That's enough now.

 I was home less than 12 hours before I got a text asking me to come back. 

 I said no. 

 I did 10 weeks. It's funny, 10 weeks is a short tour on a ship. But ships by their nature travel long distances, whereas a bunker barge does not. If I were working the ports of Philly and Baltimore, jobs are anywhere from 3 to 9 hours away from the loading dock. In New York? 30-40 mins. The loading terminals are almost all in Bayonne NJ, which is a 30 minute sail from NY harbor, and a 30 min sail the other way to Elizabeth NJ, where the majority of the container terminals are for NY/NJ. 

        10 days ago we got the first real winter storm.  In the past 10 days, we had ONE nice day, which I define as light winds and a sight of the sun at home point. Other than that, it's been blowing gales every other day and just plain windy in the days in between, along with rain, frozen rain, sleet, snow and Monday night, an ice storm. 

     Monday night I wiped out on deck, and almost fell and caught myself another dozen times or so. Tuesday, more of the same but much much worse. The ice was heavy enough and mirror smooth to boot, thick enough to gloss over the nonskid on our decks. The present HQ has a LOT of obstructions on deck (large pipelines that are thigh high to be stepped over, small pipelines and conduit, 8 inches high, that must be walked on to be passed over, and valves, ports, hatches, etc.   Plus the 4 100' cargo hoses on each side of the manifold, the pipeline junction where the hoses connect to the barge's piping. And our two 60' cargo cranes sadly have trip hazards in the control area as you rotate the crane. 

    I was coming apart on my last watch. It was one of those nights where nothing worked right. Even though we heat the coffin-sized fluid sump for our hydraulics, hundreds of feet of hydraulic piping full of cold hydraulic fluid on deck make the hydraulic-powered equipment SLOW and unbelievably loud to operate until the warm fluid reaches the equipment. So if you're using the anchor capstan on the bow, the sound level in the bunkroom is about what you'd hear from a chainsaw 50 feet away... for the first 45 seconds or so. It's NOT a pleasant way to wake up. 

    So the cargo cranes were barely moving, the capstans for mooring lines were barely moving, and I was constantly slipping and catching myself, which feels just AWESOME after a couple of hours, let me tell you. 

      Oh, and the oil supplier we have been using, in a fit of unbelievable genius, thought it a real bargain to buy bunker oil that was formulated for a tropical zone. The pour point (the temperature at which the oil will turn solid was SEVENTY frigging degrees, whereas it should be 20 degrees or less. So we've been having oil turn solid in our pipelines and hoses, needing to be blown out under high pressure using our cargo pumps... and by high pressure I mean higher than the maximum safe working pressure for the cargo system. 

 Imagine blowing out a snot rocket in your sinuses using an air compressor vs your own lungs.  Same same.  And even then, we've on several occasions been unable to get this oil to pump at all. As of yesterday when I left, this was still to be addressed. 

     I came home sore, and deeply deeply dispirited.   It's brutal on my psyche, having to fight to do my job at every point, where nothing goes smoothly, the equipment is strained, everyone's stressed, the receiver of the oil is deeply unhappy because it's trash and we're risking blowing out their piping too, and they're perfectly happy to let me know that they're blaming me. And my company, while sympathetic, feels no particular urge to do anything, as this is just business, just some crappy oil that will eventually run out, and when we do fail to carry out a transfer, they just send us back to the same terminal to load MORE of the oil and hope that next time the pumps catch prime. Oh, and if we do cross the magic number of PSI in the process of trial-and-error to get a stuck pipeline stuck, if I rev the pump up and it jumps, say 5 PSI higher than I thought it would (there being no fine control, I'm revving a diesel engine using a not-very-sensitive twist throttle) and I do cause any sort of unanticipated consequences, whether it's on my deck or someone else's, the blame falls on ME. Oh, my company too, would get some flack, since they're the ones who keep deciding to accept this trash oil, knowing what could happen, but I'm the stupid bastard who puts his signature on the Declaration before starting a transfer. The company has already told me not to exceed a certain PSI. Think of trying to get to 4,000rpm on your car, knowing that at 3,900 it won't move, but at 4010 it will blow the engine.  Step one, post-incident is to find a convenient bus to throw me under. 

    Thing is, we're burning out.  I'm burning out. I'm coming home after 10 weeks with my mood at a very low low, and still ebbing. Anyone can have a bad day. Having a bad 2 weeks, with bad weather, and a lot of aches and pains related to that AND no prospect of things improving. 

    My mom was right. I should have just been a fuckin pimp. 

    Anyhow, I'm home, everything hurts, everything sucks except for everything related to me being in my house with my family, which is awesome. I hope to enjoy it more by not being such a wet ass blanket today.