Spot the dog!

Me and the dog have just got home after a lovely weekend visiting my parents.
On Friday my mum and I went to the Birmingham Symphony Hall to Dance to the Music. For fans of the TV show Strictly Come Dancing it is a fabulous 'must see' experience. The Strictly Dance Band led by Dave Arch, with four brilliant singers played a variety of music, from blues and soul to disco and Cuban. What talented musicians and such excellent voices they boast. In addition they were accompanied by four of the Strictly dancers. Kristina Rihanoff and her dance partner Robin Windsor along with Artem Chigvintsev and his girlfriend/ dance partner and winner of Strictly in 2010 Kara Tointon. As well as dancing each dancer took the mike at some point during the evening and spoke with the audience. There was audience participation and by the end of the night we were all up dancing in the aisles. A great night out, well worth running through torrential rain from the car park to get there!
On Saturday morning I was up early to attend a tutorial for my Open University course that I'm doing about Diabetes.
I spent the rest of the day with my family. My brother lives with my parents and has just got home from a 6 week trip to New Zealand which happily resulted in him being offered a job there. So he is home to sort out all his belongings, sell what he doesn't want and get ready to go back out there.
Today is Fathers Day so it was nice to be able to spend time with my Dad. Mum & I had thought we could go out for lunch but poor Dad wasn't feeling too good so we scrapped that idea.
Get well soon Dad!

Maisie the dog loves going to my parents. She always gets very excited when she sees them and loves the freedom of their lovely big garden. Unlike at home Maisie has a large patio door to look out into the garden and can see all the birds, squirrels and brave cats who venture into the garden. Once she is outside she loves trying to chase the pigeons off next doors roof. However her favourite thing to do is to hide under the big Acer bush up the garden.
Can you spot the black and white dog?

Work at last.

Well after over a week at sea we have finally loaded our first dredged cargo.
We left Purfleet and went up to load on a dredge area up near Great Yarmouth.
We can't just load anywhere. There are special areas which have been surveyed and then a licence is issued for that area. We have to dredge within these areas and the ships position is constantly monitored and fed back via computer. Huge fines can be delivered if you are found to have loaded outside the area.
Dredging is done for aggregate rather than clearance purposes so we load sand/gravel which is then landed ashore and processed into concrete, cement, road surfacing.
Dredging is done by lowering a large suction pipe with, what looks like the head of a vacuum on,over the side, this connects to a valve in the ships side which opens and once the high powered impeller pump is started this sucks up material from the seabed,

The pipe is lowered over on the port side. It is held by
three wires.

Material is sucked up through the pipes and over 2
screened towers which help grade the cargo.

This shows us the angle of the pipe when it is underwater.

The ship moves along very slowly whilst dredging - about 0.5knots. The cargo took 9 hours to load.

We have come back down to anchor off Southend until Friday morning when we shall sail up the Thames to Denton, near Gravesend to discharge our cargo.

If you would like to see a video of dredging in action click on the following link. It was filmed on my husbands ship by a trainee onboard. Its really good and really shows what happens.

Click on this link to see dredging in action.

This afternoon we had our Fire drill. The fire alarm was sounded and all the crew (12 of us) mustered at our muster station up near the bridge. Our scenario today was a fire in the paint locker.  It is fitted with a sprinkler so we did  a walk through drill where all the crew learn about every aspect of what to do if you discover a fire and how you would tackle one in the paint locker, This included the location of fire fighting equipment and the sprinkler system for the locker plus starting the emergency fire pump.

This week I have also started my study for the Open University course which I have signed up to do.

Its on the subject of diabetes which quite a few of my foot patients suffer from and I decided it would be good to extend my knowledge further on this subject as Diabetes seems to becoming evermore prevalent in our population.

Finally I really appreciate all the page views I have had to my blog, thank you for reading. I would love to read any comments you have about my posts and also any questions you may have. To make this easier I have now changed my settings on the comment box which hopefully means you don't have to sign in/up to be able to leave a comment.

Finally don't forget that if you would like to see where my ship is at any time you can click on the marine traffic link to right of my page and type in my vessels name. Its really quick and easy to use. I know my mum has been looking up where both me and hubby are and in fact when i spoke to her earlier she told me where I was!!  however beware!! Mum has got so addicted to looking at it that she managed to burn a pan of peas dry the other day so if you are going to use it make sure you're not cooking at the same time!!