Dry Dock

We have just completed our first week in dry dock. It has been an incredibly different, busy week and I do believe I’ve loved every minute of it. 

One of the reasons I'm glad to finally be here is so that I can figure out what all the fuss is about--it's been a bit confusing at times to just hear "oh we'll do that in dry dock". Why do we do dry dock? Here is video that was produced by our communications team to show you what goes on. It will probably help the rest of this post make sense. :) It's just a couple of minutes long; I hope you enjoy it!

(I am definitely taking advantage of our "fast" internet here--up from 2.4MB to 8!!!)

We are down from around 380 to 80 crew. Part of that is lots and lots of goodbyes--this year quite a few long-term families left; either to move on to other things or to continue working for Mercy Ships in Texas. There were also a lot of nurses who served in the Congo but their 10-month commitment is up now and they’re heading home. But there’s quite a few people who are just taking their vacation time during the summer so it’s nice to know that we’ll some familiar faces come August. :) AND, anyone under 18 is not allowed on board while the ship is in dry dock so all of the families are staying elsewhere on the island until the middle of July. 

I didn’t know this until we’d been on board for a couple of months, but the ship does not go into dry dock every year; only every other year or so. The process itself was pretty fun and took alllllll day. The power was shut off which meant no one had access to computers and every cabin was dark so pretty much everyone was up on deck watching all day. 

[Disclaimer: the following order of events were written solely by Katie and any false information is completely accidental because I didn’t know any better. Also, anytime I refer to an ambiguous “they” it’s because I am not a sailor and I don’t know who did what. :)] 

The process started around 8:00 Wednesday morning with the pilot coming on board. Every port has a pilot(s) that guides each ship in and out. The pilot maneuvered us out of the space that we had been docked in since last Friday. Our power was cut and two big black balls went up on the mast to signal to other ships that we unable to control our movement so that they would stay out of the way. A couple of tugboats helped this whole process. 

The lifeboats had to come down because they are too heavy. So they took the opportunity to test them out and went zooming around the harbor for a while. 

Very cool but I hope that’s the last time I see those things in the water. 

We eventually made it over to the “parking place”. I couldn’t get a good spot for this picture but you can see where we are headed into. Can you make out the edge of the platform just underneath the water? 

Our ship was hooked up to essentially a huge pulley system and we were cranked into place. This tug boat held his nose against us to make sure we stayed straight. 

Once we were in place, divers went underneath the ship to make sure everything was good to go and then the platform was slowly raised up. 

SLOWLY. 

So slow that most people went inside (myself included) for lunch and when we came back out--WHOA! We’re not in the water anymore! 

We were pulled backwards into the parking spot--I suppose so that when it’s time to leave we can just head out. Here you can see where we came from and the platform. 

When I moved to Ohio, two things about midwestern culture absolutely baffled me: hunting for mushrooms and tractor pulls. About the former, I honestly thought Jordan was joking when he mentioned it once and then was shocked when, come spring time, we actually hunted mushrooms. (I couldn’t resist a Hobbit reference once I’d figured out he was serious.) 

About the latter, I remember thinking, “Aaaannd... we just watch tractors?” 

Well I now know that mushrooms are delicious (although anything wrapped in flour and fried in butter stands a good chance of being edible) and I think I can understand the fascination with tractor pulls. It was hard to not be impressed with this one: 

There’s another big tractor behind the three “little” ones that you can’t see in this picture. These guys pulled us out of the parking area completely and then they switched configurations to pull us to our permanent parking spot. The ship is in on train rails; that’s how the tractors are pulling us. There was some problem so it took us a while to get going but once we did it was pretty sweet--felt like we were driving an enormous vehicle at a snail’s pace.


This is a video I took of us on the last stretch. It took nearly ten minutes but I sped up the playback by 8x. If I do say so myself, it’s kind of fun to watch. :) 

Once we were in place, it took about an hour to set up the gangway--no longer one staircase. Our temporary gangway is actually scaffolding that drops off at the hospital since we are higher up now. It’s a little scary being three stories up with very little between you and the ground but I’m slowly getting used to it. Here you can just barely see the scaffolding being set up. 

Aren’t the blues incredible?? I just can’t get enough of the sky and water!! 

These guys work for the shipyard and couldn’t be bothered to wait for the scaffolding to be put up so they hopped off in the man box.

The ship does look pretty cool out of the water and it will be fun to see the various projects getting done--the drive shaft (are there two? I dunno) are coming out to be inspected, the barnacles will be cleaned off, and I think it will be repainted.

We couldn't resist some photo opportunities. :) These are my good friends Hannah and Tegan that I work with--I am so grateful for the chance to meet them! They are wonderful women of God and we get along so well; we can make any day fun. :) 

Dry dock has been different inside the ship too. We are running on less power so not as many lights are on and the background hum of the engines is gone. It’s actually kind of eery. Less power also means no air conditioning. Thankfully every door that can be opened up to let the outside air in has been and some of it filters it’s way down to our cabins (where we have a window that doesn’t open--helpful at sea but not at the moment!). Outside though is beautiful; Gran Canaria is a small island (only 31 miles across) so the temperature is fabulous with all the ocean breezes. It kind of feels like a sunny late September. 

