From: Monrovia – Freetown
To: Dominican Republic – Santo Domingo
Date: 29-01-14 till 17-02-14
Some ship deliveries are quite a challenge. In this case it wasn’t because of the age of the vessel (four years old), but because there was a lack of spare parts and no possibility to buy stores and provisions. At our port of departure Monrovia (Freetown) it was hard to purchase food and even harder to get the right and much-needed spare parts for our voyage. Fortunately bunkering wasn’t a problem. After a meeting with the client we decided to call at the port of Dakar (Senegal) to gather all missing items. During this part of the voyage I found out that the autopilot was not working properly, so manual steering it was.
While moored at Dakar the client’s crew member flew to the Netherlands and back for the necessary spare parts and we were able to buy stores and provisions. We also tried to fix the autopilot, but unfortunately we were unable to do so. Back to basic, old school manual steering to the Dominican Republic. As the fuel consumption was much higher than estimated, we were forced to call at the capital and largest city of Cape Verde: Praia. Possibly the high fuel consumption was caused by lack of maintenance in the previous years. Everything was well arranged by the TOS office crew and bunkering only took some hours.
The delivery crew accomplished a great job in cleaning, fixing and preparing the vessel for its new crew and we arrived safe and sound at the port of Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic). A job well done!
