Considering the last day my ship would be anchored would be a duty day for me, I had one more chance to explore Hong Kong. First though, I had a stores on-load to contend with. Up to this point all my stores on-loads had been at a pier. I had intentionally avoided any stores while at anchor because of the logistics involved. I had no choice this time as the kind of stores I would be receiving were still about half the price I would pay for them later on in the next port, Singapore. What I mostly needed were soda and Gatorade.
Pallets had to be unloaded from a boat to the floating pier lashed to the side of the ship. From the floating pier everything was inventoried and then moved up a ladder-well rolling with the waves on the floating pier. I considered this a very dangerous prospect particularly since someone had their foot rolled over the day before. I was literally praying the ship did not take some kind of freak wave while stores were still on the pier. It ended up fine, no one got hurt and all my stores were safely put away in the storerooms.
After the stores on-load was finished most of the Officers had left the ship but one of them had stayed behind to get a little work done. He was waiting for me to finish my stores and then we left. I had been through some of the busier sections of the city, the shops and the markets. This time we walked down one of the main streets and through some of the parks. It was nice just to take in some sights.
Towards the later part of the day, the markets started to open again and I started looking for some new items to compliment my recent acquisitions. I bought some belts, cuff links and then found a nice carved travel size chess set. We found a nice hole in the wall restaurant for dinner. After that we called it a day and went back to the ship early. I needed to catch up on a little sleep since I had duty the next day anyways.
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