That's better

 Big E came home yesterday. 

      It's hard to remember that I had free time this past weekend. Just a few days ago, but a couple of hard days really undoes the good ones, and I think being sleep-deprived along with nothing memorable happening last weekend probably has something to do with my poor recall of it. 

         So, I was right and also I was wrong. Dollar Tree Big E was very nice as I had thought. He was not, though, good at the job, which to be fair I wasn't holding out much hope for, as he was new to working on the ocean.  I mean, there were signs. I was up for about 6 hours during the 8 hours I had wanted to sleep on both Monday and Tuesday. I mean, pretty big sign right there, right?    I really tried to just let him work and figure things out, but for example, after 90 minutes of him unsuccessfully sending the end of a cargo hose ashore for the oil terminal's workers to connect to their dock pipe manifold after I had left him WRITTEN instructions ("When sending the low sulfur fuel oil hose ashore, put the sling for the crane's #1 hook 5 feet behind the hose flange, and put the #2 hook 15-20 feet behind the #1") in my night orders as he was new, I knew I wasn't going to be sleeping. In faact, the 2 page list of tips that we give out as part of familiarization training was completely ignored, which is why the 3-hour pumpoff that he was supposed to do that night... well I finished it the next day. 

           Us old guys, of course we're more efficient and fast. We know the vessels, we know the terminal, we know the terminal staff, we know. The new and younger guys we make allowances for. Or we're supposed to, at least. 

        I had told my company a couple of years ago that I wasn't willing to train new men, as I don't have the patience and I rely on the quiet, solitary part of my job to maintain some sort of inner harmony. At times I think that passing on what I know would be the right thing to do, regardless of what I'm feeling... but then I look at my paycheck and think "No."  The solitary quiet part is THE last thing that allows me to stay here I think. If getting up in the morning makes me want to stick a gun in my mouth, it's time to do something else. 

     I actually like teaching, but teaching on board a boat or barge means the trainee lives with you and sleeps in the spare bunk in my room too, waking when I wake, sleeping when I sleep, eating when I eat. 

  Dollar Tree Big E is a 30-something single guy.   Bachelors as shipmates always require behavior modification unless they've worked on oceangoing tugboats.  Tugboats are normally (in my experience and with my company) surprisingly clean and hygienic inside. Decks are swept twice a day, surfaces are wiped at least once a day minimum, and the galley would pass a board of health inspection easily. Going to sea also means everything is stowed, lashed, bolted or organized so as not to take to the air on a shitty day. The coffee in the coffee pot might lift off and fly up into the air when falling down the back of a wave,  but the coffeemaker is lag bolted to the counter and the pot has fiddles that keep it on the burner. There is no trash lying around.  One corollary to this  is that tugboaters can make good roommates.  Since the HQ is a manned barge, we have our quarters, a small but homey place, shabby and tidy (the HQ is about 3/4 through her service life and was never particularly luxe).  and, in the case of the HQ, organized and laid out for comfort, cleanliness and utility.  We spend more time here than we do in our real homes, after all. 

       Bachelors who don't come from oceangoing tugs... they're messy. I can't speak for other married men, but Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife makes it very clear that by her standards I am a mess-maker when I'm home. And I probably am. Every day at home is a celebration when you don't get many days at home.  As such I try not to be to keep the wa in my house when I'm home.  Bachelors, whether at home or at work, leave shit lying around, trip hazards on deck, crumbs everywhere. 

      And the bleach. Oh, fuck me the bleach. 

       Bleach is a real pandora's box on a boat.  So, we have 2 very separate water treatment systems. Gray water, and Black water. 

     Black water is our septic system. It JUST runs from the toilets to the tank. No sinks or showers run there. The black water tank is the shit tank. We call it the MSD, the Marine Sanitation Device, and it's a storage tank for poop, shit paper, bacteria and pee. Marine toilets have an electric macerator, a blender-like grinder that makes a crap frappe out of the toilet contents before it goes in the pipes. We add some aggressive bacteria to the tanks once every 2 weeks to help digest the solids and convert the ammonia in the pee to nitrate and nitrite, which are harmless and inoffensive.  The MSD has a chlorination station at the exit pipe that sterilizes anything that leaves the MSD. Now, the exiting cloudy water goes into our gray water tank. 

    The gray water tank is a large tank that collects the water from the sinks, washing machine and showers. It's not really a harmful water, just that it's got soap residue and food bits in it. 

    Thing is, the gray water tank, while not dependent on bacteria to keep it clean, does have bacteria in it, which we like because it keeps the food bits from collecting and clumping and clogging pipes. So we NEVER have non-septic safe cleaners and such on board, with the exception of bleach, which we use sparingly on paper towels to sterilize surfaces as needed. If, for example, my partner B, a retired navy corpsman, is going to remove a bunch of stitches from me at the galley table 10 minutes before dinner, or one of us gets the flu, bleach is mighty handy to have on hand. 

    Dollar Tree Big E discovered our bleach stash and decided to use it to clean things because he didn't like the smell of the septic-safe cleaners and the bubble-gum soap we use to clean the heads (it smells like woodsmoke and bubble gum and is not pleasant, but it works great). Thank Christ almighty I caught him.   Killing off the bacteria means that the MSD will fill up with shit until it bursts. The resultant shitsplosion ("GOD DAMMIT, CODE BROWN IN THE AFTER PEAK") paints our after peak void space, our underdeck storeroom where we keep spares, coats, suitcases, tools and supplies, and which also houses the MSD and gray water tanks. The after peak is 50' x 20' and runs the full depth from the deck to the keel. It's a big room, but a code brown has about a 50' kill radius, where the resultant crapnel (like shrapnel, but, you know, made of feces and TP bits) is airborne. Picture a paint grenade in a porta-potty. 

    Yeah, like a mother with a little kid who finds the draino bottle, I gently disengaged Dollar Tree Big E from the Clorox. 

    So, anyhow, long story short, about 1400 yesterday, a tugboat dropped Big E, the real Big E, off here.  He was about ready to keel over he was so beat.  I'm bitching about the week I spent without him, here, on home ground. Big E had the same personnel issues, on an unfamiliar oil barge that is utterly different in design and with the absolute WORST ergonomics in any galley at sea I've ever seen. Laid out for maximum discomfort AND all fill-in, inexperienced crew.  He passed out smiling at the galley table, shortly thereafter, sleeping 3 hours while I puttered about and came in and out while we were pumping off oil to a ship. He woke up to take the watch, finishing the last parts of the job we were doing, and I went to bed, where I slept 10 hours straight, waking this morning to find that I have 3 hours free to eat a breakfast sitting down and write a bit. 

 But now it's time to go back to work.