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iPhone 3.0 vs android
2009-03-27 04:10:00
.A few days back Ajeet sent me the comparative table of the iPhone firmware versions and the android..I'm not sure where he got it from so can't give proper credit for it. But 3.0 does promise to be a pretty neat jump ahead. And once the apps around the 3.0 come out in iTunes, the iphone should be an all new playing ground. :).
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nagpur Rickshaw
2009-03-25 14:22:00
Thanks for the wishes on the last post. Now that I am posting from my phone, hopefully the posting will be more regular. But the downside is that most likely, my blog will involve non - ship related subjects, and the posts will also be shorter.Was out at the gokulpeth market in Nagpur and snapped this rickshaw driver in thought as he waited for his next ride in the dusk.

Peekaboo
2009-03-24 07:49:00
I do apologize to anyone who has noticed the lack of posting on my blog. But I am home these days , and asYou all might have guessed from the above picture, our priorities have been undergoing some dramatic changes.Cheers all!!

Flocculated in the Mississippi
2009-01-25 00:42:00
After a few pleasant days at anchor in Venezuela and an uneventful voyage upthe Caribbean, I find myself again going up my favorite river, theMississippi . There was a possibility that I might have been heading off homefrom the vessel, and it would have been great to spend a couple of days outin New Orleans. But as it turns out, I still have a few turns of the log todo out here.As we came up the South west pass, it was dusk and the banks of theMississippi were actually steaming. I kid you not. There is a wicked coldfront out in New Orleans and the whole day a moist southerly wind wastrickling up the shore. As it came in contact with the cold waters of theriver, I could see the vapors forming on the surface. The effect was great.Sadly it was quite dark to take a good picture. Going up the Mississippi inthe night is such a pity. Dawns and dusks are brilliant out in the river andhopefully I'll catch another one going out of here. A new thing I learnt on the river today is "Floc...

Marlboro Economics
2009-01-16 13:18:00
We have been spending the last few days at anchorage off Venezuela. It is a welcome change as the crew had a lot to do in the days preceding that. The days begin beautifully, but by the time the people ashore get ready to bring us in, the wind picks up and the berthing gets cancelled. Acts of god, we call it out at sea. J A long time back, my elder brother told me about “Burger Economics ”. It seemed that with the rapid spread of Capitalism, a whole new branch of economics was coming up dealing with the pricing mechanism of McDonald’s Chicken burgers. You see, as McDonald opened new stores in new countries, it used local ingredients at local prices and then had to charge a price for its burgers which normal people would pay. Hence though it might charge 1.99 USD for a chicken burger in the US, it would charge only 0.85 cents in India and maybe actually pay the customers 0.20 cents in Rawanda! So by simply glancing at a list of prices of Big Macs around the world, we could get a...
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The Singapore Smiley
2009-01-11 22:34:00
Location : VenezuelaI have been working for some time of Singapore flagged vessels, but I wasstruck by it for the first time today. Is there any one else here who thinksthat the Singapore flag looks like a smiley of an alien with five eyes?Say now that I am on that thought process, wouldn't the American flag look like a humorless multi-eyed alien? :)In the background is the small town of Aransas pass on the Corpus ChristiShip Channel.
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X-mas, the new year and the year ahead
2009-01-09 12:23:00
Location : The Caribbean   If you have ever heard me complaining of how busy I've been, all that pales into insignificance as compared to how busy I've been this last fortnight. I kid you not. The last sane day we had was the 30th of Dec, when we wished the best of new year to the Corpus Christi Pilots, Speaking of Pilots, A couple of posts back one of the Houston pilots had dropped a kind comment. He has a great flikr stream, which you really must see. I think I have put a link to his stream on the left of this blog, but as I'm not on the internet, I can't be too sure.   Picture above is the San Jacinto park on the Houston Ship Channel. The warship moored here is the USS Texas, that has been converted into a Museum. On the way out of Houston, the fog cam down so bad that I couldn't see the bridge of that ship. It was one spooky ride out of the city and I am really impressed with the guys who take ships like ours every day up an ...
More About: New Year , Year , Ahead

