit lives on. When England calls, Linda’s always ready to do her duty. Even when Scotland calls.

“C’mon, you! It’s action stations time - fetch me another bucket of Ecossais eau de vie, tout suite, and go easy with the water!”


Noon position 06◦01.31 N - 090◦34.28 E
Day’s run to noon - 577 miles
2,638 miles out from Khor Fakkan
Heading 086.9◦
Local time GMT+7
Average speed - 25.1 knots

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