No way

Monday and Tuesday was so busy I didn't read the news or look at social media. I talked and texted with my wife and kid, worked, and Big E and I here on the HQ talked personal stuff, exercised, took on stores, did the planning for the upcoming (now here) winter bunker ops, and dealt with the first cold snap here and the things on board that didn't like the first cold snap. 

     You know, not reading the news, I forgot who I was supposed to hate this week and why I am wrong. And without social media, nobody said I'm hateful and evil and everything bad in the world for being here. 

      

 The world didn't end because I didn't pay attention to it? 

Huh. 

         You know I LOVE being old enough to still appreciate being able to talk on my cell phone to people I need to talk to, instead of lining up at the pay phone that was located at the end of every dock for ships' crew. 

    I remember that. I too, have asked for and received a $10 roll of quarters for my monthly phone calls. I bought my first cell phone after getting made permanent crew on a ship for the first time, after sailing for a couple of years off the board.  IIRC, in my first blog, BLUE WATER, (which I deleted after the CEO of the company I was then working for spent a couple of days looking but not finding evidence of bad behavior on my part after I committed the unforgivable sin of bad-mouthing southern cooking (of which I am now a big fan. Growth! )), I announced proudly, like a hen with a new egg, that I talked to my father from the ease and comfort of the wood planks bolted to the bulkhead outside the mess on my ship instead of at the pay phone. 

  But yeah, no social media for a few days, and it was fine. I enjoyed it.

 I may start reading the shampoo bottle again when I gotta crap, rather than the news. Better for the body and soul. 

 Gen X still remembers where to find Sodium Laureth Sulfate.  

And now, this.

I'm a week in on this tour aboard the HQ and winter is here. We had our first cold snap ans the HQ scored a resounding 'meh' in terms of resiliance.  

On one hand, the potable water system did great; where last year our pipes froze and we spent days at a time unable to maintain basic hygeine (with no fucks given by most at the office), leading to a serious morale problem and a Fuck You attitude to all, including me, sadly, this year, after considerable effort spearheaded by me, with the patient support of my port engineer and the cooperation of The Money, a shipyard crew, and lots of patience, we were the proud posessors of washed asses the whole while.

 On the downside, one of my two big cargo pump engines refused to start for the first time. Water vapor in the compressed air system froze the starter motor, which happens, but not to this HQ... until now. 

 Easy solution there, though messy. We were still getting air at 110psi at the starter, but when I opened the air valve, just a fraction of the air was getting through the stsrter, not enough to turn over the engine... but 110PSI (about 8 bar) which is more than adequate pressure-wise, so I grabbed a pipe wrench and took off the big 1 1/2" hydraulic hose that we use for starting air, right at the starter, and dumped a 1/4 cup of antifreeze in the hose before screwing it back in. Kicking the air valve blows antifreeze into the starter (and all over the engine and into a vapor cloud about 10 feet across and all over me), which blows the ice off the vanes of the starter and turns the engine over. Vroom vroom, Bob's your uncle. 

  Sumpin' to be said for growing up in New England on shitty workboats. Field fixes is still fixes. 

    

       

Travel day

 Welp. 

       At the airport waiting on my flight to, sigh, Newark NJ... just in time for a nasty storm to be waiting for me. Seems like it's always shit weahther for travel day... still, I've mostly got a lot of patience and sitting to do. Should be ok, and this is better than working in it. 

        It's a bit surreal, though. Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife and I left the house at 5am. It was a perfect 68 degrees in the predawn dark, dead quiet, and the crickets were in chorus. In a few hours it'll be 39 and raining, and there'll be car horns and yelling foreigners rather than pleasant and innofensive fauna. 

I will say, boarding on a Newark-bound flight is pretty low stress. The Depends 500 Miracle Race was only 4 people- the magic healing properties of aviation being what they are, and expat New Yorkers being what THEY are (awful), NY/Palm Beach airport boomers will line up in wheelchairs, usually 15-25 of them, to get to be first to sit down, and as everyone knows, modern air travel is so pleasant, refreshing and comfortable, all but 2-3 of the boomers will walk off the plane under their own power, no chair needed! 

