Category Archives: Craig Eason

Some final thoughts before I go

By Craig Eason | Published: March 10, 2010
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 [...]
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Murmansk beckons

By Craig Eason | Published: March 9, 2010
After a night wallowing in the broken ice we set off again towards Murmansk. The weather is better and the captain has been told by the agent that the Belakoneka, the VLCC storage vessel, will be able to take our cargo tomorrow after 1600 when an export aframax will have left for Western Europe. We [...]
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Fuelling the crew

By Craig Eason | Published: March 9, 2010
There’s no weight watchers here. This is food for a working ship, not food for lengthy socialising over. Meal times in the officer mess are short and functional. They come in, eat, talk a bit and then leave, many of them chewing raw onion and garlic with their soup, and eating from the ever [...]
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Playing the waiting game

By Craig Eason | Published: March 8, 2010
We are now floating in some thick, but broken ice. The wind is howling around us and we are drifting eastwards, the way we came, at about 2 knots. The two main generators have been switched off, with the third smaller one now being used to power a single azipod propeller to give us any [...]
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Following the path home

By Craig Eason | Published: March 8, 2010
The second officer Alexander has managed to find our old track through the ice a few days ago. It looks like a canal and means the ship can save time and fuel as it follows the channel. In some places it has widened to twice the width of the ship, and in others has shrunken [...]
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Time for a turn around the ice

By Craig Eason | Published: March 8, 2010
The tide has swung Kapitan Gotsky round the terminal, which has had to swivel to follow us. Prior to the tide turning a decision was made on the bridge which way the vessel would turn to give the icebreaker a chance to move up and down to ensure the ice was broken up. If the [...]
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The berthing operation. They make it look so easy.

By Craig Eason | Published: March 8, 2010
10.45 The pilot and the loading master come aboard from the Toboy and we begin the 4nm approach to the platform. Varandey has gone on ahead to break the ice. On the bridge the pilot and captain discuss the approach and berthing procedure while the loading master and chief officer Aleksy Paramonov talk about the cargo. With the [...]
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Seeing the light despite a busted flush

By Craig Eason | Published: March 8, 2010
If I had not broken my toilet last night, I never would have seen the Northern Lights. The toilet system on board is a vacuum type that most people would have seen on an airplane. It is noisy and sensitive. Mine decided it would remain on the flush action, resulting in the sound of a banshee [...]
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Alarms, a walrus and more ice

By Craig Eason | Published: March 5, 2010
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 [...]
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207 miles to Varandey

By Craig Eason | Published: March 5, 2010
We are heading due south, directly towards Kilguev Island which is now visible on the horizon as a dirty line between the white ice and pale blue sky. It is not the course that will take us directly to Varandey, but towards the thinner ice. We are puddle hopping; going from one stretch of open [...]
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