Turama

24.01.2005 - 09.04.2005 Staff Captain
20.03.2004 - 15.10.2004 Staff Captain
04.01.2004 - 25.02.2004 Staff Captain
01.11.2003 - 19.12.2003 Staff Captain
27.03.2003 - 31.10.2003 Captain
15.02.2003 - 26.03.2003 Captain, delivery voyage Hong Kong, SAR – Elefsinas, GR
30.01.2003 - 03.02.2003 Consultant, assisting new Owner’s in inventory
m/y Turama

Turama off Kavalla, Greece

Conversion period at Lamda shipyards in Greece

We arrived with our handful of crew to Greece after a nice crossing of the Indian Ocean, we had the chance to enjoy barbecues on the aft deck as we steamed over the vast watery emptiness that was so flat. Only the monotonous chugging of the main engines disturbed the peace as we kept swallowing mile after mile, shortening the distance to our next stop, Suez Canal. We passed Singapore and Malacca Straits that gave us a bit of traffic but as we kept going it thinned out and soon enough we were going alone only to sporadically spot a vessel passing in the horizon. It was a lovely transit.

We passed Suez with not much consternation, I had no cash float and hardly any slop chest to speak of so the demands for bribes and cigarettes rang largely to deaf ears. I think I did give old uniform or other knick knacks etc that we had plenty of after all the crew left. When entered the Mediterranean we set course for Crete and Athens, I had orders to anchor off Elefsina at Pachi where we were going to clear into Greece.

I had a few beers with the C/E G. Bergbo in the evening for a successful canal transit and turned in, the weather was ok. Then later around 3-4am I was woken up to being jolted back and forth in my bed and had to go see what was going on and as I entered the bridge I saw the crew there somehow petrified, they had lost control of the engines as seawater had short circuited the telegraphs on the wing controls (they were inter-connected) and the backups didn't work properly. Our speed was going down to near zero and massive waves were rolling towards us, I had no idea where they came from as the weather forecast had been fine. We were slowly turning broadside to the wind and waves and it was pretty scary. C/E was down in the engine room pretty quick and soon we had the system going, I increased speed just in time and headed upwind until I had about 10 knots of speed and activated the stabilizer fins, then I turned sideways to the wind and headed for Rhodes that was the closest and most convenient anchorage as the C/E had told me he will need to turn off engines to make a better fix.

Next morning we arrived Rhodes and we anchored for a few hours, during that time our 3/O forgot to check his position and we dragged badly until I told him, luckily engineers had finished their repairs and we could get going again. It was easy going as we were going inside the Greek archipelago, the following morning mid march 2003 we anchored off Pachi and did our clearance. 

Then we sat mostly idle for the following month and only had from time to time some guys come from the office visiting onboard. Soon enough the crew wanted to go home as Management was not too quick in telling us what is the program and the SE Asian crew started feeling homesick, the operation was not the same as it had been all these years and they were outside their comfort zone. The Burmese were keen to continue but the Management opted for a Filipino complement and soon enough I had a new crew onboard. By that time we had been moved to the Lamda shipyard in connection with the Petrola refinery. There we were going to stay for the most part of the refit.

At one point the new Owner came with his wife to inspect the ship and plans were made on top of the already existing drawings. Next step was a wrecking crew arriving and it was hard for me to allow this to happen as I had spent 6 years on her but it was a learning curve that not everything is constant, least of all on ships. They gutted all her guest decks 3-6 apart from deck 2 on top of the crew accommodation on deck 1, they were left as is and only refurbished where needed. It was interesting to see the pillars only left on each deck though and vacuum pipes plugged and various lighting panels hanging from the ceiling. 

Then they started building the cabins, it wasn't modular work but pure carpentry, every piece was custom. Not very well thought out for maintenance either, everything was covered up and could be accessed from inside the cabin, not the corridor as it had been. In the end only 26 guest cabins were built, I can't recall how many are on deck 2 that were left but total is 178 so perhaps about 120-130 cabins became the 26. Crew was estimated to be around 60 in this operation (the old had been 100+ at times).

