Arrival

Hello All,
Just writing to say that i have safely in Miami. My flights where all mostly good. Except my Christchurch flight was delayed and i almost missed my flight to LAX. Luckily the combination of the LAX flight being delayed and a lot of sprinting between terminals means that i made the flight even if i was in the last 10 people on board. And US Customs where a breeze to which didn't expect, Customs took a grand total of 4 minutes.
Made my flight from LAX to Miami. which was amazing for two reasons. first was that there where NO clouds what so ever the entire trip. I got to see the port of LA which we passed over, the Grand Canyon, a massive forest fire, and lots and lots of patchwork fields. All the fields seen from that altitude really reminded me of Sim farm which is rather amusing i think. And when the sun set we passed over the gulf of mexico and i could spot all the gas fields full of rigs and the shipping lanes.
The second reason this flight was interesting was that the window in front of me kept falling off. yes that's right. the window was falling off. Periodically i had to click it back into place. it also worked as a nice air conditioner too as it was gushing cool air.
I'm currently sitting in my room in the Miami Marriot planning my trip to the city centre. I really don't want to pay for a taxi and it doesn't look like any buses leave from here. hmmmmmm we shall see.

Success

As apposed to my first post i know have a job (woot!) which is ever so exciting. After a month a frantic job hunting, anxious waiting, and soul searching Kees came and told me one of the best sentences i have heard in my short life so far "Todd i have a boat for you".



Which as your all excited to know so far the Grandeur of the Seas which is owned by Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. I'm gonna be joining ship on the 20th of September in Fort Lauderdae and cruising the Caribbean. When i first join i am operating from Fort Lauderale and doing a route involving George Town in Grand Caymen, and Mexico. In November i relocate to Colon, Panama and do cruises running from there to Colombia, Aruba, Mexico, and Jamaica.

More news to follow and actually photos that i have taken myself of the boat when i get there.

caaaaan't waaaait.

-Todd

Firefighting Complete with pictures

Heya Folks!,

So events in the life of todd to follow.
First of all sorry for the late post. firefighting did finish last friday and i did mean to get this post posted during the weekend but lets face it. mr. lazy/reaaaaallly tired got in the way. anyways enough of that.

The course we did was the 4 day basic Maritime fire fighting course. basically the first day was spent drilling the fire triangle into our heads (i'm sure you've all heard of it) so thoroughly we will now never not dream about it again.

Day 2 we finally got to the airport and went to the fire training ground they have there ( for those of you who have flown into Auckland you would have seen it. its the big very burnt plane at the start of the runway). The morning of this day to was further spent cementing that damned triangle of our dreams into our very essence. The afternoon though they got us familiar with our. Basically a really thick fire retardant jacket and pants followed by a helmet, burn hood, and nice big clomping boots and gloves. Then in the 20C heat we ran around carrying fire hoses and rolling them and unrolling them. then rolling them. oh wait, then unrolling them again. Let me tell you lots of sweat and sore muscles.

Day 3 rolled around next. by this point the waking up at 6 was really starting to hurt. but oh well thats life eh. On this day we were introduced to our lovely BA's (breathing apparatus). Basically a mask that feeds you air from a massive steel bottle on your back. made you sound like darth vader too. It was fun to wear until they made us to an obsticle course which involved crawling through very small spaces. I've known any better claustrophobia invoking device before.

Day 4 was the killer. we had been warned so too. didn't make it hurt any less. basically we suited up in all our fire retardant gear plus the BA sets (we got steel ones. the instructors got carbon fiber. the...........). Next they lit a fire in the building they had and heated it up to 40C inside. Then they got us to search the inside in zero visibility for bodies (they had giant bean bags weighing 70KG to act as people). and on top of that, they didn't let us use the stairs. we had to us the ladders. I've never known anything more exhausting than trying to climb a ladder in 40C of heat while wearing the equivalent of a parka, with a mask plastered to your face, and oh wait you couldn't see anything because it was so smokey and the instructor behind you yelling at you. All that added up to an exhausting day. Also a day i must say in which in which i learned alot about myself. Most notably its hard to think indignantly when someone is yelling advice in your ear (the instructors would would give you advice, the wrong advice to try to confuse you then when you hesitated he'd start 'telling' you to make a decision). all in all a very learning experience.


here's us all looking really tired. this is just after i got lost in the building. i was not happy.


