Life is never boring for long on a container ship. We had a fairly calm night .
At 5:45am it started to rain heavily. There had been no weather warning sent to the ship and no sign of it on radar. The ship was rolling again. It was dark outside. We stayed in bed. At 6:10 our smoke alarm started a continuous scream. We dressed hastily and climbed up to the bridge to find the officers busy in the semidark. The captain was madly pushing buttons with one hand and listening to a handheld radio. We sat in the corner out of the way. We noticed that the fire doors on the stairs had all closed automatically. The ship was still rolling. The captain was talking to the electricians and seemed reassured but it was difficult to hear over the screaming alarms. The second officer came over and told us they had checked with the engine room and the kitchen and there was no fire. The electricians reported a short to ground in the alarm system caused by water washing in. We had sat quietly up to that time as the officers needed to deal with the problem speedily. It was only after twenty minutes that the alarm stopped. We went back to our cabin quite relieved but the ship was still rolling. Fortunately our stomachs had adapted now and seasickness was not a problem.
Later the captain told us he was surprised that the heavy rain had not shown on the radar and the cyclone was no longer near us. He showed us the latest report that indicated this was a new tropical storm that developed suddenly. It was very localised and about five miles square but we travelled through it for five hours and the seas stayed rough for a lot longer. He gave us a copy of the report which showed its predicted course towards Japan. The storm only showed on the chart after we had come through it, so it surprised everyone. We hit it where it started on the bottom of this chart.
The engineers had planned to replace a gasket in the main engine today so we were going to stop eight n.miles off the island of Saipan for a couple of hours but the weather was still bad so we sailed straight past. We spent a couple of hours on the bridge today and the captain assured us the seas would be quite calm as we got closer to the equator.
At 5:45am it started to rain heavily. There had been no weather warning sent to the ship and no sign of it on radar. The ship was rolling again. It was dark outside. We stayed in bed. At 6:10 our smoke alarm started a continuous scream. We dressed hastily and climbed up to the bridge to find the officers busy in the semidark. The captain was madly pushing buttons with one hand and listening to a handheld radio. We sat in the corner out of the way. We noticed that the fire doors on the stairs had all closed automatically. The ship was still rolling. The captain was talking to the electricians and seemed reassured but it was difficult to hear over the screaming alarms. The second officer came over and told us they had checked with the engine room and the kitchen and there was no fire. The electricians reported a short to ground in the alarm system caused by water washing in. We had sat quietly up to that time as the officers needed to deal with the problem speedily. It was only after twenty minutes that the alarm stopped. We went back to our cabin quite relieved but the ship was still rolling. Fortunately our stomachs had adapted now and seasickness was not a problem.
Later the captain told us he was surprised that the heavy rain had not shown on the radar and the cyclone was no longer near us. He showed us the latest report that indicated this was a new tropical storm that developed suddenly. It was very localised and about five miles square but we travelled through it for five hours and the seas stayed rough for a lot longer. He gave us a copy of the report which showed its predicted course towards Japan. The storm only showed on the chart after we had come through it, so it surprised everyone. We hit it where it started on the bottom of this chart.
The engineers had planned to replace a gasket in the main engine today so we were going to stop eight n.miles off the island of Saipan for a couple of hours but the weather was still bad so we sailed straight past. We spent a couple of hours on the bridge today and the captain assured us the seas would be quite calm as we got closer to the equator.
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