Two Weeks at sea, where has the time gone.

I really can’t believe we have been at sea two weeks now. The time just seems to have melted away, although I think that is because of the 12-14 hour days seven days a week.  There is talk that the RFA are going to change the schemes of complement again and I can see them going to singleton Nav/Ops on all ships which is absolutely crazy. With the hours the Navigator puts in and the hours I put in as Ops there is more than enough work for three people, so to expect one person to do it is ridiculous.

 

Saying that it is really good to be an operational ship and being busy as it makes the time go quickly. Especially at the moment with everything that is happening in the MENA region. There is just so much information flowing in it is hard to keep abreast of it all.

 

This week has been especially hard as on top of my normal work I have had to prepare a brief. When I say prepare, the slides were already done. Basically because we didn’t get an introductory brief to the theatre before sailing from our local HQ we downloaded it. All 80 slides.  I managed to weed it down to 50 prior to presentation to the HoDs and thankfully I managed to get through it in 35 minutes.  Only problem was that I hadn’t managed to type up all my notes so half way through I had to revert to my hand written note. Problem here was that I couldn’t read my own writing so I had to wing the remainder of the slides.  There was some really juicy stuff in the brief but I can’t write any of it down here due to the classification and I don’t want to get arrested.

 

Well I hit the first month marker next week, the time really is flying by this trip which is good and it helps that we have a good Captain. It is surprising how much difference it can make as we have some true Hitlers and some true gentleman as Captains throughout the fleet.

 

The mood onboard at the moment is quite sombre as the company has to cut 150 officers jobs. They are going to try voluntary means at first but if that doesn’t work it will be compulsory redundancy.  I am just hoping that my rank and branch remain untouched as in the last year at least 9 have left so there can’t be many of us first officers left.  I have heard rumours as well that the Merchant fleet as a whole is starting to suffer with rising fuel costs and are so laying people off.  We are certainly in for a few hard years.

 

Well next week should be interesting with where we are going, the security advice for going ashore doesn’t bare reading.  At least I should have something to write about next time.