Elements of Shipboard Safety (ESS)

In order to work on a small commercial fishing or trade vessel, even as a deck hand, you need to have an ESS certificate.So today I took the ESS course, and it’s was so exciting because I never did this kind of course before. It is all about ship safety, how you are gonna save you life from a ship disaster. First of all we wore very special life jackets like frogman and then we jumped into the water to do some practical training. It’s really amazing to see how Australians emphasize ship safety when it comes to engineering students. The depth of the water is like 4.3 deep, you cant touch the ground. Luckily, I learn to how to swim back in Taiwan before, so I still can handle it
somehow. You have to know what the best pose is when you’re floating on water with life jacket. Otherwise, you have a great possibility of getting choked by your life jacket, I feel quite funny when I am doing this with all Australian students. They’re all Caucasians while I am the only Asian here taking the course. Also, in the water we have to hug each other to prevent form hypothermia as well as other techniques I have to learn how to apply when wearing a life jacket. Also we have to do the ‘’abandon ship’’. It feels so real that you’re easily to get nervous when doing this kind of activity. We have to pull off a giant cylinder that contains with a life jacket, and when it was pulled down the water, it exploded and inflates with air in no time. And they make all those artificial thunders, rain, and sound to make you feel like you’re in a real situation. And of course, those equipments we have to use is real for survival, we just need to learn how to use them properly. So we jumped in to water from height in dark one by one, there’s a capital who is in charge of giving orders, telling us what to do. But he’s also a student for sure.

Survival training with a life raft