Happy Birthday Dada
2009-01-09 11:44:00
A few days ago my brother surprised me by saying that he actually checks outthis blog sometimes. It was by all accounts a big surprise. :) So just incase you do drop by here, A very happy birthday.Cheers!-- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.5.7 - Release Date: 01/Mar/2005
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The prognosis
2008-12-27 11:10:00
The last few days haven't been good to us. Apart from the way things haveturned out on the ship, the weather's been doing its bit keeping us in agloomy mood. Todays weather report shows another cold front (the curvedlines with spikes) swooping down on the Texas coast, bringing with it,another spell of fog, cold, showers and squally weather. I guess the only thing to do is to batten down the hatches, turn into thewind and ride out the winds.
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Seabulk energy at Gaveston anchorage
2008-12-20 13:46:00
  Things are looking up today. The sun has come out and the fog seems to be dissipating. I can now actually see the mast and funnel of “Seabulk Energy ” a mile off as the sun works on this fog from the top down. As I came down from the bridge, the pilots were opening up the Houston Ship channel and taking in the ships in.   I would be lying if I said that we weren’t enjoying the anchorage. But the problem with anchorages is that you can’t make fresh water and your provisions start running out. So it will be great if things start moving up in the channel and we can get some fresh veggies on our plates.      
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Cold, foggy and spanky in Houston !!
2008-12-19 14:07:00
As might have been guessed, I am back on the ship and back in the same partof the world, the US gulf. It's a part of the world that I am beginning tolike. The US gulf is a rather dull place. And dull things are something thatI am beginning to relish these days as a Captain. I go to ports I've beento, I meet pilots I've met, I dock at berths I've docked at and even the CBP(Customs and border patrol) personnel have begun to recognize me (heavenforbid!). So all in all it was a rude surprise when I came in to Galveston fairwayanchorage and met a wall of fog that everything more then 20 meters intoblankness. Fog is something god made strictly so that like minded peoplecould frolic in it over sloping hills and unending meadows. It was not madeto roll over into the sea and terrify you with fog horns blaring out at youfrom all seeming directions. And it most certainly was not meant to berolling out over the US Gulf. Everyone seemed to be as disoriented as thissupply boat by ...
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Party time
2008-10-16 06:02:00
Its an occasion for celebration and joy. I have signed off from my ship and its back to home for me. Years back, when contracts were longer and booze available, it would have been a pretty good excuse for a party like the above. Typically the mate would raise the topic of a farewell get-together with the old man over breakfast and instructions would be given to the catering department to get things ready. The crew would then meet in orderly groups at the pre-assigned time and talk urbanely about wide ranging pertinent topics such as the changing cup sizes of Pamela Anderson. The "get-together", would then steadily go downhill till the old man left for his cabin, after which people would be often be spotted in poses like the above, gyrating to lyrics of some pubescent girl , claiming to be a "Barbie Girl". This would go on till enough people were escorted to their cabins drunk, or the scene looked too gay for even seamen like us!I'm not sure if I'm actually sad that these parties...
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Two balls and a diamond in between
2008-10-09 00:15:00
We mariners have a nasty reputation of being perverts. Now we of coures have worked hard at deserving it so its not be be thrown away lightly. Which is why we keep hanging our balls out for all to see. Hanging from the halyards we see something called very imaginatively as  "shapes". These shapes are used as required by the collision regulations to indicate that the vessel is "Restricted in her ability to Manouver" or "RAM". As I have been spending most of my evenings in the US gulf doing lightering operations. As a master, it feels inherently bad to wear these shapes on my halyards, because it means that I can't take my ships anyway I want to. Adn when your 200 meters plus vessel is manouvering at distances of 20 meters from a 300 meters long ship, the last this you want to do is go any closer. I find the manouvering for this fascinating because the dynamics of working such large vessels is amazing to watch unfold. Maybe we'll have beer one day and I'll explain the&n...
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Sunset on the ship
2008-10-08 13:50:00
 Now that its time to go back home, US Gulf seems to be saying goodbyes, by offering me stunning views. As I was doing my last lightering operation, we had a stunning display of colors on the horizon spread over the vista of smouldering oil rigs and installations.  And a great good bye surprise - I shall be going up the beautiful Mississippi forone last time and signing off at New orleans. I haven't been to that city in a few years, so it'll be good to walk those streets.
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Last of the bad guys - Marco
2008-10-07 13:17:00
  Tropical depression 13, has been thought worthy of a name and has been upgraded to Tropical storm  "Marco ".  Its been a tough year for the people of this part of the world, and even caused a few ulcers and sleepless nights to me and my pretty ship. After being banged around by both Gustav and Ike, I am glad that the season is drawing to a close and hopefully Marco will be the last of the bad guys we see this year. I should anyway be out of this area and back home, but I hope you all stay safe here.
More About: Tropical Storm , Guys

