Man Overboard

Some dummy fell into the ocean today.  Literally.  This morning the crew practiced the man overboard safety drill, throwing a dummy into the water and launching a rescue boat to save it.

The announcement from the Captain came over the ship’s intercom at around 11 AM, “For exercise only, for exercise only, man overboard.”  The ship then made a hard bank to the right circling back to rescue the poor dummy that had been sacrificed to the sea.  Luckily for the dummy he was wearing a life jacket when he went in. 

The ship then came to a complete stop as a rescue boat was lowered with seven crew members aboard to pick up our victim.  A group of about twenty of us watched from the seventh deck in the hot sunshine until the rescue was complete.  The rescue boat bobbed in the water as it approached the dummy, the current kept pushing him further away from the boat until they were finally able to circle back around and use a large hook to real our friend in.  We cheered as the dummy was brought onto the rescue boat and the drill was completed. 

We have some time to kill on our way to Myanmar today as our arrival there has been delayed by about six hours because we are waiting for the river to be drudged.  It was really interesting to watch the crew practice a very important drill that we hopefully will never use.  

We were going the wrong way!