 Miracles happen every day! 

 But yeah, Newark has fine, more honest people apparently, although a disconcerting number of them travel in pajamas on morning commute flights. 

      My 2 weeks off were mostly spent on home maintenance. I got a bunch done at least, but it turns out I am no pro with a commercial paint sprayer. Between drawer fronts and cabinet doors I have about 50 pieces to spray as part of painting my kitchen cabinets, and I kept fucking up the topcoat, and expensive AF urethane paint at $85 a gallon. I either starved the sprayer or overshot it and got a sag. 

 So when I get home in 4 weeks I have to reset up my garage for spraying and sand and 3rd coat the fancy foofoo topcoat. Sigh. 

 Still, it was a great 2 weeks. I got plenty of time with my wife and my kid has figured out finally that every acquired skill set is one he will have in his own pocket, and this got him through the drudge work of sanding, taping, priming. 

    Off we go. 4 weeks to go. 

Home!

 Well I've been home for almost a week. Doing some renovations and I've been in the kitchen and garage for much of the time. 

 My giant laptop, a big bulky machine with a large keyboard and a 19" screen, chose the start of the holiday season to die. So... I got a normal size laptop and the smaller keyboard and smaller screen just sucks so so much... but between shelling out Home Depot and holiday money, a $2000 laptop was not going to happen. 

 Still, all is well. I am setting up a spray booth in my garage today for the doors for the kitchen cabinets. I did the backsplash this past spring. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and with my sister having moved back to Boston to live with my niece, dinner will be a smaller affair, and my kitchen is TRASHED. So... gonna try deep frying the turkey this year. Go full redneck for dinner. 

With a little less than a week to go and tomorrow a wash in terms of work, time is getting short. 

Before. 

During

So...many...doors

With 40+ cabinet amd drawer doors to sand, repair dings and fill in the holes from hardware, it's been a lot of work. I now understand why cabinetmakers make the big bucks. 

I'm up, I'm up

Well.

       Unfortunately, my retarded choice of careers has made me pretty good at waking up on short notice and on short sleep. 

   I'm good at getting my shit in gear, but I don't have to be pleasant about it when it's on account of stupid. 

    I'm on nights this week, and a ULCC (Ultra-Large Container Carrier, a supersize ship) was our customer. I got us all fast, transfer hoses connected and the papers sorted within 2 hours, which is fast for a French flagged ship, and the oil flowing shortly after. Later B relieved me at 0530, and I showered and went to bed to read until I was ready to sleep. 

     As often happens in the days after a 12-hour shift in my circadian rhythm, my sleep is fitful. Bad dreams, like my id, ego, and superego were taking a shit on my happiness. So it goes. 

 Somewhere in my mind I was aware when B kicked on the deck hydraulics; in cold weather the pump, which runs off our cargo engines, gives off a rattling somewhat piercing whine when engaged in cold weather- the colder the louder, so think train horn in November, jet taking off in January- the cold hydraulic fluid in the pump and pipes does not love being moved and starves the pump a bit, causing cavitation that lasts until the 130-degree warmed oil in our sump tank reaches it and it quiets down to an annoying hum that makes your testicles and teeth itch, vaguely, deep inside. 

 Thst hum is B using one of the two big cargo cranes, as the fuel hose we were using weighs over a ton,  and the ship, being big, had a manifold connection 60 feet above my deck. Big boat, like I said. 

  The whirrs, thumps, hums and clanks are normal or not, and the not-sleeping part of my mind hears most of them and classes them, without waking me. Usually. 

 So I was still sleeping at noon, and I think I was between REM cycles, since I was sleeping more peacefully, when I felt our assist tug bump us as they started sending up lines in preparation for sailing off the ship. Again, all normal. I'm still asleep. 

    The tug blows their whistle, a deep and loud thing, which means the ship's deckhands wandered off and need to come back to cast us off. I hear it, muted but not that muted. Again normal, but I'm awake, though I'll doze right off again. No big deal. 

   The whistle blows again some short time later. I was already maybe asleep, or close to it. Annoying. Pretty normal. The ship's deck crew are ill disciplined, or maybe just busy. The 3rd party bunker surveyor who verifies our fuel numbers said the officers on the ship were tyrannical, bordering on abusive to the Filipino crew. 