Birds on a wire
2008-10-07 05:45:00
     A short post today. The picture above was taken at Pascagoula. Sights like these are quite common, but they always remind me of home where you'd see birds sitting on an electirc wire. Included in the picuture from the bottom to top, is our ships crane, with the Markings SWL 15T, which refers to the safe works load, a smaller fendering davit, light post air pipes and bollards.
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The Dredger - Glenn Edwards
2008-10-04 14:45:00
The type of support vessels that come next in line to the Tugs in my "List if favotrite vessels" are the Dredgers. Pictured above is the Dredger Glenn Edwards , pictured above at the mouth of the Pascagouls Ship Channel in the Mississippi state. The Glenn Edwards was waiting for us to pass so that they could continue with their dredging works. Glenn Edwards is a relatively new ship, floated in 2006 near here in Mobile Alabama. You can see a very informative article about it here at the workboat.com website. In it we are told of the extremely high standards of specifications that the vessel is built to. The method of operation of dredgers like the Glenn Edwards are simple in principle. The boom that you see on the sides lower to the sea bed and act like a gaint Vaccume Cleaner, sucking in all manners of mud, small rocks and debries. These are deposited in the middle of the ship in their hold, from where the water is simply drained out. The dredger then makes its way to the dumping...

Leaving the Mississippi
2008-10-04 14:09:00
I'm leaving the Mississippi river today. Though I spent quite some time on this river during this voyage, thanks to some very slow loading, I do feel bad about getting out of here. In contrast to the whole of the US gulf, the Mississippi river is a beautiful place to be in. And in this time of the year, the dawns and dusks are serene. The river gently flows by and all manners of crafts make their way on it with grim determination.Its immpossible to concieve that any type of music other then Jazz could have been born on the banks of this river.
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Ship art on the Stena Poseidon
2008-10-03 05:28:00
   Its rare to see art or anything resembling it on the sides of Merchant ships.  So it was a treat to see what Stena Ice have done with their ships. I saw the Stena Poseidon in the Mississippi river where I assume she was loading cargo. From news reports on the net, the Poseidon, along with her sister ship, the Stena Palva, have been chartered for a period of 10 years to Neste oil, on a route from Finland to US carrying Low sulphur fuel oils. She is a new double hulled tanker (2007 Croatian built), that is actually registered in Finland currently.      The Stena Poseidon seems to be of a fleet of ships of the Stenabulk that is certified for ice class. ABS has given the Poseidon the A1 class. You can check here on Wiki to get the basic outlay on Ice class ships. Also if you need to know some more about Ice Class ships and shipping in the cold, you really must have a look at this excellent paper written by Capt Duggal for the Nautical Institute...
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Mississippi River
2008-10-02 05:03:00
The Mississippi is a fabulous river. There is absolutely no question about that. It has been a few years since I came this way, and I really relish the opportunity to sail on it again. These are the same waters over which distinguished people like Mark Twain actually piloted ships.It is common Knowledge that Mark Twain actually selected that pen name because in his days of piloting the Mississippi, two fathoms was the established safe depth of water. So seamen would mark two fathoms ( mark Twain) with their lead to establish safe navigation.In the picture above, you can see a tug pushing a few barges of coal down river. In the picture is the Cantilever bridge for New Orleans. and to the right of the picture, you can actually see a bit of the New Orleans city.Along with the Mississippi, Bhramaputra, Ganga and the Nile, I have sailed, boated, immersed myself or atleast seen almost all the major rivers in the world. The only one I have yet to go up is the Amazon. Maybe later.The eveni...
