An excerpt from the chapter, Man Overboard.
We loaded steel coils and set sail for Port Klang in Malaysia. At Port Dampier in northwest Australia, we took a full load of bulk iron ore destined for Kaohsiung in Taiwan. There, we had a change in the crew. The Radio Officer left and was replaced by a new recruit who had been flown in from Bombay. The voyage from Kaohsiung to Long Beach in southwestern Los Angeles County in California was hard on me.
I was happy to be rid of the first Radio Officer. But I soon found this new one to be inept. He could not even do simple things like transmitting and receiving messages. I tried helping him with some of his tasks but soon found he wasn’t really learning on the job either. I found him incompetent. This meant I personally had to perform most of his duties, which mainly involved using satellite voice and radio telephone.
By the time we got to Long Beach, I began to have my doubts about his bonafides. It did not take me long to determine that he possessed a forged Certificate of Competency. I reported this to the head office in Port Klang. They informed me it was too late to find a replacement for him. It was a mess. We had a long stay of five days in LA loading coal for Kaohsiung. During our transpacific journey to Kaohsiung, I had to man most of the Radio Officer’s activities, including accounting and payroll tasks that an RO performed.
The misadventure occurred when the ship was about four hundred and fifty miles off Hawaii. It was nearly 1100 hours. I was on the bridge with the Third Officer. The crew were gathered on the poop deck, taking a tea break. One of them saw the RO jump overboard at the stern of the ship. He sent a young seaman up to the bridge, who stormed in, crying out, describing what had happened.
I was in shock for a few seconds. This had come out of nowhere. I came to my senses and instinctively pressed the MOB – Man Overboard – button on the radar. I ordered a lifebuoy to be thrown overboard without delay. The seamen on the poop deck who had witnessed the RO jump had also thrown a lifebuoy out.
I found myself ordering the helmsman through a figure 8 maneuver to help me regain the MOB position. I was amazed it came to me naturally. I had only studied it in theory, but now it came flooding to me from the navigation class I attended at TS Dufferin three decades ago.
The sea was fairly calm. The water was warm. These were, thank God, favorable conditions in a rescue mission. Meridian Spica was over 250 meters long. With a full load, she would have a very long stopping distance owing to the vessel’s momentum.