    And next whistle blast goes on, continuous but with little annoying quarter-second pauses, FOR 3 MINUTES. 

     I hear nothing after that but I'm awake now. That ain't normal and I'm annoyed. It's only noon, and I'll be up until 0530 again tomorrow. I need good sleep, which has been elusive since Wednesday.  I fell asleep somewhere around 0700ish. 

   I'm in bed, stewing, annoyed, but this stuff happens at times. Even if I'm not sleeping, a lifetime of working on the water has taught me that lying in bed in repose, eyes closed, while not super restful, has some marginal value as a sleep substitute. IIRC, 3-4 hours of this is roughly equivalent to 45 mins to an hour of sleep. 

AGAIN with the 3 minute whistle. 

 I'm not furious, just ennervated and exasperated. Once or twice a year this happens. 

        Then... nothing. No thumps, and I don't hear the tug's wheel wash. 4200hp, with two bit 8-foot diameter props, the tug transmits vibration and prop noise to our hull, and they're 25 feet behind me, so I should hear them, feel them AND hear at least the two stern lines, heavy hawsers, thump down on deck, only 10 feet or so from me. 

Nothing.   Then voices. Annoyed voices, not yelling.  Then some yelling, but not annoyed yelling, just info being passed. 

 This is why we have 2 senior VERY experienced guys on the HQ, 2 masters. For non-emergencies, the guy on watch got it. 

Still quiet. It's 1230 now.  I hear B go by outside my room, cursing softly to himself. Not normal.  

  I'm not sleeping amd I'm not feeling zen. I get up to take a leak and talk to B. Why not? I'm not resting. My blood pressure is up to a full head of steam. 

    It seems the tug's engineer, a 400lb mulleted redneck kid, an absolute fucking idiot, but decent engine mechanic, decided that a 45 minute shitshow of a failed departure, while the tug's engines are running and the crew's on deck and captain at the wheel, well, this will be a great time to take the tug's steering offline and do some maintenance that will take an hour to get steering restored. 

 Mind you, this motherfucker, may he die of blood loss from super herpes, did this while the tug was trying to get under way. 

 So now, with the ship's deck gang there and one of our 8 heavy hawsers already cast off, we gotta wait while Lenny pets the fucking bunny. 

I know the captain well. Knew him as a deckhand, knew him as a junior mate and later an experienced mate, and know him as a very competent captain. As a deckhand he had a famously bad temper. Dangerous. Very dangerous, as in almost did time for assault as a kid at home dangerous. Marriage, age and reaponsibility made a solid citizen out of him, but I'm going to bet that fucking soup fork of an engineer got a screaming-at that will hurt the dumb fuck's future descendents. 

 For my part I wish that trashbag engineer be sent ashore, but I ain't King Tugboat, sadly. He rubbed me the wrong way on day 1 when I first met him a few years ago. Overfamiliar manner, , bad breath, too fat to move at a reasonable pace, and walked right over lines while I was stowing them, stepping on one, causing me to near pull a bicep, before waddling away without helping stow lines. A shitbag seaman, right there, not a shipmate. We help each other. Everyone does. 

 Seriously. Fuck that guy. But good to know I AM at least sometimes, a good judge of character, or lack thereof. 

 

 *****

 It's 1420. Almost 2 1/2 hours since this hsppened. We JUST got under way. I'm up commisersting with B, who refrained from climbing down on the tug to energetically recreate line #2 from Humpty-Dumpty. 

Well, let's see what today has in store now. 

Cold nights

 I pulled out my float coat yesterday. Needee it today for sure.

 A float coat is a heavy waterproof coat with neoprene cuffs that is insulated with buoyant foam; on top of being very warm it is also a classed life jacket.  2 for one.  Very warm. 

 And today it was just above freezing, blowing 40, some gusts to 50 and the job kept me outdoors most of the day.  Good day to have a good heavy coat with windbreaking properties.