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Sunset off Mississippi Delta
2008-10-01 02:22:00
   The days are fully packed these days. The fact is that I am preparing th get off the ship and this means not only extra work to get things in shape for next guy, but also a lethargic attitude in getting to posting long blogs.   So  till the time I get off, I think I'll focus on smaller posts for the time being. This above picture was taken during a stunning sunset off the Mississippi Delta . Its rare to see ships of this vintage and with derricks such as these.       
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Sorrounded by Sharks
2008-09-20 05:03:00
As we lay anchored off Pascagoula, we were surrounded by Shark s. These were young ones and were only about a feet plus in length. Its rather rare to see these creatures out at sea, because unlike Dolphins and Whales, these don't come out of the water and so are very hard to spot from a moving cargo ship. But luckily as we were at anchor and the water was very clear, we could spot these chaps as they swam all around us. As you can see there were many of them all around and I manged to count as many as 14 of them at a time. As far as I can Identify, they seem to be the Atlantic Sharpnose Shark, which is also found in good numbers in the Gulf of Mexico.I read out here that a huge gathering of whale sharks are taking place off the coast of Mississippi and Louisiana. Since I am around these waters, it would be really neat to get a sight of these chaps as well. Links : Sharks In Wiki, Shark Species ,

Fishing Vessel " Angie baby"
2008-09-18 02:59:00
          The above picture was taken on a beautiful day at Freeport, Texas, when my ship had gone there. By habit, I put everyone of such vessels that catch fish as fishing vessels. Out here in the US Gulf, they are called the "Shrimp boats". The Angie Baby pictured above was trawling in the waters of the inner channel and the dog on the deck was exibiting a calm detachment that would have made any dog proud. When I think of shrimp boats, I am invariably reminded of "Forrest Gump" and his shrimp boat. As a matter of trivia, reported on this website, the shrimp boat used in that movie is moored in the moat at Planet Hollywood restaurant in Disneyworld resort in Florida. The above picture was ofcourse taken before either hurricanes Gustav and Ike. As I write this, the port of Freeport is closed and most of the Nav aids to the port have been washed out.  Boats that small can't head out to sea like us to ride out th...
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USCG 559
2008-09-15 00:42:00
      Everytime a hurricane comes out, it screws up everything out at sea as well as the damage it does out on the land. During the hurricane Gustav that passed through a few days back, all the approach channel buoys of the port of Pascagoula were washed off. These buoys are anchored to the sea bed and can be dragged off position in strong winds and swell.   It is the job of ships like the above US coastguard vessel to get those buoys back in place. You can see a couple of buoys lying on their decks, which they were probably carrying incase a few of the buoys might have been lost.   These guys did a stellar job in getting things moving when Gustav passed through and they are going just as good a job now that Ike has gone by.

