One Day to Go

I feel far better now! I am as close to paying off as a groom to the day before he's married; I've accepted it as at last as going to happen! I have in fact packed my suitcase, unpacked it again and repacked it! The only thing left for me to do is to pack away this laptop, sleep this night away and then go home!

Ah, but if life were so simple! In sequential order these things happened this evening; the Lubricating Oil Purifier Motor burnt out, I had to stop an engine and various communications from the office caused me to raise my eyebrows in wonder! These three events once dispensed with had me tearing up the handover notes that I had already printed out and replacing them with the just-now updated versions! I also suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to get the mid-night figures, so back into a boiler suit I clambered! I just hope that for now I can sleep and that my relief will turn up at the expected time of 11am - and that nothing of even minor note will occur between now and then!

At this point I can muse over the fact that tomorrow I will start a new life albeit an old one with renewed energy! This ship though will just carry on as before! For four weeks it has been the life that I have breathed, from the day that I walked onboard this unknown steel can I have come to learn its grunt's and its groans and as far as the engine room is concerned the nuts and bolts that keep it ticking! I have sweated blood and burnt rubber in my brain as I fought to keep the engines running and the power on the board, yet somewhat unceremoniously and without parade I will just depart, minus thanks from the soul that this ship let me know it has!

Tomorrow, the ship will carry on as before yet servicing its every need, from sustenance in the form of diesel, lubrication to keep the limbs in motion to answering its quirkiness and services at every pit stop with a spanner and a tin of Devcon to-hand, will be a new yet equally competent engineer at the helm. Whilst I will be travelling back home to my son, the smog and heat of Taiwan and to days filled with unimportant yet memorable events, the new Chief will be rapidly learning the engine room and the quirks that keep it together and in motion! Life will carry on as before!

As with any ship the only record or memory of my ever having been on that vessel will be what I retain in my brain and the handover notes that I have written, yet even they will slowly and unceremoniously become obsolete and sink to the bottom of the piles of paperwork that clutter every ship like unwanted garbage! At some point some enterprising Chief Engineer who is fed up of the mess in his cabin or who needs fuel for the barbecue will finally dispose of them without further adieu and that is simply the end of that!

And I will have moved on, have written a few more handover notes on some other vessels and retained a few more memories of disasters and crucial moments! The mighty Pacific Sword will just be a name in my Discharge Book, a distant memory diluted with time to become just another vessel that I have sailed on!

First though I must sleep! I've packed my bag and am ready! Is that an alarm I hear?