The wakening, the cleaning, the forepeak

The working crew of midships watch got the mission to clean the forepeak, which the majority of them did all day long.

This day started with a feeling between good and rough. The good part was being woken up by Erik, who is in ports watch. He started the song “The Ecstasy of Gold” and motivated us to get out of bed. The worse part was that I managed to fall asleep again, despite his great wake up speech. I missed the breakfast for the first time on this trip, but came in time to the lineup.

After the gathering of everyone, I headed for the galley with two other companions of my watch. For us it became a long day filled with cleaning, washing up the dishes, helping with the food and serving it. We made a chocolate cake to the break at 3pm because Oskar, who is one of the boys in our watch, had his birthday on the 21th. On my two-hour long break at 1pm I took the opportunity to call my family and friends at home.

The forepeak is a storage where we keep oils etc. for the maintenance of the ship. Many big barrels with different types of paints, oils and tar had to be moved out from the tight space. You could tell that it hadn´t been cleaned down there for a long time. When you took a wet brush and started brushing the walls, the water turned black.

The rest of the crew from the watch took care of the bunkering of diesel and helped the second officer with safety checks concerning the equipment aboard. Scuppers (the holes in the side of the ship) had to be tightly closed if a leak would accrue. When the truck pulled up next to Gunilla, the driver came out and gave us the hose that we plugged in straight away. Approximately 13000 liters was pumped in with the speed of 200 liters/minute. The whole operation took about one and a half hour. One of the safety checks was about trying radio equipment, which took just ten minutes.

William, Midships