feast or famine

After an unusually long interval of being moored to a dock with nary a cargo in sight, the other evening, a little blurb appeared on the order book- a small cargo for a small ship- 2 of our 12 cargo tanks were to be used. And all was well, as we were bored. Then another... following that, a double load to be taken on at two different docks. Followed by a triple load after.

 So, with the first small parcel just about doled out as I type (I've got about 30 minutes to go before sucking air on the last tank), We'll make our way through the fog to the loading dock, there to take on some 2,000 tons of bunkers and then some diesel oil, too, and the whole cycle repeats. On Tuesday, at some point, I'll be relieved and head to Philly. I had hoped it would be quiet then, but I guess I got my ration of peace early.
       Too bad- one regret about this is that we'll be loading SUNY Maritime's training ship EMPIRE STATE after I bail. I'd have liked to have seen that ship- a lot of friends trained on her and the stories of how awful she rode were always good for a laugh.

 EDIT: Fast forward a couple of hours- we're loading at a terminal in beautiful Bayonne, NJ (the Paris of the Northeast), and the fog and mist has muted the noises down to a minimum- it's damp out on deck, but the noise level is lovely- just a very slight rumble from the generators in the stern house, and up forward in Cargo Control, there's nothing but the barely-audible grumbling of thick black oil running through the underdeck pipelines on the way to our cargo tanks. Pretty nice.