Lots of projects in the hospital! 

The Canary Islands are Spanish islands but are autonomous. They are just 100 miles off the coast of Morocco. They were the last outpost for Spanish ships before sailing west and south; in fact, Christopher Columbus stayed here in 1492 before he (unintentionally) found North America. The islands are now a big tourist attraction; kind of like the Cancun resort  destination for Europe. As a result there are people everywhere. I enjoy it since I don’t know who’s a native and who’s a tourist and it’s just fun to see people walking out and about. The city is made for outdoor activity--there are huge boulevards to walk down, tiny streets with shops, a boardwalk facing the sunset and beach with mountains in the distance, biking trails, and parks. It’s really beautiful and we are enjoying the late summer evenings--it’s wonderful to get a full day’s work in and still have time to take a walk before dark and see the sun set! In Africa the sun only ever goes down at 6:00 so once the work day is done, that’s all she wrote. 

The flowers and trees have been a welcome surprise! So much beauty. 

And that’s about it! Jordan and I are both really busy. There is a lot of work being done in cabins--including LOTS of flooring and furniture improvements/repairs. As Crew and Guest Services Manager, I’m in charge of furniture in the cabins and guess who’s in charge of fixing cabinets in the cabins?? The carpenter! So we have both been quite busy. 

It’s a lot of fun though and the difference in work has been good--sometimes it’s just nice to switch things up a bit. :) 

I don’t usually do this but here are some prayer points:

Pray for safety for everyone involved--safety for the crews at work, for the families away, and for the people traveling for the summer. Pray we get our projects done in good time--changing field service locations from Guinea to Benin at the last minute has put us into a bit of a time crunch. Pray for west Africa as we heard this week that the Ebola situation is getting worse--it has now spread from Guinea to Sierra Leone and Liberia which makes an end seem nowhere near in sight. Pray for energy for the crew; this is not a vacation, no matter how beautiful the beaches are and there is a lot of hard work to be done. 

Thanks for sticking with me here. :) 

Sailing

We are about halfway through our sail from Pointe Noire, Congo to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. Let me tell you, it is one of the weirdest and disconcerting things I’ve ever done. Nothing has changed in our cabin--except that everything is off the shelves and glass items are packed away carefully so it looks like we’re in the middle of moving. My office is still 30 seconds away and there is still work to do but my route to get there is a little comical; everybody I meet is ricocheting off the walls and walking down stairs is a little bit dangerous if you’re not careful! Inside this big metal box that we’ve come to call home is exactly the same but outside there is absolutely zero to see except deep, blue sea. It’s truly beautiful and also scary; you realize just how big this wide world is and how much of it is purely under God’s will--namely, all of it. 

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before but the  Africa Mercy used to be the Dronning Ingrid, which means “Queen Ingrid” in Danish. It is one of a set of triplet ships that ferried passenger trains across channels in Denmark. Because it wasn’t built primarily for the open seas, its bottom is flat, as a that makes it much more stable wehn docked, which was the majority of the time in its former and present lives. That’s not to say that it won’t do fine in the open seas, it just makes for a bit rougher of a ride than a v-shaped hull would make. A flat-bottomed boat rides on top of the waves where as a v-shaped boat rides through the waves. Jordan says to just picture a shoebox floating on on waves and you’ve pretty much got an idea of what it does. Every wave around us has an impact. 

[FYI, I got all that from Jordan and the next best thing: Wikipedia. *gasp*] 

Needless to say, I have been dreading the sail. I can’t even swing on swing set without feeling a little queasy so I figured I would be in trouble once we got out of the harbor and I was right. :( I spent the first 5 days of the sail in bed and on Thursday I finally got an injection that took away the nausea and that combined with several other medicines has gotten me back to normal. Now I’m not minding the sail too much but I will be very grateful to see some land.

Jordan has been loving the sail as it’s given him the chance to do some new things. Just before we left, a huge storm came in and sent some pretty massive waves crashing along the coast--so badly that even in the harbor the water got really rough and several of our mooring lines snapped. The entire deck department was out on the mooring decks all Friday afternoon and it was pretty stressful for them but thankfully it all got under control. 

It’s weird to have everything around you stay the same but look outside the window and it’s different. Since we’re sailing north, the weather is changing too--below the equator, where we were, the rainy season was pretty much over. Now we’re above the equator and we’re getting a lot of rainy/cloudy days. It’s also staying light longer into the evenings. 

Anyways, that’s about it but I thought I would post some pictures. :)

See the tail lights poking out from that container? All of the cars got loaded up to deck 8 for the sail. 

Last but not least: the gangway was loaded up (that's Jordan in the blue).

Every port has pilots that guides each ship in and out of the harbor. When it's time
for them to leave, they hop from one boat to the other!

Goodbye to our dock space--look at that lovely water!

The bow is only open during the sail but it gets plenty of use when it is!


This sail introduced me to flying fish--so cool! They've got little wings
and will pop out to fly for a few seconds before they go under the water again.


Today we finally saw dolphins--just a few and not for very long but it was
long enough for me to see why they are a favorite animal for many people. They were beautiful!!

And the water is that blue all the time too--breathtaking.