    Tonight is the night we dog (because we cur-tail them) our watches, working and resting in shorter shifts so that I, the guy going home next week, rotate to the night watch. So I had a shorter offwatch period, which is sad, but I did so because I am going home next week, which makes me happy. 

   The gale has started to back off, supposedly, but the wind is still whipping and it's almost time to head to the next job. 

  We're busy, very busy. Almost nonstop. The Christmas rush is here I guess. The Cheap Chinese Crap must flow and since 90% of all goods move by ship at some point, some dink has to gas up the ships... and that's me. 

Ennui

 Had one of those days yesterday where nothing went right but nothing went terribly wrong, either; we all have 'em, and we all hate 'em. 

      We've got a lot of young and seemingly enthusiastic new hires in the company's office. The support staff and administrators on the management side of bunkering; paper pushers. These are the people I talk to when I get my cargo orders, have questions about cargo, or need support in relation specifically to our cargo. 

        With so many new people, old established relationships no longer translate into smooth operations, on both the afloat and shoreside sides. 

        The young office kids are killing me. I've gone from 1-2 phone calls a day to well over 20. They're dealing with a LOT of variable personalities in terms of the bunker tankermen they need to interact with, and w/o longstanding relationships, it's a one-size-fits-some situation that chafes, probably on both sides. 

    If I was capable of 20 phone calls a day without having a stroke, I'd have a normal fuckin' job and not spend half the year away from everyone I love, trying to stay the hell away from people

 Whine whine whine, I know.  I untactfully have said a few times 'This could be handled by email, you know.'  So yesterday instead of 2-3 emails, which is normal, on top of my 20 phone calls, I had, and I counted, 27 emails. 

 90% of my job MUST be done away from a phone or PC. If we get busted being distracted, we get a slap on the pee-pee for good reason. My job is easy... until it isn't. 

     When my ego is feeling front-loaded I say things like. 'I gotta train these kids' to my victims shipmates or to their manager, who used to do their job.  Really, it's just growing pains... and I'm no prize either. I caught myself about to hand an ass-chewing to a seemingly nice guy earlier this week, when I misinterpreted an emailed message. I stopped myself (Thank God, but I need to do this more, also) and said something less inflammatory. 'We're all on the same side here, right?'  

   I think, without bragging, I'm the most technically proficient tankerman my company has in the northeast and all my little certificates and permissions and licenses let me oversee pretty much any dangerous cargo, solid, liquid or gas (except cryogenic fuels. I let that lapse, as I don't have opportunity to do it, which is required to stay compliant). My damn personality, however, is self-limiting. 

 I like doing what I like doing, and not much else, which is why I do bunkering rather than moving clean oils,  and have an explosive hatred for incompetence or ignorance, seeing it as a personal affront rather than an opportunity to promote growth. The office kids are nice, housebroken and polite, which encourages responses in kind. They deal with some incompetent scumbag lowlifes among the tankermen rolls esp among the post-covid hires, and as such I have been, while not dismissed, say... treated as mildly retarded, if nice, by the kids, which my ego does not relish. Found the chink in my armor fast, for sure. 

    And speaking of my character flaws, I hate change now. When did that happen? I think that's what's sending me off watch red-faced and able to feel my pulse IN MY FACE every night.  We're in a time of change.  The only cure for my ennui is a win in some form. 

A dick punch and deep thoughts on sailoring

 There was 20 or so of us who came to NY to open up my employer's NY bunker operations, 15ish or so years ago.  Not a one of us LIKED New York, mind. But a little pay bump, an opportunity to be out from under the thumbs of the Maritrans Mafia, the office staff who came over en masse from a failed company and treated anyone not from their bankrupt employer's rolls as, if not second class than... with the same attention a parent with a favorite child pays to their other children. NY was, lol, a new frontier. And, like wine, the surviving Maritrans Mafia mellowed as age and time scythed through their numbers until something approaching parity... distance making the heart grow fonder, maybe. 

   

       The core group of tankermen is down to just a half dozen of us. 

           Seperately, the 4 tugboats who came with us have their own Originals, but crewing on tugs is transitory, a few years on any one tug being normal, just as it is with tankermen. The skillset required to be a ports of NY/NJ tugboat operator is arguably among the most challenging in the US, so people come and go, but usually not too far. 

