Well now, I'm back at work, and this is watch #2. Watch #1 was busy with nice block of free time in the last 4 hours so I got to eat a hot meal and sit down and read a little bit of "The Wine Dark Sea." one of the books at the tail end of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin series ("Master and Commander" being the most famous), which is my favorite book series, and at 21 volumes, one I've read through three times already. Even after 20 years and multiple reads, I can still find new subtle aspects of the story to enjoy, things I didn't catch the last few go-rounds.
Tonight is the opposite of last night- I have the first part of the night free, and the last 6 hours of watch will be busy.
This tour, the Office People, for reasons known but to them, ganked Big E off of here and put a fill-in as my 2nd man for a week. The 2nd man is a guy I only know by reputation, but he seems nice, and while he's not an experienced bunker tankerman, he's got the essentials down, and is a systemic learner. It's nice to see a guy with his notepad in hand, writing down details about everything and interested in learning for knowledge's sake. And he's polite and quiet, which is a massive relief to me.
Of course they lied to Big E and told him he was only shifting his dunnage for 2 days, so he's got a spare set of drawers and socks and his poopie suit, and that's about it for clothes. I suppose if they were honest and told him he was staying for a week, they might have to observe his displeasure at it so pretending it was not a planned thing made the whole thing less unpleasant (for them).
Still,I'm back in the mix, anyhow, and up to speed again.
I don't know if it made the news for regular people, but there was ANOTHER maritime incident the other day. A third-world flagged container ship in Charleston had a fuckup whereby the throttles jammed and the ship took off like a rocket while departing the port, moving too fast for tugboats to catch up to it, in fact. The pilot and officers decided to ride the ride and simply steer the big fuckin' beast out to sea. It's wake caused some mayhem and possibly a couple of injuries. A 1000+ foot ship moving at 15 knots in a little harbor will throw some lumpy ass water around.
I have yet to hear any truly juicy conspiracy theories yet on this mundane sort of mishap but it sounds like it went about as well as it could. Now that regular douchebags are now marine engineering experts after the Key Bridge collapse, we should be getting a fine crop of unlikely scenarios cropping up. Now, I'm not saying that this wasn't a case of a floating FEMA camp suffering EMP damage from a Jewish Space Laser after the Salvation Army secret invasion... but if this is indeed what happened, please remember that you heard it here first.
1 comment:
Yikes! When Twenty Knot Tommy was in a rush, he went up and down the Cooper River at 20kts, which always got him some heartburn with the Coast Guard, but there's a hell of a difference between a Knox-class FF and a container ship that's probably bigger than an CVN.
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