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Published: January 30th 2023
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Hello everyone!
So it appears I'm not very good at this whole writing blogs malarkey! So while on a train heading north, I thought Id take this perfect opportunity to finally write a post and update you all on everything that's been happening over the last 3 months!
So where are we at the moment. So this week has been our second exam week, with the first being just before Christmas. More on them later though. So now I have the joys of a week off before returning to Warsash for my Basic Safety Training Week (basically a week of drowning me and setting me on fire) before completing Phase 1.
Before going any further I will announce the big exciting news...my first ship appointment. I will be joining Fred Olsen's Bolette in Southampton on Thursday 23rd February for 4 months through till June 24th in Newcastle. First two weeks are a scheduled dry dock/ technical refit before moving round to Newcastle to pick up our first set of passengers for a 9 night cruise to the Northern Lights. Over the rest of the 4 months we will be sailing to Iceland, Baltic, northern
Europe, lots and lots of Norway and rounding off with a voyage to Greenland and Spitzbergen before disembarking and enjoying the summer. If anyone fancies a trip to Norway...Bolette is the place for you!
With the big news out the way lets head back to October and run through the last few months (exciting bits only ofcourse) The standard order of the day has ofcourse been lectures, lots of them! The nature of the course has been described by some as university on steroids. A few of us calculated the total number of hours we have done in the last four months of lectures. We calculated that we had done around 480 hours. When compared to the average uni student who complete on average 500 hours of lectures over an academic year, that's a lot of lectures. Most weeks up to Christmas consisted of 37 hours+ of lectures per week. However, despite this and the work there has been plenty of time for fun as well.
The middle of October brought the opportunity to have a day onboard Red Funnel's Red Osprey ferry, thanks to an email four of us wrote to their CEO.
Two of us went one Saturday with the other two going the following week. We joined the ship intime for her 0900 crossing to Cowes and we lucky enough to be allowed to remain onboard for 4 round trips, returning on the 2030 arrival back to Southampton. The bridge team gave us a fantastic day with many exciting opportunities which got us more involved with the vessels operations as the day went on, including car deck ops, mooring ops, radar plots and ofcourse the excitement of driving the thing! Not a joystick in sight either, all managed on a series of 4 wheels to control the Voith Schneider propellers. The last round trip and a half was in darkness allowing us to put our Rules of the Road and lights knowledge to the test along with seeing the bright hulk of P&Os Iona and Ventura depart the port bound for sunnier climates.
A weekend trip to HMS Raleigh beckoned a week later to run and manager a cadet training weekend for 120 cadets and 65 adults. Raleigh's wardroom comforts are always very welcome even if the food isn't worth any more than this sentence!
A trip home for remembrance weekend and Grandma's birthday followed a few weeks later. A certain set of parents decided that weekend was a perfect opportunity to go to Jordan for the week!
As the end of November approached, exam week started to loom so among the mass revision and long days of lectures everyone's minds were starting to turn toward Christmas. Two mess dinners in Weymouth were attended in late November and early December with exams nicely sandwiched in-between. In our first exam period we had four paper in Tides, meteorology (No, a cloud isn't just a cloud, there are in fact over 10 different types! Yes they all look pretty much the same just varying in whiteness and puffiness!), Bridge management and wet/dry cargo operations. With the last exam early on a Thursday morning we totally didn't find ourselves having a celebratory drink somewhere before midday! (it was 1700 somewhere in the world!) Pleased to say all were successfully passed, with results released just before Christmas.
The last Monday before Christmas (the one where everywhere was covered in snow) involved a little trip to the US Embassy in London to be interviewed
for my US C1D Visa to allow crew transit through the USA. A visa that we all have to have however, Fred Olsen very rarely visit the US, so if it gets used very often over the next decade it will be because someone too a wrong turn at that headland off France! Anyway, Fred paid for us to have a hotel overnight in London before the interview at 0800 on the Monday morning, The walk up to the embassy, which is now a large knew glass cubed building in Vauxhall was full of snow. Quite an experience to see London turned completely white overnight! The process was completely painless and we were in and out within an hour before heading back to Southampton for the last week of lectures before Christmas break.
Christmas definitely went by like a blur. With only two weeks to not only have some down time, a trip to London (for leisure this time!) but also get a good amount of revision in before the next set of exams at the end of January.
Returning to Southampton on a very wet and windy Tuesday morning in January signalled the
start the the last few weeks before exams. The last three weeks flew by and exam week had soon begun! Now that's over, I find myself, writing to you, from a train somewhere on the East Coast Mainline! This week consisted of 3 exams all over two hours each. Kicking off with Stability and construction, then Ocean Nav (Celestial and Terrestrial navigation) Fun fact you can navigate your way all around the world by triangles if you so wished, although a Great Circle is by far more effective but takes a while to calculate! Alternatively you can navigate by the stars but it will take you a while to fix your position and the chances of you being anywhere actually near you position by the time you have finished the calculations is remote but still an essential skill all the same. A cold day in November allowed us the opportunity to use a sextant for the first time also! Our last exam was Chartwork and Rules of the Road (don't hit anything!). The exam went well, as our question was on the chart for Star Point to the Needles with a starting position in Weymouth Bay. If that's not a
sign then I don't know what is! Results expected in Mid Feb. The difference with our exams is we have two pass marks. Your standard academic pass mark of 40% but also an MCA pass mark (which we need to obtain before we can go for our oral exams to gain our Certificate of Competency) of 65%, all exams are also negatively marked. The room for error is very slim!
With that all out the way its time to look ahead to the next few weeks. A short course looms in two weeks also marking my last week in Southampton till September then a two week break before joining Bolette for my first 4 months at sea. I promise these blogs will get much more interesting once the actual sea time starts. So standby for lots of talk of Norway, Scandinavia and generally cold places!
DG
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