The cargo chief officer has been testing all the high level alarms in the cargo tanks this afternoon. The Varandey crude is loaded into the five pairs of tanks as well as the two slop tanks. He is testing the high level alarms in each one, which sounds at 95% and the very high level which sound at 97%. He told me that he will load each tank to 96.5% of its maximum capacity. One of the crew members has the unhappy task of wandering around the deck setting all 24 alarms off.
When we get to Varandey this will be the 7th cargo of the year. The intention is to load 69,200 cu m of crude oil. The first tanks the cargo mate will load will be the smaller slop tanks at a rate of no more than 1,000 cu m/hr, before loading the cargo tanks at 7,800 cu m/hr, albeit in a staggered fashion to remove the risks of stressing the vessel and allowing them to be topped off individually.
The finishing sequence will be 5, 2, 4 and finally 1 and 3 wing tanks, with the load rate dropping down to about 2,000 cu m/hr at the end. If the anticipated bad weather does not reach us the operation should be finished in 18 hours. If the bad weather hits, or the ice becomes un manageable, it could mean we have to stop loading and even move off the loading terminal.
As the loading is done, the mate will also discharge the ballast water. The tanks can be heated, although he said he prefers not to. The seawater in the tanks is currently at about zero degrees, but will not freeze due to it being salt water and having the relatively warmer cargo tanks beside them.
We saw a walrus this afternoon. Quite a thrill. It seemed completely oblivious to a huge steel structure shuddering its way towards it, crushing up all the ice. It only rolled away and under the water when the bow was a few hundred meters away from it.
I have just had a look at the weather prognosis the ship receives from Applied Weather Technology’s Bonvoyage service. It is the prediction for Monday evening when we should be on our way back to Murmansk. The low pressure beside Svalbard is going to have a big impact in pushing the ice east. The ice is he cream colour, although it has not been extended up to the North pole.
Some final thoughts before I go
Waiving goodbye
We are a few hours away from Murmansk pilot station and passing by a bleak white coastline to the south of us.
The vessel will anchor until it can go alongside an discharge its crude oil cargo. It will not load any bunker fuel this time, which could save it a few hours, so it could be away by Friday morning.
When it leaves it will get as much weather information as it can to make sure the passage is as safe as possible, even calling up the other two Sovcomflot shuttle tankers to see what conditions they are currently sailing through.
The second officers on the vessels keep an ice record to send to the charterers. It records all the differing ice conditions the ships pass through during their voyage, no doubt helping Lukoil get a better picture of the operation conditions of the region.
The vessel has been given permission from the port to enter, so now we head to the anchorage. Permission can be denied if there are submarine movements or other ships moving in and out of the port as the tanker approaches.
So what are my over riding thoughts just before I step off the ship. Firstly the climate challenges being faced by the crew and the technology can at times be insurmountable, in which case it is best to wait until it is safer to resume.
The technology onboard has been designed for the conditions, but there are still some small details that need refining, from the frozen window wipers, the poorly placed anemometer or the need to bring the Varandey support vessels off station to bunker.
Some of the problems have been solved in old fashioned seafaring fashion. A poorly placed hydraulic line or water intake line that regularly froze has been re-routed, insulated or heated. A bent railing is levered back into place when welding is simply out of the question. Even the chief officers new desk lamp on his work area to replace the original small lamp which he thought was too dim show’s the adaptability of the crew to the conditions.
But there are still challenges. I was surprised that the iridium phone cut out despite the claims of pole to pole coverage. The Inmarsat Fleet 77 signal was also inconsistent, but that was not too surprising. But if trade is set to increase in the region, particularly the northern sea routes, then this issue desperately needs to be addressed.
The two azipods and three Wärtsilä engines on the vessel provide fantastic engine versatility for the conditions, but fuel consumption can be extremely high in the worst conditions. It was amusing to be told by one of the engineers that the “ABB azipods are indestructible, that is why we have four spare blades on deck.”
Despite having the azipods the vessel is not double acting, meaning it can not go astern as effectively as effectively as a truly double acting tanker. This is partly due to the ship’s skeg which helps it maintain stability in the ice. The is also huge blue funnel obscuring part of the view as well.
But my respect goes to the crew of the ship who have to endure sub zero temperatures for a large part of their work time. When it is unsafe to be on deck, they are not there, but otherwise there is always some maintenance or repair work to be done.
The accommodation is warm enough for them to walk about and relax in short and t-shirts, but outside the temperature can be lethal. In January it can get to -40 degrees, even now as most of Europe looks for signs of spring the temperature can reach -25 degrees. The ice will be at its thickest next month due to compression and the sea temperatures remaining below zero.
I would like to thank Captain Vasily Ermatov, his officers and crew for the trip on the ship, and the insights I hope I have been able to share of the operations and life in the Arctic. The crew have two or three more round trips to go before they have ten weeks of leave. Only for Captain Ermatov, he may be spending a large part of that on dynamic positioning training courses rather than at home.
Once I am back at work, I’ll be writing a full feature on the ship, the developing arctic trades and the developments in the northern sea route in Lloyd’s List next week.