Algeciras or how I stopped worrying about the paint
This is my first letter; an experiment of merging fiction and business, in parts based on my experience working for Daimler Financial/Mobility. It is also my exercise in writing. For feedback, reply to this email; looking forward, and thanks for stopping by! If you are interested in what is still to come, make sure to subscribe:
Dear *redacted*,
Hopefully this letter finds you well? It has been a while.
HMM Algeciras reminded me of that time in Andalusia, when we took a side road from Ronda towards Gibraltar, remember? It demanded your full attention, views of the Rock competing against the serpentines; you never noticed my hand on the handbrake. Just in case you forget you are driving. Somewhere on the Mediterranean, a port pilot was boarding a ship to guide her to Port of Algeciras.
This was long before I saw her for the first time, long before I decided to write these letters, and long before I went to the sea. It was centuries after the Muslims were forced to leave Al-Andalus and a couple of days after Real-Barca game everyone forgot about. It was also some years before I realised that painting containers makes no sense and that I was supposed to be thinking about Tetris.
„She is massive... looks like a floating building,“ I said to break the ice.
„Yeah... We will be loading around nine thousand today. Meet us at noon.“
He was strict with a short fuse. Rumours had it he once made a sailor disembark in the middle of the Indian ocean. Truth or fiction, who am I to judge? Truth is I had no idea about this industry at that time; it is not much better today. I did not pack much besides humility and some spare clothes.
„Welcome to Algeciras-class ship,“ he said and looked at us like we go to war. "Our capacity is almost twenty-four thousand containers and as of today, we are the largest container ship in the world. Some say we are Ultra Large Container Ship, but who gives a shit,“ he continued, showing he is colourful. "She is four hundred meters long, sixty-one meters wide with a draft of sixteen and a half meters. She is uglier than a mud fence, so you should probably show off with her size. We can only sail on the Asia-Europe lanes and on average carry twenty thousand crates. That is a lot of stuff, like five million cigarettes or twenty-two tons of almonds per crate.“
Later I googled draft: a distance between the waterline and the deepest point. Like all self-aware beginners, I was trying to learn as much as possible before and during; I can tell you that a certain Malcolm McLean had this brilliant idea of commercial use of containers in 1956 and then eventually got rich with his company, Sea-Land Service, today part of Maersk.
„We head eastbound, final destination is Busan via Suez and then same way back to Hamburg, calling at a couple of ports on the way. You know what you signed up for; I expect you to listen and do what they pay us for. It won’t be hard, because the port guys will be playing Tetris. If they stack them crates badly, we will lose some, or in the worst case, abandon ship.“ I was funny: „Why do you call it Tetris, if all the crates are the same shape?“ and was nicknamed Retard thereafter.
He continued with logistics of loading and unloading. At this stage, I decided to keep a low-profile and did not smartass about containerisation. I could have lost additional points by explaining that our work is essential for the global economy and that in sixty years we had, for example, increased capacity of container ships by twenty fold or even more. About the same time in 1968 when Soviets were in closing stages of crushing Prague Spring, first container ship ever reached Hamburg with a capacity of twelve hundred crates.
Capacity reminded me of Kapa, from Kapazität, a word we used in Daimler when discussing who does what. Wie viel Kapa hast du? echoed in my head as I was looking at his explanation about the challenge of Tetris. Tetris = crate weight + destination port + load balance.
Fast forward a couple of months and I report my daily grind was walking around the bridge, cleaning our sauna and gymnasium, checking on crates and helping in the engine room. I was paid as bad as other Asian crew, but at least I did it by choice.
On my third rotation I started to feel he likes me. So I joked: „Why don’t we stack the crates by the colours?“ and almost had an accident by falling into the Andaman Sea.
„You should look at Algeciras in constraints of size and purpose,“ he started at dinner, probably feeling he was rough earlier. „She will be operated for decades and then decommissioned at Alang or some other God-forsaken place. Our size affects infrastructure: port, its roads and railway and vice versa; to make money we need to efficiently ship lots of crates on our lanes. We cannot turn into a feeder or a Panamax and start shipping to East Coast next week. We are doing what we were built for, so stacking by colour … is just a retarded idea.“
Drawing this made me think about the days when we were painting those containers, remember? I said let's go for black and you advised grey. And then we painted and painted. We really had a lot of paint, it just kept on coming in and we got almost whichever paint we asked for! I still remember the day you told me you are Banksy of Stuttgart and went wild. What a team! Remember when we painted DO THAT over four containers, and then waited for a couple of days but nothing happened? Those were the days.
No matter how many layers of paint we put on, which sections we painted and what our neighbour teams painted, our ship sailed and docked inside her constraints. And we thought our paint was changing her course; by your graffiti and my lines of red, white and blue. You said we were naive but isn't this simply the way things are?
Each organisation, say over twenty thousand (or even fewer) people, must be similar to HMM Algeciras. It can only do what it is meant to do, no matter where and how you paint the crates. So, Daimler builds cars, McDonald's makes burgers, airlines get bail-outs and Tesla ships cars to Mars. Yes, we had successful pivots and shipwrecks salvaged, but what are the odds that you will morph into a speed boat, a truck or become a rocket? Never with painting crates.
If Mr Bullshiter, that consultant on board, is suggesting to write DIGITALISE NOW on your crates, make him a man overboard. If Captain agreed, or worse, suggested adding BECOME A ROCKET on top, it might make sense you abandon ship or plot a mutiny. If Optimist is your middle name, think about your Tetris, what are you meant to do. Or in other words: to what extent can you influence your constrained environment and which parts will you even be allowed to optimise. Or just sit back and enjoy the ride.
And do not worry about the paint.
Thanks for making it to the end! If you liked it, please do share with anyone you think would like it. Appreciated and happy to hear from you.
A good article, Igor. Yes, Paint does not matter. If some consultant tells that the main goal of your cargo ship is to be the most profitable thing in the world and for that you need to build a rocket out of the ship because rockets are more profitable ...i.e.when profit makes everything else does not matter that this is when things get amorph and dangerous.