Well, it was a good run. 2 weeks of good work at work. But that's over for now.
My final week this trip sees me back in NYC, back to bunkering ships aboard a manned bunker barge, in the smallest quarters imaginable. It's been about 10 years since I've been aboard one of the Ghetto Sleds.
The Ghetto Sleds are some elderly trunk deck barges- barges with an elevated maindeck that stands taller (about 5 feet in this case) than the perimeter of the barge, basically leaving a 2 1/2 foot wide walkway around the perimeter.
The house on these things is TINY for 2 men. The office/galley is about 8x10, the head is 6ft by 6 feet, and the bunkroom, with 2 beds, is also 6x6. Luckily I am about 1/8 inch under 6ft tall but anyone taller has to sleep with their knees bent.
It's uncomfortable. When you're sleeping, the guy on watch is 3-4 feet away, as is anyone else like deckhands stepping in the house, cargo surveyors, etc.
The Ghetto Sleds, there being 4 of them around the east coast, are actually good training platforms. The cargo pumps, piping and tanks are simply laid out and easy to operate and for some reason, very forgiving if you let a tank run dry and suck a little air into the pumps. On the HQ you get 3-4 seconds max of sucking air and the pumps lose prime, and repriming can be a bear when it works at all on a near empty tank. On the Ghetto Sleds? 10 seconds. Big difference for a newer guy who is learning the ropes. Plus, the small uncomfortable quarters make one more grateful for the standard somewhat larger quarters found elsewhere in the fleet.
So here I am. Next week I get off early, one week early. Innapropriately hot foreign wife is flying up to meet me in Boston to attend a family wedding and do some visiting before we head back home.
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