A Sailor's Winter in Tianjin, China

_{This is my friend Ansari from Southern India... it's his first time seeing snow LOL! 😂 He has been playing for half an hour making snow footprints. 🤣}

Foreword

I am a sailor and a mechanic on a (Very Large Gas Carrier) VLGC Tanker. It is a 50,000 gross tonnage ship that carries liquefied petroleum gas all over the world.

Been my profession for more than a decade now and I am also an Asian sailing under a Norwegian contract. (I am seriously not good with speaking English 🤣)

Here is my first post to the community. Sorry if it has more than a few words 😅. I am more of a creative writer than a photographer, but still I want to share my journeys.

Also, I'll be submitting this for the POBphotocontest.

What is Winter for a Sailor?

Arriving Tianjin, ChinaFebruary 2022 just in time for Valentine's Day 😭.

We went through a snowstorm going through the Yellow Sea with temperatures dropping to -10 °C (Celsius) or 13 °F (Fahrenheit) in open waters. Our ships have been rolling around 10 degrees port and starboard every few seconds for 3 days — straight! (you can imagine trying to sleep in that condition 😂)

and,

This is normal during winter especially when the cold with up north blows heavily downward. It is much worst up in Russia and Norway ⛄, where the rolling would last till the ship is tied to the port 😭.

_{Port of Tianjin (Tianjin Gang, Chinese: 天津港; pinyin: tiānjīn gǎng), formerly known as the Port of Tanggu, is the largest port in Northern China and the main maritime gateway to Beijing. src}

I have #STEM as a tag. So, I will be talking about technicalities in living conditions on a ship during winter.

During winter the only place safe from the cold is the accommodation area (working areas aren't ⛄). This has a centralized air conditioning unit that is run by us in the engine department. In cold climates, we turn off the AC and send steam through our airducts.

Where does steam in a ship come from? A boiler of course... but we have two kinds.

• Exhaust gas boiler: its some kind of Fire-tube boiler but our main engine's exhaust gas (420 °C or 788 °F) heats the water and turns it to steam. To make it simple we are using our ship's exhaust pipe to boil water. 🔥 This is in running condition.

• A normal conventional boiler we call "auxiliary boiler". If the ship engine is not running. 🚢

Priority for steam consumption will always go to the engine... the personnel will be last. Why? As long as the engine is running we are safe, the crew can sleep in winter coveralls or sleep together if they want 😂.

_{This are various pipe lines that run on the ship ranging from cargo, air, water, electric, nitrogen, fuel oil, etc.}

Anything can happen on a ship. One of my worst experiences during winter is needing to change one of our pistons.

Why is it worst?

...with temperatures dropping to -10 °C (Celsius) or 13 °F (Fahrenheit) in open waters. Our ships has been rolling around 10 degrees port and starboard every few seconds...

Imagine working in that condition plus this.

Our engine is as big as a house that is three storeys high and half of that length is the piston.

Funfact about our engine: This is a revolutionary type that can run using HFO, Diesel or Liquified Petroluem Gas. 😎 Almost zero harmful emmisions! 🌍

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_{Walking in snow is a fun experience as long as it is not waist deep 🤣.}

Winter is not all bad, I just don't like it 😂

Things I did during winter!

• Make a snow angel!
• Make a snow man!
• Snow fights!
• I got drunk and jumped on our swimming pool! YAY! (never doing that again! ⛄)

Here are some extra pics, put subs on it. Enjoy!

_{That white tank on the left is where we store our LPG fuel for our main engine}

_{This is aft of the mid ship, the round drum type mechanisn is our mooring winch. The shelter front right of is part of our LPG fuel system. Area with the yellow boxes is our deck store, and oil spill equipment storage.}

_{Even though we make a relatively safe path for us to walk through.. there is still some who likes to walk on snow and get their shoes wet 🤣}

Here is the part where I say thank you for reading and I hope you find the pictures entertaining

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_{All links go to Wikipedia.org. The pictures and the banner in this post were made or taken by myself, ©@khoola. In the cases when they were taken from other sources I stated the source in the sub-caption of the pictures.}

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