 ... and don't tell any of the tug guys I said nice things. The ego on many of them is shocking, just shocking, considering that some of them are savants;  retards with neurotic cognitively dissonant God Complex personalities, like you'd see on a surgeon, but one living with a micropenis...all wrapped up in a person whose mouth hangs open when they have to think. 

 Some, not all. Some are also genuinely great guys, and smart AF.  Some are merely good guys. But maritime work is a meritocracy, and some damn good sailors are just bad human beings. 

 I'm aware that I'm a hypocrite to judge, which is why after losing 30ish or so IQ points between 30 years of fuel vapors and mental atrophy, I don't care. I know I'm an obstinate midwit now. 

           Well, point of all that digression is that one of our best tug deckhands Mike, a cheerful athletic guy that many of us originals truly liked, and who was perhaps the most prolific trainer of GOOD deckhands (and it takes time and effort to make a deckhand trainee into a good deckhand) passed away at his galley table down in Philly, where he transferred last year to be closer to his home in rural MD. 

   I guess he sat down at the galley table, it being a quiet evening, and him saying he wasn't feeling great, and when the captain came down to the galley for coffee a little later, he was gone.  

 Peaceful, apparently, but still a dick punch. Mike was a genuinely good guy, very positive and always trying to lift up the people around him.  Single, a confirmed bachelor, but social and gregarious at home and at work, he was 62, coached lacrosse, and played on an adult league himself. 

62 is my partner B's age. He and Mike got along especially well.

 Christ, it's never the assholes who drop off early, is it?  

 Now, tugboaters and tankerman share a deep and abiding affection for the sound of their own voices, so we've all been talking about Mike this week as we come and go. 62 is young to go. Not absurdly young, but still. I'm a bit young yet at 51 to be classed into old fartdom, but it's not the years so much as the years at sea. Us old farts are shook. 

 There's a split between the younger and older mariners. Was it a good passing, inasmuch as any untimely death can be? To us older guys, it seems the idea of having a quick kip sitting down at the galley table to pass the time when you're feeling peaky, and not waking up, well, that seems an OK way to go.  To the younger guys, dying at work is horrible regardless. 

 Perhaps it's a matter of how much in your mind you define yourself as a mariner, I dunno. Generally among the older sailors you don't mind the work; it's familiar, a living; it's what you do and to a point it's who you are: when home you talk different, wear shoes, lay in the dark listening to nothing but your tinnitis, and by day you try to force in enough effort to both see to your obligations and enjoy yourself too, if there's time. For that reason, Jack ashore, at least among my peers, is a little standoffish by virtue of unfamiliarity as to our surroundings, until you pour some booze into him or the tension of not being in the confined uncomfortsble environment he's habituated to by virtue of time finally wears off, at which point overindulgence in some form is the rule, not the exception. 

 To the young, the work is what you do until you can get back home. We all start that way. To the experienced, being home sets you right, but going back to work isn't funereal, merely sobering, in a spiritual sense. And often literal. 

        I'm one of the most well-married people I know. My marriage defines me in most ways...and part of that admittedly has always been partially attributable to the absences.  My wife and I, when we're together, are still passionate like newlyweds, despite middle age. We still routinely gross my kid out, in an innocent way, if he's quiet and comes into the kitchen and finds us kissing like two silly teenagers... my time home, severly limited, is for family, for celebrating, hopefully, and for support. 

 My wife will always be nonplussed when friends and associates, especially other Brazilian women (who can be catty AF), will say they're jealous of having a husband who's gone more than half the time, as being alone half the time is a weight on her shoulders that is NEVER not brutal. I mean, shitty day, upsetting news, illness, car accident whatever, it's on her. My kid as a teen- that was on her too, easygoing as he is, he wasn't always a jewel.  But however tough it is, it's also good, and we like it. It suits our personalities... and if it weren't for Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife, I'd... well, I'd be like Mike.  And that makes me sad just to write. 

 bI feel bad, thinking about such a good dude, with just us assholes out here, his friends and shipmates, to mourn him. Just us, to mark his passing. 

