Winden

12.12.1994 - 18.01.1995
M/s Winden

After the last contract with Atlanta Forest I went back to school to do my Captain's ticket and to make ends meet I took a job for Christmas holidays on m/s Winden as 1st Officer. 

She is a 105m long general cargo ship built in Germany at the renowned Sietas yard. Winden has boxed in holds to fit 20-foot containers and can load 4402 DWT. She also has special tween decks that can be put in place with the hatches but when I was there, they were stored ashore. 

The ship is built in the time when other shipping Companies had bad times and the business for small coasters were booming and if I recall correctly Engship also managed to secure some cheap loans from the Finnish Government in order to build this series of ships. 

I can't recall where we sailed with her, but we took containers up and down between Finland and Central Europe, the weather was horrible with wind, snow, rain and sleet. Sailing the Baltic and North Sea is never pleasant in wintertime. Pretty hectic in port as we were shifting back and forth in Hamburg area discharging one container here and another there. Lot of sleep deprivation was gained.

Atlanta Forest

03.03.1994 - 04.09.1994
M/s Atlanta Forest

As m/s Kent Forest

Then I was off to sail the Oceans again and was glad to get rid of the shore hopping in the Baltic Sea. I joined on Atlanta Forest for my 2nd contract.

Finnsailor

01.02.1994 - 17.02.1994
m/s Finnsailor

m/s Finnsailor

After Norden I got offered a job to m/s Finnsailor as 2nd Officer. I was thrilled to be working in the "No 1" shipping Company in Finland, finally I was going to see what the hype was all about. I had seen their old ships and they were good tools but now I was going to see a newer tool.

M/s Finnsailor is a Polish built in 1987, ro-ro vessel, that is 158m long and had none of the cargo lifts but ramps only. This saved a lot of time in cargo handling. She could load 7620 DWT or 1790m lane length. My job was to correct charts and then to assist the Chief Officer in loading/ unloading. This consisted mainly of tallying dangerous goods and register plates of trucks/ containers.

The ship itself was very spacious, even my cabin was so big that I got agora phobia in it. Moreover I hated to clean it up when I was leaving the ship, all that dust wiping (although we got extra paid for it). We were on a liner traffic between Helsinki and Luebeck, Germany. It took barely 48hrs at sea between the ports as we did 20kts. All in all a very comfy ship to sail but all was routine, nothing ever happened. The messroom was like a restaurant, I almost felt like out of place there. If something happened it was bound to be bad news.

Time passed quite quickly and my temp contract was up and home I went...