06/001 - Chemical Trade

V/l loaded from Malaysian & Indonesian ports arrived Europe with heated cargo of different grades of palm oil in winters. En-route passage nothing much except Suez transit & heating of cargo. Total passage to N. Europe is about 25 days.
After coming along side v/l will be discharging 4 parcels along side & 4 parcels to coasters. Head office kept well informed about berths & coaster arrival schedules.
Coasters are arranged by owners and as per instructions received should not have any delay when coming alongside for loading.
Boarding supervisor on board to monitor cargo operations and tank cleaning. Any slackness on part of crew is added as remarks in report.
Total crew on board includes Chief Officer, 2 duty officers, 3 Abs, 1OS, Pump man, Boson & two cadets.
Due to hectic schedule and freezing nature of cargo chief officer is all the time in CCR to monitor cargo operations. Duty officers are continuously on six on six off.
Crew are distributed as follows
0600-1200, 1800-2400- Pump man, AB1, AB2 & Cadet
1200-1800, 0000-0600- Boson, AB3, OS, Cadet
Except for fatty acids all cargoes require squeezing while stripping. This requires crew to go inside hot tanks & do manual squeezing. Coils are hot & tanks are slippery. Any delay in squeezing can freeze cargo at bottom & this can lead to ROB or delay by several hours in discharge of cargoes.
From each watch pump man & 1 cadets stay on top for operations & crew go inside for squeezing. But with only 2 crewmembers it is not possible to complete squeezing. View this all crew members (Including off watch are called for squeezing tanks).It is important to give gap in stripping of tanks however at times gap cant be more then 15mins & immediately on completion crew has to enter into another tanks. Work load increases in case cargo stops going due to freezing when level of cargoes goes below heating coils.

On completion of discharge v/l to proceed to North Sea for tank cleaning. Next cargo is chemicals including some fine chemicals like Paraxylene, MEK, Acetone, Iso-Butane etc. Loading to take place in 3 consecutive ports.
Time allocated for cleaning of 28 tanks is 4 days. To wash tanks with hot water followed by detergent & finally rinsing.
Duty officer can’t participate in tank cleaning view they are doing Navigational watches. Chief Officer after completion of discharge busy with tank cleaning schedule.
Almost 3 days go in washing tanks & one day to prepare tanks for loading. Once about to complete you plan to return back for loading to avoid any delays. Tank cleaning involves manual cleaning after initial pre wash to remove traces of last cargo. Sometimes acid tanks need re cleaning if not properly cleaned.
Once again prior to arrival you will receive schedule of berth rotation & coasters in first loading port.
Immediately on arrival Surveyors come on first berth to take wall wash tanks to avoid delays at other berths. This shifting on berth & loading takes about 3 days in port.
After loading v/l to proceed to two other nearby loading ports. After first port, pressure reduces as no of tanks to be loaded reduces.
Total Discharge-Tank Cleaning & back loading takes about 12 days.

So in all, those 12 days of tank cleaning & back loading is full of work with no proper rest! Rest hours violation becomes common. With so much work in hand one has to worry about tank passing by surveyors and reports given by the boarding supervisor!! On chemical tanker additional duty officer should be a must, who can assist chief officer in tank cleaning operations.