Malacca Straits

23/10/20 It is now 3 months on board the Noble Ace. Hopefully only a few weeks left now. We left Singapore last night, I worked a 16 hour shift taking on spare parts, provisions and bunkering different oils that we needed. We are now headed to Ho Chi Ming in Vietnam on the 26th. The sailing from Africa was pretty boring in the grand scheme of things. Since we worked non stop around America and Mexico a few months ago there hasn't been much work needing done in the engine room. We didn't have much bad weather except from a spectacular looking storm off the coast of Sri Lanka. It took us about 3 and a half weeks to cover the 6000 miles from South Africa to Malaysia since we were doing "super slow speed" as per instructions from the company. We are continuing at this speed to Vietnam, then Taiwan, South Korea and finally Japan. Although dates aren't confirmed just yet we are then heading down south to Australia after our final stop in Yokohama, Japan. Before we reach Australia however, we are making a stop in Saipan, a tiny little island right on the edge of the Marianna Trench. It should take about 7 days to get there and then another 7 to reach Brisbane. We took on some new crew members in Singapore as well. The 2nd Engineer didn't manage to get his visa in time so he has been kept on, hopefully this means they will try to change him in Asia and I can leave with him as I only have about 3 weeks left. We also took on a new 3rd engineer, a fitter, motorman and an engine trainee on his first trip to sea. I took him under my wing this morning since we had a large cleaning job to do. On arrival to Singapore a fuel inlet valve broke on Generator 1 and fuel started spewing into the engine room. This was only discovered 20 minutes later when the 3rd engineer showed up for manoeuvring. It took the whole engine crew and the deck crew, a total of about 15 people, 2 hours to contain and another 4 to clean up. Even now there is oil still staining the walls and pipes so we will be cleaning and painting for the next week. In the meantime I need to teach the new engine trainee all my duties in case I do sign off. I have also been working with the new 3rd engineer this morning. Our boiler water needs some chemical treatment so I ran some water tests, which I do every Saturday, and shared the results with him so we could determine the quantity of chemicals that needs to be added to the system.