NOAA Vessel Pisces at Pascagoula
2008-09-12 17:38:00
   Few mariners on the US coast will have anything disparaging to say about the NOAA. I have always been a fan of the organization, and am especially grateful to them for the invaluable assistance they give us during the current situations such as the Hurricanes. So I was especially pleased to spot on the horizon, a ship with the markings of the NOAA. A couple of posts back, I had put up a picture of an oil platform in the US gulf. The picture above is of the research vessel, "Pisces " as it is passing that same oil platform. The Pisces was launched on 19th Dec 2007, and if the launch page is to be believed, she was going to begin operations in Late of 2008. So it is quite possible that I captured her on one of her first voyages out to sea. Do look at the video of the launch that I found on Youtube, which is amazing to watch.     The Pisces is one of the four ships to be launched in Pascagoula that is supposed to be a quite ship, which improves the resear...

Big Bad Ike
2008-09-12 12:03:00
  "Big bad Ike" is what the media in US is calling the lastest hurricane to hit their shores. After dubbing Gustav as the mother of all storms, one would have thought that the granny wouldn't show up the next week, but that is pretty much what has turned out to be.   The problem with Ike is that even though it is still a force 2 Hurrican, it is one monstrous system. If you look at satellite picture of Ike, you will see it witha footprint all over the US gulf. When we got Gustav a few days back, the gale force winds were forcasted within a distance of 160 miles from the eye. With Ike, the figure is 250 miles, which is actually 500 Km. Our ship is atpresent more then 300 miles form the eye, but we are bobbing around worse than a cork in a bathtub.   But then there are worse places we could be right now. At the storm centre, there are actually waves of 35 feet rising up as we speak. Picture six storied buildings crashing all around you.  

Seagulls
2008-09-12 00:09:00
.  Right now I am hanging on to my ship as we are being banged around by Ike, so this is a good time to remember the good weather gone by and yet to come. The above picture is from the Port of Pascagoula when an unusually large number of Seagulls were foraging around in the wake of the ship. Its usual to see these trailing behind trawlers as they scoure the waters, but seeing them swooping around our stern was a welcome change.    . 

Stolt Concept at Freeport
2008-09-10 00:40:00
I had put up a post about Freeport , Texas and the way it was a sleepy little town. This place really is one of the biggest thing going for the town. Pictured above is the Stolt Concept , moored at the Jetty of the Dow Chemical plant at Freeport.   I haven't personallt sailed in Chemical tankers myself, but the ship above is as big as a chemical carrier is going to get. The Concept is 177 m long and has a beam of 31 m. The Ship was built in 1999 and operated under the Liberian flag untill 2000.   As I said earlier, the complex of piping in the background is the Dow chemical plant. The pilo told me that when he had first started working at Freeport, a total of forty thousand people used to enter the gates of this chemical plant everyday. The number sadly has decreased to about nine thousand these days.   Absolutely Unrelated and irrelevant Titbit - Dow Chemical was the sole supplier of Napalm to the US Military during the Vietnam war.    

Ike is here
2008-09-09 20:09:00
. I think the one thing that is stopping people from talking too much about Ike is figuring out how to pronounce it. But seriously, with one hurricane following another, one gets tired of the whole show. The season has barely started and we are on to the 9th hurricane and now we are already hearing of the Josephine following Ike. And the scary thing is that the season actually ends in October. Well anyway, Ike enters the US gulf sometime later in the night, and is expected to make land-fall sometime over the weekend in Texas or near the Mexican border. Thankfully I should be floating around far away from the path of Ike to not be bothered too much.  Will keep you all updated.

Oil Platforms
2008-09-06 18:33:00
..The US coast all along the GUlf of Mexico is dotted with oil Platforms and installations that pump oil back to the shore along a vast grid of underwater pipeline network. Pictured above is one of the bigger oil platforms to be seen out here. .As you can see out here, on the left of  the platform is the accomdation space and also visible if the Lifeboat for emergencies. When Gustav came, platforms like these were evacuated and are now coming back to normal status.  Also at the foot of the left pylon is a Supply boat. These supply boats are the work horses of the US Gulf and supply everything from stores to people to these rigs.