Marine Engineering Training: Breaking Lines

We arrived in Bayonne Sunday and the port soon closed due to bad weather, so we ended up staying until Thursday morning.

On Tuesday morning at 7:30am, the chief and I saw a ship one down from us being moved to a safer position and joked at how annoyed the engineers must be to manoeuvre for such a short distance. Only an hour later, we were in the same situation. We were only supposed to move once, but after mooring we were being moved around lots by the wind and current. After 6 of our mooring lines snapped at lunch (leaving us with barely any left) we had to start the main engine and move away quickly. So, we went further up river towards Bayonne and moored again. The drama was then over. The sound of them snapping was pretty loud.

On Wednesday the weather had calmed down a bit and the port reopened later in the day so we could leave. Thursday came and we slipped the lines at about 7:30am.

For the rest of the week we had big swells, the first day of which was just left over from the bad weather. The waves were long and very big, although it was sunny outside some of the time, so it was pretty enjoyable spending breaks watching the ship crash into the troughs, then climb out again. I'll try and put one or two of the videos on the side bar you can see on the right hand side of the screen. The wind was constant and strong between thirty and forty five knots.

Yesterday (Saturday) we were in La Coruna discharging the steel we had loaded in Bayonne, and then we left at 5pm heading for Carino. We went down for manoeuvring at 10pm and after a while we found out the the lights at Carino weren't working at all. At first it was decided that we anchor overnight until first light when we'd manoeuvre in - we weren't happy at this prospect as it meant an extra set of manoeuvring for me and the chief. However, the decision was changed for some reason, and we slowly made our way into Carino. By the time we had finished it was about 1:15am, and we were pretty tired - it was fairly boring manning the engine room for over three hours of manoeuvring!

Today we are being loaded with some kind of gravel/rock and at 9am the sun was shining and everything looked blissful. By about 11am it was pissing down with rain and miserable. It's been constantly changing since.

I've included one photo below which shows the top layer of the Carino breakwater missing due to the huge waves pounding it earlier in the week. Apparently they got hit quite hard here and had 18m swell, so even the massive wall wasn't a match for the waves. Glad we weren't nearby!

Photos below from the past week or so.

Tug waiting to guide us to new berth in Bayonne (first day of stranding)