My senior in the Academy(He was in the 5th term while I was a first termer. We never came across each other till our appointment at INS Chilka, together, during 1989-'90. He's a person who can handle snakes and cook its meat with elan!). He's soft spoken and a great guy to be with who's happy with the simple things of life - like say, going for a long drive or trekking up a difficult hill.
One late evening, after a comparatively early dinner, we'd gone hunting for wild boars and somewhere through the drive, I managed to drive my Standard Herald(Cleopatra) into a shallow ditch - the retrieval was easy, thankfully and the only resultant damage was that the brake fluid had bled with the result that the return drive was without the luxury of the brakes - a fact that I'd hidden from my co-passengers in the excitement, lest I scared them!
MJ Paul sir is currently the Master of an Offshore Supply Vessel(OSV) equipped with a dynamic positioning system(DPS) and is operating off the Krishna-Godavari Basin, off the eastern coast, somewhere near Kakinada. The cyclone 'Vardah' necessitated the clearing away of personnel from the ship as she had come in the way of the cyclone. To avoid missing on any of the details, I shall quote him verbatim from the chat that we'd on the What'sApp regarding the connected operations,
"The vessel has been made watertight. Mooring wires adjusted to prevent anchors from
dragging and all stability adjustments carried out to ensure maximum reserve of buoyancy
at all times. She'll ride out the storm without her crew. We shall drink to her luck and good
health. We'd shut down the power supply and locked up all compartments and are currently
lodged in a decent hotel at Rajahmundry - the land known for the 'Devadasi' system that it
follows, as a tradition!
Once the cyclone passes over, the first lot of personnel - the Master plus seven - will be
disembarked back on board the ship by chopper who, go on to start the emergency generator,
open up the hoods of all mushrooms and the closed flaps. Then all the external doors and
hatches are opened up, so as to ventilate the ship. The engine room is then accessed, the
ventilation blowers are started and finally, the air conditioning system is started. The whole
sequence of events will take more than half a day before normalcy is restored.
The rest of the crew - 42 along with the ONGC personnel totaling 120 - will, then, arrive at
the OSV. Then, starts the seamanship evolution of adjusting the mooring wires to reposition
the ship exactly over the well so as to enable the re-entry of personnel to work in the oil rig".
Interesting, but tough life this! Paul sir takes it all in his stride and is quite happy with the situation!
His wife, Jaya, who'd recently undergone an angioplasty and now, has a stent within her system is at Kochi while their son, Ajay and his family are at Visakhapatnam.
Tailpiece.
1. A quiet Sunday when further aspects were put in place in connection with Ammu's engagement ceremony and her wedding!
2. I'd headlined this thought of mine as 'new knowledge' simply because I was always under the impression that ships deliberately steered clear off the path of a cyclone by following Buys Ballot's Law in meteorology which says, "In the northern hemisphere, if a person stands with his back to the wind, the atmospheric pressure is low to the left and high to the right. This is because wind travels counter clockwise around low pressure zones in the northern hemisphere. It's approximately true in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere and is reversed in the southern hemisphere. In layman's terms, if a mariner were to be to the right of a cyclone/tropical storm making landfall, he's in the dangerous quadrant in the northern hemisphere and vice versa, while in the southern hemisphere!"
One late evening, after a comparatively early dinner, we'd gone hunting for wild boars and somewhere through the drive, I managed to drive my Standard Herald(Cleopatra) into a shallow ditch - the retrieval was easy, thankfully and the only resultant damage was that the brake fluid had bled with the result that the return drive was without the luxury of the brakes - a fact that I'd hidden from my co-passengers in the excitement, lest I scared them!
MJ Paul sir is currently the Master of an Offshore Supply Vessel(OSV) equipped with a dynamic positioning system(DPS) and is operating off the Krishna-Godavari Basin, off the eastern coast, somewhere near Kakinada. The cyclone 'Vardah' necessitated the clearing away of personnel from the ship as she had come in the way of the cyclone. To avoid missing on any of the details, I shall quote him verbatim from the chat that we'd on the What'sApp regarding the connected operations,
"The vessel has been made watertight. Mooring wires adjusted to prevent anchors from
dragging and all stability adjustments carried out to ensure maximum reserve of buoyancy
at all times. She'll ride out the storm without her crew. We shall drink to her luck and good
health. We'd shut down the power supply and locked up all compartments and are currently
lodged in a decent hotel at Rajahmundry - the land known for the 'Devadasi' system that it
follows, as a tradition!
Once the cyclone passes over, the first lot of personnel - the Master plus seven - will be
disembarked back on board the ship by chopper who, go on to start the emergency generator,
open up the hoods of all mushrooms and the closed flaps. Then all the external doors and
hatches are opened up, so as to ventilate the ship. The engine room is then accessed, the
ventilation blowers are started and finally, the air conditioning system is started. The whole
sequence of events will take more than half a day before normalcy is restored.
The rest of the crew - 42 along with the ONGC personnel totaling 120 - will, then, arrive at
the OSV. Then, starts the seamanship evolution of adjusting the mooring wires to reposition
the ship exactly over the well so as to enable the re-entry of personnel to work in the oil rig".
Interesting, but tough life this! Paul sir takes it all in his stride and is quite happy with the situation!
His wife, Jaya, who'd recently undergone an angioplasty and now, has a stent within her system is at Kochi while their son, Ajay and his family are at Visakhapatnam.
Tailpiece.
1. A quiet Sunday when further aspects were put in place in connection with Ammu's engagement ceremony and her wedding!
2. I'd headlined this thought of mine as 'new knowledge' simply because I was always under the impression that ships deliberately steered clear off the path of a cyclone by following Buys Ballot's Law in meteorology which says, "In the northern hemisphere, if a person stands with his back to the wind, the atmospheric pressure is low to the left and high to the right. This is because wind travels counter clockwise around low pressure zones in the northern hemisphere. It's approximately true in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere and is reversed in the southern hemisphere. In layman's terms, if a mariner were to be to the right of a cyclone/tropical storm making landfall, he's in the dangerous quadrant in the northern hemisphere and vice versa, while in the southern hemisphere!"
No comments:
Post a Comment