Day 5 was the day we finally got to play with real fire. they took us to there finally training ground. this time we lugged around hoses and fought giant burning pools of fire. A step down from yesterday but was a bit harder since we all were a bit sore. well i claim everyone because i was. and lastly heres a picture of all of us afterwards.


thats all for now. i'll try to write next week too. don't forget to comment.

churs

todd

Firefighting Day 1

Heya folks again

well today was a bittersweet day. what made it so bitter was that today all we did was theory of firefighting in a freezing cold classroom. starting from the very basics of stop drop and roll and the fire triangle. boring boring stuff. oh well. some of the stuff we learned was cool. like the AFFF ( Aqueous Film Forming Foam) we learned about was cool. The sweet part is tomorrow we ship out to the airport to actually get hands on and tackle the fires. woot. can't wait. i'll update tomorrow on how singed my eyebrows are.

over and out

Changes

Howdy again folks,


Day two of my blog and already changes afoot. yip i changed from livejournal. The main reason being that while on livejournal i couldn't break that feeling of 12yearoldgirlness that just seemed to weeze it's way out of my computer. So blogspot it 'tis


thats all folks


Todd

First Ever

Hello family and friends!

Welcome.

After much deliberation and thought I've decided to start a blog on my life and most notably my time I'll be spending at sea starting this September. yes that's correct for those of you who don't know I'm currently attending the New Zealand Maritime School(http://www.maritime.ac.nz/ if you are interested, wouldn't really bother though as the sites pretty rubbish) studying towards my Second Mates Foreign Going Ticket and a Diploma in Nautical Science (not sure if that all should be capitalized but it makes it look more exciting so hey). i have to amass a years worth of sea time to be able to sit the oral exam for my ticket. Thus this September I'll be shipping out to sea as a cadet (like an intern sorta) to learn the tools of the trade.

Most of you may be thinking that all very well. and yes it is. but i'll take this time to elaborate on my course as I'm not at sea at the moment and there's nothing else really to talk about. My course is a three year one with a mixed agenda of sea time and classroom learning at the school on Auckland's waterfront. Currently my courses range from the topics of basic shipboard familiarization to cargo practices to industry knowledge. all pretty basic stuff, the hard stuff comes along next year when we do passage planning and radar. then we head out to sea again for 8 months to finish off our sea time. after that the rest of the next year we complete all the courses we missed and sit our oral exam which just happens to be 5 hours long. ouch.

So top on my mind right now is the finding of a company to get my cadetship with. which is rather harder than it sounds as most companies spend around 100,000 dollars per cadet and they get really very little out of it. many companies, for example Swires Shipping, make you sign a two year contract to work for them after you get your ticket if you do your cadetship with them. I wouldn't really mind signing a contract like that with a company. What i'm looking for is an interesting professional company that i can go places with, get internal promotions, and that will look after me as much as i look after the company's interests. oh, and they have to have sweet boats like heavy lift or icebreaking offshore tugs. So far i've contacted 15 companies. no replies so far. fingers crossed. I've listed a few off the top of my head that I've applied for.

Grieg Star line (Totally pimpn fleet there)
Holland America Line ( cruise ships, not really looking to go on them as its not 'real' work but if i had to i'd go here)
Swire Pacific ( offshore)
Jumbo (heavy lift dutch company)
Heavy Lift (yah guess what that one is)
ANL (container)
ACL ( PCC and RORO vessels)
CMA-CGM (french container company)
Trans Atlantic Shipping (container Roll on Roll off (RORO))
Hamburg Sud (container)
Reef Shipping (break bulk)
Spliethoff (multi purpose)

and a few more i can't name off the top of my head.My favorite company keeps changing but at the moment my favorite is Grieg Star Line (http://www.griegstar.com/) as they have a pretty mint fleet. They own 12 offshore/icebreakers supplying the oil rigs off the coast of Greenland. that would be an amazing job. working in the offshore industry would be pretty cool too as the pays +A, you get six months off a year, and the vessels are generally pretty new. The downside is that they work your ass off. but i always figure if you like your work you don't mind working more and if you don't like your work. make yourself like it or just deal with it.

that's all i can think of writing at the moment. leave a comment if you have any questions and it'll make me feel a little more loved. maybe even give a fuzzy warm feeling inside. yes that's correct. my happiness is directly in your hands. so comment.

lastly i'm gonna make it a tradition to post an interesting fact/figure at the end of each of my posts. Just because i like random facts really. So today's fact is that the paper clip was invented in Norway. who would'a guessed. if only i knew that on Tuesday night for the weekly pub quiz dammit.

oh and every shipping company gives upwards of $500 dollars a year to each officer at sea to buy sunglasses with. mint! ( and yes that was two facts but i just couldn't contain myself)

cheers and so long
Todd

PS i'll try to post as many photos as i can but i don't have a camera so we'll sea (see the pun there!)