Cybercaptain

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Shore based employment - Pandaw cruises

08.08.2005 - 20.12.2005

r/v Tonle Pandaw on Tonle Lake

r/v Tonle Pandaw, r/v Mekong Pandaw, r/v Pandaw 4, r/v Pandaw 2

Position: Marine Superintendent

GT: 553, 600, 550, 550

LOA: 55, 60, 55, 55

Class: River cruise vessel

Flag: Cambodian and Myanmarese

Sailed up and down Vietnam & Cambodia on Mekong river and Myanmar on the Irrawaddy river.

Was contracted to write ISM manual and completed task. Also required to take care of many other technical matters. Recommendation of safety improvements for existing ships and implementing planned maintenance which was hard to explain as crew was not used to preventative maintenance. They rather waited for things to break and then they dealt with matter at hand.

In Cambodia sailed down to Ho Chi Minh City with stops in between depending on cruise. In Cambodia sailed once up to Kratie and Angkor Wat. Cruises took from 3 to 9 days.

In Burma joined a cruise from Bhamo down to Mandalay. Pretty awesome countryside that not many gets to see. The staff in Burma was very professional. We also visited the Katha village of George Orwell where he was stationed during the English colonial years. The area was totally dry now as the riverbed had moved quite far from the houses he writes about but the buildings still stood and were inhabited by locals.

Most memorable experience was when we had a weeks stop (a charter was cancelled) in Kampong Cham and one evening the Vietnamese Captain and Chief Engineer invited me ashore to come for dinner. They had found a Vietnamese lady who lived there and ran a restaurant. In fact there are plenty of Vietnamese refugees or immigrants in Cambodia, so they are not that hard to find. The highlight of the dinner was a 6kg python that was cooked to a curry. We ate snake and drank some kind of local liquor to wash it down. It was not that strong but we emptied several bottles in the course of the evening and were in a merry mood when coming back onboard.

Employed several qualified staff to the technical side, it was difficult to find personnel.

Planned new building projects in Vietnam and Myanmar. Mostly gave insights of design matters at hand.

Budgeting area of responsibility.

Owner/ Operator: Pandaw Cambodia Ltd.

Phnom Penh Center, Rm. no 229, St.Sihanouk 274 Blvd. Sothearos 3, Sangkat Tonle Bassac, Khan Chamkarmon, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

www.pandaw.com

Friday, February 13, 2004

Grounding of Margarita L

Back in 2003 I was in Greece working for SETE yachts converting Columbus Caravelle to mega yacht Turama and we were alongside in Lamda shipyards where I had a good view of the laid up vessels in the sheltered Elefsis Bay, one of the interesting vessels out there was Margarita L, her imposing silhouette brought into my mind a lot questions of what is this ship doing here, where has she come from and what is she doing here. Little did I know that she was the property of the Latsis family.

After some research I learned that she was originally launched as Windsor Castle and sailed for the Union Castle lines from UK to South Africa. She was the last cruise ship ever built by Cammell Laird shipyard. Eventually after the advent of air travel cruising was no longer popular and she changed hands and became property of Mr John Latsis who used her mostly in Saudi Arabia where he had business interests. After that she was laid up in Elefsina Bay.

Then one night in the middle of the winter in 2004, Feb 12th she broke her anchor chain during a winter storm.

Margarita L on Salamina

Apparently the night watchman on Margarita L had numerous times asked office for a tug to unwind her chain but it was ignored or forgotten for some reason and as such during the storm she broke loose and drifted onto the Salamina Island.

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 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.

Anyway, the storm and night passed and then Margarita L was in the morning on the Salamina Island and soon enough after office opening hours my phone started ringing asking how many hands I had onboard, I gave them the figure and was then told to leave only the minimum for safety and send the rest to board a tugboat arriving soon. In about an hour more men converged onto the yard jetty as they had been procured from SETE yachts different vessels around the Athens and a tug came and we were all told to get onboard.

After that we then motored to another laid up tug with coils and coils of old mooring ropes, some of them with a hefty 9in diameter. They were all laid on the tugs aft deck and we went for Margarita L. Obviously she was a dead ship and thats why all the able hands were needed, we climbed aboard and went to her foredeck and started pulling onboard lines, she was a big lady and I think the foredeck was abt 15m high so we were nearly 50 men pulling the ropes up with muscle power only. Once the ropes were on forward and aft deck the tug engaged and she was pulled up alongside the Lamda shipyard in Elefsis (where Columbus Caravelle was being converted).

During the time after the lines were on deck and she was towed to the jetty I had some time to roam around the vessel and visited onboard every nook and cranny that I could. It was for me very interesting to see her old DC wiring and Frankenstein switches and the enormous machinery meant to power her systems as well as her massive propulsion and what not.

I did take some pictures of the magnificent view from the bridge wing. Even then in her dilapidated state she was an impressive vessel, sadly they don't make cruise ships as they used to anymore.

After she was brought alongside they spent a few days fixing up her anchor and towed her back to her usual anchoring spot.