Encountering hurricane on the deck of cruise vessel
One of the most memorable events for me as an open deck worker was following one.
One beautiful August evening our ship, like usually was leaving city Miami. Sun was shining, it was very hot, but suddenly one of the dark spots rapidly transformed into leaden cloud. Everybody understood that squall is coming, and all people left the deck. Everything happened in 20 minutes, in low latitudes weather changes taking place much faster, than in zone of temperate climate.
In generally on large cruise vessel upper deck is about 5 decks with different size and position. One of them had a store of broken chairs. They were tied up to each other and to handrails with ropes. I was working upstairs alone agreeably was responsible for everything.
When first raindrop fell down, one of the stationary house phones suddenly rang. It was my Indonesian supervisor . She asked me to go and check how secured broken chairs before the storm to avoid problems of their falling into the water. Order was given as ask about favor, nicely, but I understood very well that I don’t have any choice.
Hastily put on yellow rubber raincoat and boots which looked like fisherman’s, I got up to the smokestack of mine 110 000 – ton and 450 000 million dollar handsome liner. Storm was in progress and furious wind was blowing. Grey shroud was around and visibility was only 20-30 meters.
To my luck, when I got upstairs, I found rope, tied myself with it around my waist and started to check how strong it is tied. At this time I used rope as a dog, which moved along the handrail; in addition to that I secured myself with one free hand.
Storm
Ship was passing, probably, middle of the storm. Heavy shower with big amount of lightings were making me blind, it was thundering.
Packs of chairs were quite high, and as I mentioned already, broken, there was easy to fall even without the storm. Feelings were interesting; it was interesting to compare strength of my muscles with power of the nature even in this way. Was it fright? Yes, I felt adrenaline explosion inside but I didn’t have time to get scared. To my happiness nature was lazy to play with small man.
By degrees everything calmed down and in 15 minutes raindrops were shining on the black windows of restaurant in the sunrays of the setting sun. No chair to fall in the sea.