One Saturday I received a call from the office asking if everything was ok onboard, as it was weekend I was taking it easy and had not walked around but I said everything is fine (if not, I would have been told), the chap said "ok" and hung up. I was wondering what that all was about and I got up and about to have a look and make sure. As I was on deck I could see the smoke rising from another project across from us that they were working on, one abt 45-50m yacht sitting on the hardstand. 

The project had apparently been going for about 2 years and very close to be finished but Friday night it had caught fire and burned up, the fire department had filled the hull with water and extinguished the fire but at same wrecked all work done so far. I don't recall if they ever did her up again or just scrapped it. The Lamda annual report says: "In 10th January 2004, a vessel, which was being repaired in a subsidiary's shipyard suffered damages due to a fire outbreak. The insurance company has not yet determined, the amount of the damages. Therefore any potential liability of the subsidiary in case of partial coverage of damages by the insurance company can not be calculated."

I had full time work preventing accidents onboard and saving fire doors and other fixtures from being wrecked and many other things all day long. The safety engineer lectured me that according to Greek law I was in charge of the vessel even if in refit, in case something would happen I was responsible. I once admonished a worker not wearing goggles as he was chipping cement off the deck with a pneumatic chisel, I was told to "f. off, this isn't Sweden". I did ask how can I be in charge when I have no say in anything? I never got an answer and we kept doing these meetings on a weekly basis and he made his notes in the safety notebook that we had for this purpose. 

Workers kept smoking everywhere and then I discovered they had used the garbage room as their toilet as well although we had portapotties on the jetty. The relationship with the yard manager was not on a very good basis, I didn't have much diplomacy in me those days either. Maybe that's why they introduced a Greek Captain but offered me to stay with same pay as they still needed my knowledge. We actually after the initial grumblings got on well and I stayed and worked alongside with him, Capt C. Ntaoutis had been on the now defunct cruise line Renaissance and I did learn a thing or two from him during our time together.

Then came the turn of the superstructure steelwork modification, the bow was modified to a sharp cruise ship or yacht bow, the funnels were cut off and a cover was built on top of them, like an arch, They covered the lifeboats too. On top of the sundeck was placed a helicopter landing pad, it came fully assembled from Norway to offshore specs. Last thing to do was the stern modification, it was another story too. We were also towed to a drydock a couple of times to overhaul the propellers as we had on one side only 2 stumps and 2 blades from a previous accident with a wave breaker. In the course of that it also seems we damaged the controllable pitch controller somehow. The last haul-up they painted a new antifouling on the bottom.

Winter in 2004, Feb 12th the Margarita L broke her anchor chain during a winter storm. I was in Elefsina onboard Columbus Caravelle (now renamed Turama) and can indeed confirm it was quite the storm. We had new a new accommodation section welded on the quay and covered up with staging frames wrapped in heavy duty shrinkwrap for working the filler on the steel and I was afraid the staging was going to blow away. It was lifting from time to time as the gusts came through the bay. I had the crew to try tie down more lines to strong points, and eventually it didn't fly away. However next morning we had to go help take Margarita L off the rocks as it was also the Owners property.

The stern was a normal transom style but leaning a bit outward, the new owner wanted it straight up/down, no gradient. So the yard people cut the stern open where the bottom met the stern bulkhead and extended the "bottom" abt 50cm in the same line to make it straight up/ down with upper edge of the aft deck railing edge. Said and done the steel work welding went quickly ahead now to fill up the top edge to the lower with plating and to be honest it didn't look too bad in my eyes, the lower edge was higher than before as the bottom had been extended in the same line slightly on upwards angle. Then one day the owner came to inspect the exterior steelwork modifications and they passed by every item until they walked on the jetty to see the stern. He took one look at the stern and said "cut it off" and walked away. 