 I am grateful to God Almighty for my life, and am pretty good about remembering to say and mark my gratitude as I can. 

 It sucks Mike's gone, man. 

The Grind

 Well, I'm in it now. I've been at work for a week and I've got 3 weeks to go. When I get home, the holidays will be starting up, and while I'm not going to be home for Christmas this year, I'll be home for Thanksgiving and New Years, which is pretty good.  So to add to the Honey-Do list for next time I'm home, which is already jam-packed, I need to add losing about 6hrs to ha g the Christmas lights, which I intend to do, as I have not done so in the past 3 years, and frankly I could use the pleasant effect it has, and maybe the neighbors can too.  So that'll be a good project to do a few days before I go back to work. 

       We've been working steady since I got here, right up until yesterday. We've got a little break now, and while I can't go ashore at the lay berth where we're sitting now, we're doing an early crew change today, and Big E is going home, while B is coming in. Big E had surgery 7 months ago and is finally almost recovered, but has been working shorter tours to build up his endurance, but this is the last shortened tour. On his return in 3 weeks, he'll be back to full time. In the meanwhile, B was working overtime elsewhere and I heard they had a major breakdown while he was there, and an awful time, so he'll be relieved, grumpy and hopefully ready to rest when he gets here in a few hours. 

        Dirk the Dutchman, the mayor (and senior captain at this point) of New York Harbor, will be swapping bodies on his prison ship launch (a water taxi) all day today, and in just a few hours that'll happen. I took the launch just last week when I started my tour at HAWSEPIPER'S Afloat Global HQ/ Penal colony, and as always it was great to catch up with Dirk, who at 82 is still spry as hell and while 'retired' keeps his hand as owner of his launch company. 

    As I have been working on boats since age 8, I understand that on a boat something is always broken and in need of repair. That's the nature of boats after all. This past week the head (bathroom) has been playing merry hell, and while the primary culprit was a burned out macerator pump (boat toilets grind down poop and TP to a slurry before pumping it to a holding tank for treatment), the reason the poop pump got smoked was the control/flush switch was damaged. A new switch wasn't available locally in NYC, and is being shipped, so Jimmy, one of our shoreside staff, an electrician, Jimmy-rigged the switch to sort of work in the meanwhile, if pressed REALLY hard... which worked until yesterday, when the whole switch and its' box just fell into the bulkhead (wall) and disappeared after a piece of wall it was screwed to just said Fuck Off and tore out. 

 So yesterday before my morning bidness, I got to rip out a 20-year old, mildewy, crumbling and piss-spray saturated hardboard wall to retreive the control box. Which smelled magical. Fermented ammonia, stagnant water and mildew.

 A blessing in disguise, really, as, unpleasant as it was, nobody had to crap in a bucket, including me, and our port engineer has a replacement panel and some insulation on order. A new panel should improve the smell, as we already removed the insulatuon, sprayed the space between the old bulkhead and the exteral steel house with dilute bleach and then an enzyme deodorizer we keep on hand for when old guys and hoodboogers with bad aim piss on the deck and bulkheads around the toilet. 

 So I was able to have the Morning Seat in peace, if delayed, and thus yesterday was saved.  At 51 it's really hard to have a nice day if it starts with crapping in a bucket, so even with a hole in the head, we're good.

   We also got stores (supplies) yesterday, which included new office chairs. Fancy gaming chairs, even. I assembled one yesterday and we like it, so I'll build the rest today. If God is kind our schedule will hold and I'll be free today to cook a real lunch, help out B and Big E with shifting their dunnage, and get caught up on paperwork, etc. 

 

Still not dead, but closer than

It's a small thing, but I can't remember being this comfortable on a plane before.

 It's the tween season here in FL, where I'll be for the next 5-10 mins until my plane takes off. The snow Jews aren't here yet, and the business Jews and I are not filling up the plane.

 There's some advantage for parts of the year to live in a Jewish-heavy community in FL... The Snow Jews make up an enormously rude, selfish and inconsiderate bloc, and they'll be a plague all winter, but still better than the flying housing projects that hoodboogers infest in discount airlines... but for early AM flights from June-October, me n' the business Jews practice politeness. Not a speakerphone or an arguement with the flight attendants in sight.

