Capt Phillips: one among many untold stories..

Till now I was convinced that merchant mariners of cargo ships are invisible people.In a world where movies cover professions from media to Intelligence, time travellers to space travellers, writers to painters, engineers to doctors, ninja warriors to modern soldiers, stock traders to serial killers, add man to mad man, ghosts to wizards, perhaps all possible streams of life, one wing that remained nonexistent was of merchant mariners in cargo ships. These people cover the largest part of sea going trade and vessels,  and are largest part of seafarers in a group which also includes warships, fishermen, support vessels, and luxury liners. Somehow the majority is out of picture. They are perhaps the common man of high seas. 

Leaving Behind : Part two

And so as i was telling you, I fear that my blog shall have same fate as I do as a seafarer. Last time when I went for sail, I had a funny idea that once I will come back I would join back my life just where I left it. As you can guess it din't work that way.Earth had taken an entire revolution around sun (yes I was on ship for one full year) and lot had changed in between. No, I am not implying that it all came as a shock to me when I landed up back.Every information was coming to me.It's just that you realize the changes when you come back.

Leaving Behind : Part one

And so under constant pressure of my parents, I have zipped up my bag after putting six pair of socks along with some other useless things.Socks are important, else how will I respond to my captains appeals, " Pull your socks up Shubham, you are an officer now.Stop behaving like a cadet!"  How do I know about this? Because in my cadet-ship time i have heard similar statements with replacing "officer" to "cadet" and "cadet" to "kid".And then haven't I seen my third officers getting same scoldings? So socks are important.Pull your socks up now as from here on I am going to be bore, informative and sentimental progressively and chronologically.

Oh , in the mean time you might have got some idea of my untimely departure.God bless me, may I rest in piece(deliberate mistake).So I am leaving in two days or so.For my next sail.Going on a ship is sometimes like going on a parallel universe.Especially if the ship is like the one I am joining,who seldom( read never) gets any shore and shore-leave for her staff.I wish I could tell you more about it, but my word limit shall exceed your interest.In short, where I am going, there is a strong likelihood that I would not step out of that ship for next six months.

Archimedic implications

Any object, wholly or partially immersed in a fluid, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object.

— Archimedes


i.e. the body suffers from an apparent loss of weight equal to displaced weight of liquid when wholly partially immersed in fluid. This generates law of floatation and thus law of sailor’s life.

We lose something ,apparently, every time we sail . We lose land fun, we lose quality moments, some of us lose love, and most of us suffer from an apparent loss of character. I believe, we lose almost as much as we displace. Thousands of tons of water. Subtract a gain of money and add apparent risk, divided by on board fun and multiply it by workload.
We have a perfect equation here.
Apparently.

There is a Sailor!!!!!

we are sailors. Though i have just a year's experience at sea and have been sitting at home counting stars for ages after that, still there are moments every day I get to know that somehow land is not a place where I should be found.

People around me are curious. They look at me and think about my eating habits. They have never been with such a creature like sailor. They have questions.Does he have fins? Does he go underwater? And so on. But they can't ask that!!So they follow an age old questionnaire. ”Things to be asked to a sailor as soon as you spot one on land.” It’s never changing. These are the same questions which Columbus had to answer to his/her highness back in England and Sindbaad to future oil owners. Whenever they returned to their home land they had to..Of course all in a good spirit..People are curious.