average day at sea

Many people are unaware of what a ship does before it actually gets to the
dock. Here is a quick attempt to shed some light. There are a crew of
sailors, usually 3 watchstanders and 3 day working able bodied seaman
responsible for preparing the decks. The watchstanders are coupled with a
navigation officer and are helmsman/lookouts while the day workers maintain
the vessels repairs and planned maintentance regiment. Prior to arrival in
port all 6 sailors get together on deck and layout the mooring lines for
which the boat ties up to the dock with. They then rig a pilot ladder off
the side of the ship, most likely on the leeward side(the non windy side) a
few feet off of the waterline so the piolt(the guy who has the local port
knowledge and conns the ship to the dock) can climb aboard from sea. The 6
sailors are split up to bow and stern teams. Traditionally, the 2nd mate and
dayworkers are tasked with tying up the bow while the 3rd mate and
watchstanders take care of the stern. Usually for docking and undocking a
tug boat is used to assist the ship in manuevering and it sends its own line
up to the sailors on either the port or starboard (left or right) quarter
(the back corner) of the ship based on what side of the ship is going be
touching the dock. Once the pilot is aboard and the tug is made fast(secured
to the ship) the teams on the bow and stern, once word from the captain is
given, send the lines to the dock. The lines are big and heavy, so a heaving
line, or a light weight line with a weight on the end is literally thrown to
the dock so a line handler can easily grab it and pull the bigger lines to
the bollards(horns) on the dock that the eye goes around. Every mooring line
has a eye about 3-4 ft long at the end of it. then the lines are made tight
by securing them to bits(horns) on the ship using a winch. Once all the
lines are tight the tugboat(s) are released and then the gangway ladder is
rigged so people can come and go from the ship. That's that. kind of, for
sake of simplicity.

More to come on the job of the pilot and other aspects of life aboard a
900ft conainter ship.