     I'm really pleased by how much more comfortable the seating is on my plane with all the weight loss I've managed this year. My ass fits great in the seat now, but sadly my shoulders fit better too. Age and a calorie-limited diet appropriate to someone with a marginally functional thyroid and the resultant metabolic slowdown from that has cost me some strength and muscle mass. From my reading, I am going to have to get into an exercise routine to get some of that back. I've been improving my joint flexibility while waiting for some chronic pain to scale back (tennis elbow, of all things, recently. Not that I play tennis). But it got me into daily stretching and flexibility exercises while waiting and I think I can start picking up weights now, at least lightly, try to get my shit moving.  

      I arrived home 2 weeks ago with an ambitious agenda for catching up on maintenance and projects at home.  Despite combining both the longest voyage away AND the shortest turnaround interval after an extended trip I've done, I was feeling very well- patient, mentally focused, etc. Surprisingly so.

  ...But at home I couldn't get motivated. I felt distracted and my usual pleasure in puttering around outside failed to materialize. Oh, I had a wonderful time with my family, mind, at least my nuclear family- I wanted to hang out with my brother more, but even there I pretty much found myself making excuses and just keeping my wife and kid within handhold distance. 

 Sure, I kept my shit together in those 4 months. Turns out I wasn't entirely unaffected by it, and after a couple of half-assed projects I dragged my ass through, Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife set me aside and told me to quit pushing myself and feeling guilty, as I was not making the most of my time off to decompress... and after that I just focused more on trying to enjoy the days... and I semi-succeeded. I never got entirely over not doing much in terms of productivity, but I'm trying to cut myself some slack. 

 And it's a moot point now, as I'm 35,000 ft in the air and headed back north to work. No overtime, though. I'm going home as soon as my time is done. I do have a lot of shit to do. 

      

I'm not dead yet!

 But I am at home. So, turns out that despite being in a good headspace for the 4 months I was at work, being home showed me that I was beat up, metaphorically.

 Better now.  Enjoying my last few days here.  

The longest taxi ride ever

 I'm at the airport. And I am alive. I don't know if it was worth living through what just happened. 

 Taxi from Bayonne New Jersey (The Paris of New Jersey, lol.) to JFK airport, Queens. Across New York. During rush hour.

 It took a while, obviously. But that wasn't the issue.  My driver was an old middle eastern man. And he... his breakfast was not digesting well, shall we say. 

        Yeah, the old guy had the hot death farts. I don't know what he ate but it went down fighting.

  And it was pouring rain so I couldn't open the window much and got immediately soaked for doing so. 

        And he kept doing it!  Like every 6-7 minutes, like a fucking metronome.   I swear, the temperature shot up 10 degrees in the car every time he ripped ass too. I'd feel the desert heat of araby, and then... I don't want to live on this planet anymore. God is not here. 

 For two hours. Two. Hours. TWO HOURS! 

 I got... marinated. God help me. It's in my clothes, probably. 

 Anyhow, I am at the airport and have a glass of whisky.  Washing the taste out of my mouth. Out of my soul. 

 

Last watch

 Halfway through my last watch. Home tomorrow.  Channel Fever finally hit me full on. I'm ready to GTFO. 

Night watch

 Well, I'm on nights now. Thus far it hasn't worked to my advantage-  virtually all of our active moves have followed me, seemingly regardless of which watch I'm standing. 

.   Since we have 2 HMFIC's on here at all times (myself and B, or myself and Big E, and B and Big E when I am at home), we din't have a master/mate hierarchy. Instead, we stand 12 hour watches, Day (0600-1800) and Night (1800 to 0600). Guys just coming aboard or getting ready to go home stand nights), and the day guy gets to be Head MF'er In Charge.  In this way, someone ALWAYS knows what's going on, and oncoming/outgoing guys have time to get caught up on what's going on. Daytime is when the people who wear ties to work generally are scheming and plotting and calling and bothering and business is done. Nights are usually just for things that people who do not wear ties to work get done. We're a 24/7 operation but the ties and suits are not.  Generally at night we have cargo or not but regardless the phone doesn't ring and emails ding near as much. It's a great time to get shit done like maintenance, paperwork, etc. 

