Venezuela!

Frank the philipino 3rd engineer and i were working on the deck,him trying to repair an earth fault in one of the deck lights and me as a junior giving him the helping hand by the way of passing him the tools and the moral support in times of the sun shining down on below-the-deck engineers.
The Ship was fully loaded,and was heading in no particular discharge port,as is the case with the tankers,and as Frank loosened the bolts of the casing,we heard the 2nd officer shouting on the radio.We deciphered nothing really,coz with the sun,which engineers are not used to except on lazy sunday pool party afternoons,we asked him to repeat.
Then it came out POW!..Discharge port had been decided as Venezuela.Sailing on a VLCC and the last ports as Basra,Nigeria....this was the oasis for us nomads. The gravity of the situation was suddenly realised.
Now Frank only watched videos of Cher and Tom & Jerry cartoons on the ship for a period of 7 months that we had sailed,sometimes i doubted his sanity!He wore an expression equivalent to the capture of Jerry,which i think was the purest and most natural one he could come up with.I slipped into the dreamy eyed mode for some time,into the stories i had heard abt the beautiful land,from stories of Papillon and the recent book i had read from the ship's library Banco.
We finished work and headed to the day room.The scene there was of 10 school boys discussing their wonder days,and the next plan of action.For me it was a strange encounter seeing the usually high strung ppl loosened out.This carried on for the next 4 days, and u dont really mind the toil if the fruit is Venezuela!
Venezuela meant fresh fruit stock for the ship,some local beer,bars,music and the thought of coming drunk to the ship!
I dont know whether it was the sun shinning on us engineers or the successive earth fault which happened 5 days later , which turned out to be the bad omen for us sailors, coz the charterer wanted his oil to be delievered at an off-shore facility 90 miles away from land, where the only consolation were the phone cards and a bad connection.
Neverthless being on sea the hope of reaching a better port,meeting some weird new people or the bestest the hope of signing off,keeps driving you,its been enjoyable so far,this way of living,coz seeing the land lubbers the only hope i can see and understand is the hope of a higher paycheck or an empty local.Not incentive enough for us sea urchins.
And so i salute to the bullet holed pipelines of the Basra Oil Terminal which is a bringer of hope of seeing greener lands.