The weather decided to follow the weather forecast and the winds died down nicely overnight. Under sunny skies we sailed into St. Johns Antigua. It is Monday so all the shops will be open and thus we will have a lot of happy campers.
Today the trainees are being indoctrinated, trained and enlightened by the S.E.H. Officer. The Safety Environmental and Health Officer. He (or sometimes she) is a one person department whose job is compliance. Making sure that we stay on the right path towards the perfect protection of the environment; ensuring happy authorities by following all the rules and preparing enough reports to keep our people in the office nice and busy. Apart from that there is crew education, formally by classes and informally on the job. Any place where there is a chemical used or stored the S.E.H officer will show up on a regular basis. One very important part concerns the correct off-loading of garbage, recyclables, chemicals, medical waste, sludge and anything else we have left over and cannot process ourselves. In the change over ports any offloading has to be authorized, overseen and tracked by this person.
Another important part of this extensive compliance work is keeping an eye on our SOPEP readiness.
SOPEP stands for: the Shipboard Oil Pollution Emergency plan.
If we would have an oil or chemical spill then the equipment has to be ready to combat and clean up that spill ASAP and if possible so effectively that nothing reaches or remains in the environment. For this purpose we have Mop-up kits in the bunker breaks in case oil is being spilled. Special suits, absorbent pads and tools in a break-out box in the Provision break that can be taken to any part of the ship where something happened and a large oil spill boom which we can wrap around more than half the ship.
But it is much more than that. It is a complete – I would almost say Combat- plan with a chain of command, carefully defined functions, materials, reporting requirements, regularly updated addresses from authorities who can offer help and the trainings and drills for a lot of crew members.
By paying out the boom correctly, the tender has made it to the far end of the ship. (Archive photo from boom exercise on board ms Rotterdam in Nov. 2014)
This time we cannot train it in reality but we can explain the procedure to the trainee’s ensuring a certain level of competence and knowledge if it would ever happen and we would not have a delay in boom deployment due to not understanding the maneuver required.
Tonight we will sail west of the Saba Bank towards St. Thomas. The Saba bank is a very shallow under water area and is the largest under water Marine Park (2200 sq. km) in the Western Hemisphere. It belongs to the Netherlands and it if would be considered regular territory, the Netherlands would suddenly increase in size by about 15%. I can hear our Prime Minister already asking for a pay raise.
Weather for tomorrow: more of the same. Warm sunny but rains clouds in the distance and maybe over Charlotte Amalie.
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