/travel/freighter/First Impressions
June 16, 11:00
Distinctly rolling
his Rs, the First Mate introduced himself as Jani. I asked if he was Finnish,
nearly certain of it, and indeed correct. I mentioned spending time in Oulu,
which put us on the right foot. He was friendly, showed me the B ("Bravo")
deck where lunch will be served in the officer's mess, at 11:30. Then up to
the E ("Echo") deck, where my cabin was.
He asked for the contract, my insurance papers, and my passport. He explained that he'd take copies of the first two, and the captain would keep my passport until we arrived.
The cabin is spacious but not huge, perhaps 20' (6m) x 12' (~3.5m). Its features are strongly reminiscent of my parents' travel trailer: clicking nobs on doors, no wheels on the chairs, little guards on all the shelves, all to keep everything in place. And the little cupboards have the same cooped-up-wood smell as the trailer always did.
Out my window, I can see the underbelly of the global economy in action; containers being stacked, raised, and loaded. Or unloaded into stacks, and then pulled off.
The scale of everything is incredible; the containers -- these are what seems so oppressive to a normal vehicle when they're on the back of a lorry, remember -- are moved around like small boxes. The machines lift them smoothly, like pieces of a machine I might have built from lego as a child. It's about 160 steps to the top of the largest device, name unknown, that sites near my window, doing the main movement of containers on and off the boat, as far as I can tell.
It's lunchtime now.
