Break-in period part 1

 Friday. 

    After today it's 4 days and a wake-up until I can go home. 

   First some pictures from the shipyard last week. 

 The shipyard sits in a small valley along a river. I knew upper state NY was nice in theory, but the pictures don't do justice to the area. It's a lovely region. 

 Just uphill from the dock where the HQ was launched, a section of a new barge was being built upside down. Here it is being turned right side up so the yardbirds can weld the deck on. This section when done will be welded to other sections until the desired size is acheived. 

Other barges of assorted sizes under repairs. 

    My employer's project manager, who works with the shipyard, lent me his personal truck, an F350 diesel Super Duty, to get groceries, fetch parts and supplies, etc. Great dude. 

 The night before we sailed, my employer sent a fill-in guy as my 2nd man. He was there to provide... well, I don't know, moral support? Nice dude, anyhow. He didn't have to actually do anything, and I hadn't asked for or needed him, but I'm not the owner either. 

I had to use a little fish-eye filter to get this shot, but the river the yard is built on is small enough that the HQ is tricky to navigate out to the Hudson River, a few miles away.  I sat midships to snap the photo. 

Walking further forward along the starboard side main deck. 

Our assist tug had also been in the yard, and sailed at the same time. Our assigned tug, not seen here, was pushing us. The company wisely sent a senior tug captain, one of our pool of stand-out great boathandlers. Our assist tug, also operated by an expert, is also the tug my son spent a year on as deckhand. Time pasdes quickly, though. My kid just finished his freshman year of college. 

 The lighthouse marks the junction of the local river with the much larger Hudson river.

 About 15 minutes after we got into the Hudson, it's a matter of just going downriver for 10 hours at speed to get to NY harbor, so I turned the watch over to the fill-in guy, showered and went to bed. 

     I've been sleeping great since I got back to the HQ. But I've also been working hard at doing physical things I don't normally do- crawling and climbing, heaving on shit, turning wrenches while on ladders, team lifting really heavy things with gangs of guys, whatever. After a week of this I was SORE. But good sore, the kind that doesn't feel good but you know is coming from hard work and not a pulled muscle or pinched nerve. 

      We arrived in Brooklyn during the overnight and I slept in (for me at work) until 0530. Didn't feel a thing, dead to the world until my middle-aged bladder said I had about a minute's grace to get to the head.

Anyhow, about a gallon later, I was treated to a lovely sunrise... over the garbage transfer station.  Sigh.  I was in NY city again. 

   The word wasn't done. Alone again after my fill-in guy went elsewhere, I had 5 days to get the HQ ready to get ready for the Coast Guard's 5 year inspection, so we'd be issued a Certificate Of Inspection, the big one all commercial vessels need to go back into service, so the pace couldn't be slacked off.