MAAP grad is 1st Filipina shipmaster to command overseas merchant ship
A graduate of Maritime Academy of Asia and the Pacific (MAAP) class 2005 is the first Filipino woman to command as shipmaster of an overseas merchant ship.
“I am lifetime and heartfully thankful to VAdm Eduardo Ma. R. Santos, our Academy president and Dr. Conrado F. Oca, the AMOSUP president and chairman, for their kind, though strict watch during my stay at the MAAP and boardship training aboard training ship Kapitan Felix Oca (KFO) currently skippered by Capt. George de la Cruz..,” she said.
Captain Maria Kristina Javellana, 32, of Silay City, rose to the crest of her professional sea navigation as master of Chembulk Gibraltar, a 20,601 DWT-tanker home ported in Singapore, also the home of its management. She assumed the ship’s master position last May.
Ms. Javellana prefers to manage vessels of high type responsibility such as oil/chemical tankers. She had working stints in conventional types of seacraft like bulk carrier, and container ships. This lady officer takes specialized carrier as her specialty ship since boarding her first board ship assignment This is her choice, she said, because tankers have high level of safety requirements.
Having a take off in actual work navigation starting as a cadet in 2006, Javellana has worked on oil/chemical tankers – both huge and small. Working aboard a merchant ship is challenging, “as the action is there,” she pointed out, adding that “they carry chemicals of all sorts, class one to ordinary. “There were times when we carry 30 different chemicals in one ship, and that commands special attention and alertness to maintain safety at all times. These include stowage, segregation, compatibility, presence of mind at all times.”
Gibraltar is her second ship to work under her present shipping firm – the V-Ships-POMI.
She began service under the USbased shipowner in Sept. 2016 with a chief officer rank on board the 24,404 DWT tanker Chembulk Savannah.
Why her special attachment of tankers?
During boardship training as cadet of training ship Kapitan Felix Oca, she was handpicked to work at the Norwegian tanker operator Stolt Nielsen. The Stolt was a charterer of MAAP’s KFO for familiarization of cadets’ duties/ work before deployment to the company’s ships overseas.