Jan 6
[I] All of us aboard the ship are finally starting to get into our schedules. We muster every morning at 0745 to get our duties for the day. Today was mostly more onloading—loading food and supplies we’re going to need for the next six weeks. An additional 5 trucks came to the ship bearing more food and supplies. I guarantee you won’t see more boxes of hamburger patties in your life! This was primarily the task for the day until 1300 when we all remustered once again.
[FONT=Georgia]
[/FONT]
Today was also our first Fire/Emergency and Abandon Ship drill. While most of the ship just grabs their life jackets and heads to their lifeboats, many others have specific duties to do when the alarm goes off. Some are in the Fire Party, where they don all their fire gear and head to an announced part of the ship that is “on fire”. Some are in charge of the lowering and driving of the lifeboats. But regardless of what your job is, it’s important to get there as quickly as possible and assure that everyone is accounted for. We will continue doing these drills throughout Sea Term in order to ensure that we are all prepared if there is an emergency. Most of our drills will be done this week in preparation for our inspection by the US Coast Guard before we leave. Of all the drills, this is the most important because if we don’t do well then we can’t go! Fortunately, the only problem we usually have standing in the cold a little longer than we’d like.
We did a final muster at 1600 and tonight all the seniors have open-gangway until midnight. We’ve had it closed the last few nights because we needed to really focus on onloading. But much to everyone’s, well, at least the seniors’, pleasure, we have some free time to go out and run those last few errands and get a quick bite to eat at a local restaurant. The other cadets will have their night off probably Friday and Saturday night so that everyone has a chance to do some last minute shopping.
Even though it seems to be going slowly to us, we really are quickly readying the ship for departure. We’re all getting anxious to leave—we can only stay alongside the school for so long and we can’t wait to be under that warm Caribbean sun!
-1/C Kelly Kleister
More Info from Kelly can be viewed on this website;
http://www.maritime.edu/seaterm/
[/I]