Beating the hell out of the Queen II: The Queen Strikes Back.

 As I mentioned in the last post, on Sunday I bunkered the Queen Mary II, the most dreaded job among us bunker bastards in Nu Iorque. It has been almost 18 months since the last time I drew the short straw, and in that time, they actually managed to make it even more difficult to moor alongside! Is that even possible? Other tankermen wondered. Turns out, it is.

We had to moor backwards, or heads-to-tails, my stern to their bow.  I had to shackle together two of my strongest and heaviest hawsers to stretch the 400-500 feet from my bow to the closest mooring point on his stern, then the ship stretched out one of their bow lines another 300 or so feet all the way to my stern, heaving it tight. Only then did we hump two lengths of ultralight synthetic hawser (still weighed about 150lbs each) from my bow to the quarter so that we could moor to the ONE mooring point they provide on the parallel midbody (the side) of the ship.

 As I was saying to the trainee deckhand who was helping us out that day, sometimes it takes a truly pain in the balls job to bring up the creative thinking that allows you to up your game when it comes to normal pain in the balls jobs.