Because of this line the next weeks the welders spent cutting the steel off off the stern until they were 15-20cm above waterlevel, from there they again extended the bottom line horizontally to the point where the upper edge of the railing was and plated it all over. Now the stern was just above water and as the owner wanted. During seatrials I saw that when we were doing speed we towed several tons of water as the seawater sucked itself up along the stern bulkhead because it was so low. We lost probably 1.5 knots from the previous top speed. Again I was bleeding inside but it wasn't my money or my ship so I had to let go.

Mediterranean cruises South of France, Malta, Sardinia and Greek Islands (heli-deck operations):

Surely but slowly the refit was taking shape and we had also teak decks laid on, superstructure had been faired and it was all new to me. I ordered lot of new stuff like shurhold brushes etc that I had learned about during the course of the build. Soon enough we were commissioning new tender cranes and life boats and other deck equipment. Crew started coming onboard more and more and we started drilling to pass passenger safety inspection by Lloyd's register. We had in general Greek Officers and Filipino ratings., I was the only odd Finn in the mix with a French Purser. We also trained for heli-deck operations and needed more safety equipment for that, I met with the pilots and agreed the procedure. Then one day we were off to South of France to receive the owner onboard and there I experienced a whole new world.

As we dropped off the owner in Sardinia we were boarded by the Italian Port State inspection and we got detained and released so the plump would be in the record, the report is as below.

Port of inspection: Golfo Aranci

Type of inspection: Expanded inspection

Date of report: 29/07/2004

Deficiency/ Defect: 

Fire Safety measures, Fire prevention x 1

Grounds for detention:

Deficiency/ Defect: Structural safety closing devices watertight doors inoperative x1

Of course our phones started ringing like mad as we had just been inspected by class and flag and done a refit, the questions where coming why, how? As we returned to Greece I had to relate the story umpteen times for every tom, dick and jerry that came from authorities and/ or office. It transpired that the PSC officer had noticed that one fire door had the metal plate for the magnet on it but no magnet anymore as the fire plan had changed from a normally open door to a normally closed door. In his opinion it was a defect and warranted detention according to the rules, the door closed and worked properly which I showed him several times. The other WTD deficiency was that the manual handle to close the WTD in case loss of power couldn't be operated properly as the interior had been rebuilt like that and we hadn't noticed, the door closed and opened normally. This was an easy carpentry fix. I think the officer got severe feedback from this in the end.

Then 13-29th Aug was the Athens summer Olympics and we had onboard POTUS with his wife,  we started in Kavalla up northern Greece and made our way south to Piraeus. I remember walking up the street to my favourite Thai restaurant and having dinner whilst watching the closing ceremony. As I walked back later with a bit of self induced swagger I was stopped by security and I had to explain I'm part of the crew. 

Then a few weeks later we headed for Malta after having taken onboard truckloads of gear and transforming the yacht for a royal personage according to his preferences as per the PA's instructions. Incidentally Malta (5th Oct) and many EU countries forbade smoking in night clubs during this stay. We sat in Malta for a few weeks and then eventually returned to Greece as the guest never showed up. There were the same trucks waiting on the pier and we loaded them up.

Winter refurbish, Lavrion

By this time the summer was over and we were sent to Lavrion port to sit the winter there and sort out teething issues discovered during the summer. Capt Ntaoutis was dismissed for an unknown reason and he was replaced by a man with no guns. I tried working with him a few months and then I tendered my resignation and left.

Another chapter closed and I headed for Antibes to see if there was anything to be found. Unfortunately there was not and I flew back to Thailand where I was living at the time and ended hunting for work until I had spent my last penny and I got a job on a container ship. 


Specifications:
Owners: Saudi Arabian Dept of Finance

Builder: Rauma Yards Oy, Finland, NB 305
Keel laying date: 21 Sep 1989, launched 03 May 1990
IMO no: 8907216
Length overall: 120m
Length between perpendiculars: 104.43m
Breadth moulded: 17.01m
Draught max: 4.38m
Depth moulded: 9.71
Gross tonnage / Net tonnage 8343 / 2502
Deadweight 1058
Propulsion: 2 x 3000 Wärtsilä 8R32D
Class SOLAS passenger ship, LR