Day Four

Rotterdam

I have been told by the agent that the ship will be ready at eight o'clock in the morning. So, after breakfast I take a cab out to the port. We have considerable difficulties finding the ship which is mostly due to the fact that she is not there yet. The dispatcher at port thinks that she will arrive around eleven and will get the berth where right now M/V Marina is finishing loading, which, incidentally, has a Norwegian flag flying from her stern.

Closer to twelve than eleven Marina finally takes off and shortly thereafter M/V OPDR Porto arrives. She will be my home for the next two weeks. Built in China in 1998 she is roughly one hundred meters long and has a maximum load of 380 TEUs (equivalents of twenty feet containers, a useful measure since most of the containers are actually fourty feet long). She is owned by the German 'Oldenburg-Portugiesische Dampfschiffs-Rhederei' (OPDR) with an all Spanish crew of twelve men.

I report on board, get shown to my cabin. The Captain is on his way to lunch so lunch it is. He also mentiones that our departure from Rotterdam is to be expected around midnight but 'in shipping everything is maybe'.

After lunch I settle down in my twenty square meters. The cabin is larger than some of the hotel rooms I have had and consist of everything one needs: a bed, a couch, a desk, a fridge, a board and a bath room with a shower. It is called the Pilot's cabin and is on the 4th accomodation deck right next to the Captain's. The bridge is one deck up, the mess room three decks down.

At 1800 hours it becomes finally apparent, that food will be no problem at all. I reckon that two weeks of doing more or less nothing with three warm, plentyful meals a day will have their effect. It's 'manly' food, though. Not quite the right place for a vegetarian.