So, I’ve had a couple of posts recently but not a proper update, so here goes…
When I last posted, I was sill in Colorado. In addition to the angora goat kids that I had mentioned earlier, when have also had three new lambs.
I left to go off-shore, (another mammoth journey) I had to travel to Angola via Houston, London and Lisbon. Of course, my bag only made it as far as London after having been delayed in Houston. With the prospect of the ship having sailed before my bag reached Angola I had to instruct British Airways to send it on to my parent’s house in Buckie when it finally arrived in London. I did this as it was my understanding at the time that I would be leaving Luanda immediately on the ship to sail to Peterhead in Scotland (only about 40 miles from where my parents live)
Anyway, when I arrived in Luanda 24 hours later, I found that I was likely to be at the company compound for at least a day before joining the ship (it actually turned out to be two days!) and by the time I managed to get my email working, there was an email from my mother saying that my bag had safely arrived at the house.
So the ship finally sailed from Angola on the Saturday, almost exactly a week after I had left Colorado, and it is now en-route to Europe. Naturally, there has been a change of plan… instead of the ship going directly to Peterhead, it’s going to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands first (to pick up some engineers for the ship) then to Lisbon in Portugal (to drop off the same engineers after they have done whatever they are coming on for) and after that we will be bound for the North Sea. But not of course to Peterhead in Scotland, but Dusavik in Norway.
So now I have to come up with an alternative plan for how to be reunited with my bag. I’ve begun to think that it must have it’s own frequent flyer card, as it seems to do as much traveling on it’s own as it does with me!
So far the transit has been spent on nursing the Communication system (part of the reason that it’s been a while before I’ve posted) catching up on the outstanding planned maintenance, answering questions from projects and on the requirements for the new vessel and lastly (but best of all) listening in awe to the rumors about what will happen when we come off the Perseus.
I’ve mentioned before, that we are supposed to be coming off the Perseus in September before going on to the new ship, Seven Pacific, early in 2010. From what we are hearing, it sounds like it’s going to be a VERY messy ‘divorce’ and ‘custody’ battle!
The main bone of contention appears to be the cable carousels in the hold. Our company commissioned them, paid for them and had them installed in the ship when it was being built. The shipping company appear to be claiming that, as they were built into the ship, they belong to THEM, not us. They may even be trying to claim that more of our equipment belongs to them. Big Wall St. law firms are being involved which ultimately means that it will be a long drawn out and expensive affair, and at the end of the day, the only people that are likely to walk away with a smile on their faces will be the aforementioned lawyers.
