Winden

10.12.1999 - 07.01.2000

Chief officer
M/s Winden

Winden (unknown photographer)

LOA: 70m, DWT: 4402, Rederi Engship AB (now discontinued)

Once again in Finland on vacation I was called from the job centre to join up on Winden as Chief Officer, as I could not sit around, I went. Winden was already familiar to me from the last time so it was easy to make myself at home.

I signed on in Raahe where we loaded steel for the continent to Rotterdam, Holland. I don't recall if we took any return cargo but I do remember that I celebrated the change of millennia by passing the Öresund and Copenhagen. It was very boring as none of the calamities happened what the doomsday sayers and Y2K forecasters promised. Not even our navigation equipment had hiccups. I think I drank a beer after sauna with our Engineer.

Then our next cargo down from Merikarvia was timber with part of it on deck. We were a bit perplexed that somebody wanted to take a cargo of timber in the middle of the winter as deck cargo, but the client is always right so we prepared the deck lashing equipment. I had loaded about half of the timber cargo in the hold when I signed off and the other C/O continued.

I heard later from one of the Deckhands that when they were enroute it was blowing a stiff NNE'ly and just when they rounded Ölands Södra Grund, and changed course to WSW the ship rolled once to port and once to starboard and the deck cargo went overboard in one fell swoop. The Baltic can be bad in winters if the cargo is not properly lashed down...