PradoNPrada: MV Amanda

I was supposed to blog about my visiting onto the vessel yesterday night but was too tired to do so.

Here it goes.

This visitting is my first to go on board a Bulk Carrier. For those of you who have no idea what a Bulk Carrier is, there are generally four categories of ship plying the sea route in Malaysia. We have ship that carries oil/gas that we call a Tanker as show in the pic below.

Ship that carries container that we call a container ship,

Ship that carries bulk cargo such as plywood, timber, alluminium ingot, and ore types of cargo,

and people carrier,

It was a trip with my boss and a German and the purpose of this visit was to monitor the overall operation of plywood cargo loading onto the vessel. As MV Amanda did not dock at the wharf, our client's plywood cargo were transhipped onto the vessel via a barge from a warehouse at Sepanggar.

There were about 6/7 of crews mostly Ukranian and speak Russian-Toned-English which was kind of difficult for me to catch what they were saying but good experience to listen and adapt the way they speak. We were first briefted with the the Captain of the ship about our operation on board in a meeting room before we proceed with our operation on board.

MV Amanda has five bulk compartment and our plywood cargo was to load onto bulk compartment number 1 and 5 on board. The barge that was carrying our plywood cargo from Sepanggar warehouse positioned itself alongside the MV Amanda and started to transfer all the plywood cargo from the barge onto the vessel via the onboard crane. It was an amazing experience witnessing the operation as well as to be on board a Bulk Carrier.

Some times I do wonder how would my life be if I have not chosen the 8-5 hour office job in the first place. Life would have been much more exciting and adventurous if I have opted different path, talking about regrets here. Oh well, we may never know as God has everything arranged for us.

Here are some pics during the visitting.