Passion. It is indeed a big word. At the beginning of my
journey embarking into this seafaring career, all I was thinking about is money
and travelling the world. As I get to know more about this career during my
practical year, I’m amazed by the new things I got to learn everyday.
First of all, I’m amazed by how we can get our exact position
at the open sea by the calculation method of the celestial object observed at
that specific time. For your information, celestial objects is all the objects
that we can witness in the sky during the day or by the night such as sun,
moon, planets and stars. I’m more amazed by the fact this knowledge has already being
found out by the ancient sailors during the age of British conquest 500 years
earlier.
Other than that, I got to learn meteorology. By the
formation of clouds and the condition of the sea being observed, you can actually understand what meteorological weather you will encounter. I also got to
enhance my observation skill everyday as the only thing I got to see are the
sea and the sky. With this observation skill of mine, I can anticipate when a
bad weather will come. It is like a 6th sense to a seafarer since you
will experience the changes of weather many times from one places to another place.
Next, is chartwork. Chart to simply put is a display of
earth’s topographic and hydrographic on a single sheet. From there, you can
plot your vessel position obtain by means of the celestial or terrestrial
observation. Usually, it is better to use terrestrial observation to plot a
position when near a landfall and use a celestial observation in an open sea
where no land can be sighted nearby.
Lastly, surely is navigation. This is the knowledge which
all who called themselves a seafarer ever wanted. The practices and skills to
plan and manoeuvre a ship safely through the sea without involving in any
incident such as collision and grounding of vessel. A good look-out and wide
use of available means through all the equipment onboard need to be utilize.
In summary, there are whole lot of other knowledge and
skills I’ve obtained during my practical year onboard. Above are some of the
things I’m sharing to you reader as a teaser. Well as I’m coming to the end of
my entry, just wanted to share a sentence of my life's principle, “working hard in
something you don’t care is called stress, but when you working hard on
something you love that is passion”.
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