Ballast

[John Arton]

On bulk carriers it's important to keep ballast tanks as clear of mud and sediment as possible as many cargoes are loaded on draft surveys to determine quantity loaded and build up of mud etc can affect the ships constant. On one cape sized bulkers I was mate on mud and sediment in ballast tanks had built up to such an extent that the original constant of 350 tons was up to 1200 tons, meaning around 900 tons of cargo was lost each voyage.
Rgds
J.A

[j.sabourn]

The same thing happened when I was on leave and the relieving mate assumed the ballast tanks were empty as the sounding tape was showing dry. However this was in Russia and in the cool period or should say cooler and he had pumped out tanks or dropped them to the sea and tanks were slack,and more liable to freeze .which some did , plus the Russians insisted that the ore we loaded had the allowed water content and had running water going in with the cargo , I didn’t follow the result of the loss but if had been me I would have blamed the Russians with insisting on loading their estimated cargo water content I always insisted log book entries that this was being done and informed the Russians I had done so . She was a 26000 ton deadweight ship don’t know what came out but think it was about the 20,000 mark.. Sea water not mud but the same principle with any ship down to its marks. JS.

[Des Jenkins]

Hi John
I was feeding them on seed but it was to expensive so changed to porridge oats which they can't get enough of never leave a scrap, no local farms around the Cooma so they wont be going for the wheat.
Des

[happy daze john in oz]

James, those birds you have in UK are not Sea Gulls they are flying terrorists.
Our Sea Gulls are half the size.
But food for wild life is important and with the current drought we are in, may well last up to ten years, we need to think of the wild life, real ones not the polis.
Too may dead Roos on the road side looking for fresh food, feed the birds and supply water for them, have to help where we can.

[j.sabourn]

I used to live opposite an ornamental freshwater lake , on the opposite side of the lake was a school .On the lake were ducks and the occasional swan used to fly in. The council removed all the wild life off the Lake due to the kids and others feeding the birds and causing them distress was the answer I got when asked , apparently bread is bad for them , anyone know if this is true or not.Or were the birds removed for protection at Christmas time and other times when certain people got hungry. ? JS

[James Curry]

Bread when eaten swells up in the tummy making the bird feel full and therefore no need to eat, there is not a lot of goodness in a bread alone diet.

John Oz we are in a drought here in the UK certainly in my area Wirral North West England it has not rained for 24 days and no substancial rainfall since Early March. Farmers are getting very concerned as the ground is rock hard and fear a lot of early planted crops will fail also planned sowing has been delayed due to the very dry conditions. The Herring Gulls are the big buggers weighing in at just under 2kgs. Landfill sites are there play ground and in the towns they find plenty of disgarded food because some lazy bastards cannot be arsed to use a bin..

Always remember watching the Albatross following us for days in the Southern Atlantic hardly flapping a wing just gliding along for days , then get up one morning and not one in view, bugger that heading North malarky.
We had one crash landed on the wing of the bridge on one trip. Huge it was no one would go near it . The Bosun got a sack threw it over it and picked it up. He quickly removed the sack and gave the Albatross a gentle poke with a stick and knocked it off the rail. It headed for the water and then just opened it's wing and soared upwards again and resumed station for a day or so. Graceful creatures unlike these bastard herring gulls.
Always freshen up the water in the bird bath in the garden, great to watch the birds having a drink and a splash.

[Graham Shaw]

Graham, they have been conditioned to investigate black bin liners as a potential source of food. One of the local farmers round here diversified into growing trees and had two large fields neatly cultivated into long rows with blak polythene covering the ground around the seedlings to keep the weeds at bay. His first year saw his efforts decimated by seagulls ripping up the black poly. The following year he did away with black and used green I think, end of the problem.
ps just up the coast from you I heard the seagulls glow in the dark?

Right on Tony.Here on the Fylde we can indeed spot our Cumbrian visitors,not just the gulls, from their ethereal luminous green glow-no,not from their Pac -amacs(remember those?,and no,not Panamax either- just keeping things nautical of course,ain't I ,but by their whole appearance-there's definitely something in the water there,apart from the usual sewage ,that is.

And here in 'leafy Lytham' (well it used to be),just six miles down the coast from brash Blackpool ,the favoured haunt of weekend hen-night party girls where with normally respectable,during the week office jobs,let their hair down,and their skirts so far up they look like belts.Add most of them carrying around from bar to bar giant inflatable penises and vomit stained tops and impossibly high heels-even Danny La Rue or Dolores down in the Pig would refuse to wear them .Needless to say I don't go near the place at my age,but I have my own memories,don't we all, to keep me going,Hamburg,Antwerp,Bugis Street,Lisbon.Who needs an inflatable penis,ha? Hmm....

Oh yes,seagulls.Well our own 'native, gulls in Lytham are comparatively well behaved compared with their Blackpool brethren.It is well known that for a day out they fly down the coast road from Blackpool to intimidate our Lythamers,,both gulls and residents.It is said our fish and chips and mushy peas are so much tastier(they are,actually),but they also get a better class of newspaper wrapping,we mean the Financial Times compared to the Daily Blah with it's Page3,and 5,and 7 busty bathing beauties-who reads the other news anyway!

[Tony Taylor]

Right on Tony.Here on the Fylde we can indeed spot our Cumbrian visitors,not just the gulls, from their ethereal luminous green glow-no,not from their Pac -amacs(remember those?,and no,not Panamax either- just keeping things nautical of course,ain't I ,but by their whole appearance-there's definitely something in the water there,apart from the usual sewage ,that is.

And here in 'leafy Lytham' (well it used to be),just six miles down the coast from brash Blackpool ,the favoured haunt of weekend hen-night party girls where with normally respectable,during the week office jobs,let their hair down,and their skirts so far up they look like belts.Add most of them carrying around from bar to bar giant inflatable penises and vomit stained tops and impossibly high heels-even Danny La Rue or Dolores down in the Pig would refuse to wear them .Needless to say I don't go near the place at my age,but I have my own memories,don't we all, to keep me going,Hamburg,Antwerp,Bugis Street,Lisbon.Who needs an inflatable penis,ha? Hmm....

Oh yes,seagulls.Well our own 'native, gulls in Lytham are comparatively well behaved compared with their Blackpool brethren.It is well known that for a day out they fly down the coast road from Blackpool to intimidate our Lythamers,,both gulls and residents.It is said our fish and chips and mushy peas are so much tastier(they are,actually),but they also get a better class of newspaper wrapping,we mean the Financial Times compared to the Daily Blah with it's Page3,and 5,and 7 busty bathing beauties-who reads the other news anyway!

some great comparisons there , only we went to the more classy places. You dont see the likes of the dance on top of the Bugis St. sh-thouse in Blackpool

[Des Jenkins]

Hi Graham
Shows what age does to one, in your heyday you would have been like a grasshopper following those girls in Blackpool LoL
Des

[Graham Shaw]

Not so long ago a forensic lab conducted autopsies on coastal seagulls.They found levels of cholesterol equivalent to some humans in the majority of those gulls,many of which were overweight when compared to their species norms .They concluded that it was probably the well-known behaviour of gulls to forage at inland landfills,and most of all scavenging human food like fish and chips,donuts and other discarded or 'dive-bombed' food in coastal resort towns.
Once upon a time their seagull ancestors had a healthy diet of fish and other seafood.
Yes,I know it is more difficult than it used to be for them to get a healthier sustenance from the sea ,but I say really,humankind have contributed to their 'adopted' lifestyle by making it too easy for them...

SEAGULL.jpg

" Cholesterol? What bloody cholesterol?.......SOD OFF !"