8 February 2006

Warping

by Mike, onboard the Esperanza

Yesterday morning we shifted the ship astern by about a hundred meters using the ropes; and then in the afternoon we shifted it back to the start position. The purpose of this little manoeuvre was to bring a 40-foot open-top container alongside the ship into which we placed the Billy Greene (the most loved inflatable-boat within Greenpeace).

Warping the ship astern (a nautical term for winching the ship with her lines) we ran into difficulty; the towing winch failed on the poop-deck. During the last campaign the winch had come awash with the heavy seas of the Southern Ocean and the electrical control box had filled with sea water – Electric Mike and the engineers where called to the scene immediately, but it left us with only one capstan down aft to do the warping. We had two ropes running astern and some people on the quay to shift them from bollard to bollard as we moved backwards. Pulling on one rope brought the ship astern but swung the bow of the ship toward the quay; coming into close proximity with some old cranes at the very edge of the pier. To avoid the tip of our bow colliding with the cranes we had to heave on the second stern line which caused the stern of the ship to swing towards the quay where there where no fenders and many nasty bits of hard metal protruding from the edge; like can-openers hungry for the hull. In order to avoid both obstructions we had to pull on one rope until we where close to contact with a crane, then pull on the other until we where close to gouging the side of the ship with a line of can-openers. With only one capstan we could only do one thing at a time. The poop deck was a busy place with crew running from one rope to another, and the marine director of Greenpeace, visiting from the office, watching the circus.

The container that was too narrow at the top to lower the boat directly into it; Billy Greene’s shipping cradle was too wide by two inches. Eddy the Boatswain with his forty-seven years of experience at sea glided the boat suspended from the crane wire through the doors of the container. “A piece of cake,” his comment, but the whole operation had been complex (more than I can describe in a paragraph of words) and had taken four of us off the deck two hours to complete. It was hot work in the sun replacing the metal cross beams and the tarpaulin that covered the container, Ed the deck hand from England was melting, and his legs cried cherry red. The job complete, I felt my first sense of team spirit developing.

   

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