    And that's the rub; just dumb luck that what free time there is, by chance, isn't falling on the night watch.   I mean it's fine, I'm not being pressed or overburdened but my own little honey-do list of things I want to get done is not as free as I'd maybe wish in terms of time to devote to the task. 

         Edit: ask and ye shall receive.  Prior to my posting this, the people who wear ties to work (long may they live; long may they continue to shit light on the heads of the damned) corrected an earlier error made on my schedule: turns out I will have half a watch off, which is good, as I need to put together a parts list and service a generator, and will even have time for a proper dinner. 

Channel fever

 Well, I finally am starting to disengage here on the HQ I guess, and thoughts of home are kicking in intrusively in my mind during the day. 

'Channel Fever' is the distemper that causes unrest when a sailor becomes absolutely with child to get ashore.

       I've almost doubled my record for time spent at work since leaving blue water work. The shorter much more intense days of working in-harbor and coastwise don't lend themselves to long hitches... and yet here I am somewhere past 110 days on here. I've lost count. 

     It was done purposefully for more than one reason, which may be why it hasn't been a slog. We're still throwing every spare penny at construction and outfitting now at the house in Brazil. 2 of the 4 buildings are structurally done and at the tail end of the cosmetic finishing stages. 2 to go, then landscaping and furniture. 

Fuck. 

Still, progress. And I can't do more OT this year as the War Department says so. She wants me home, and as I will have been gone for 10 months in 2025, I damn well need to listen. The house will wait. In the meanwhile, home in 9 days. Single digits. Feels good. 

 I find it hard to focus on plans while I am at home. While I need to cater to my wife's well deserved need to go out and be social as a couple, I also will need some days to putter around. 

In 2 days I switch to working nights, to let B get into the practice of being the swinging dick with Kick Me signs written on his forehead and ass.  The night guy is the 40 in the 60/40 leadership we run under as HMF'sIC. 

Say hello to the bad guy

 I caused some serious traffic snarls in Brooklyn the other day and I would hereby like to apologize FOR NOTHING. 

            The other day we took on a half-load of VLSFO (Very Low Sulfur Fuel Oil, a blend of #6 heavy fuel oil and ULS-MGO,  Ultra Low Sulfur Marine Gasoil, basically an ultraclean burning diesel-esque type fuel.  Thick goopy stuff, but the good stuff. 

   We took a half-load because we went waaaaayyy up a navigable but shallow creek near Brooklyn , Manhattan AND Queens. All told between us and our tug we squeaked in with 1 foot of UKC (Under-Keel Clearance) at low tide -we went in at high tide so we had 8 feet of UKC, but we also got to pumping off just 2 hours after tying up, so 12 1/2 hours later we left again at high tide, this time riding high and empty. 

   I'd never been there before, just knew it by name and that the creek is famously narrow, shallow and tricky, our equipment being larger than the tugboats and  oil, rock and scrap steel scows that work the canals and creeks. 

         Getting to the little storage tank farm we were going to, we had to pass under a drawbridge. We went through at night, so it wasn't too disruptive. 

     BUT, to leave, we had to sail, go under a different drawbridge

make a couple of twists and turns through narrow passages, old shitty pleasureboats rafted up, and rock and steel scrap barges rafted up against docks on either side, at times having to pass with just 10-15 feet on a side OR LESS to squeeze through... and after that, finally, a turning basin, a wide area, where we could do a 180, and 30 mins later, go under the SAME drawbridge but heading downstream and make a bunch of turns in narrow spots until the creek widened out where a bunch of derelict boats were stacked

Bro we could do SO MUCH METH on those

        And then go under yet another drawbridge, this one with a lovely view of the mile-long traffic jam we made, it being 10am, ON BOTH SIDES. 

    This bridge connects Brooklyn and Queens. And we fucked traffic all up. 

           Tight squeeze.  The HQ got them birthin' hips. 

      Still, it wasn't but another mile or twomand we were entering the Hudson river.  We passed summat' close abeam of the UN

 and a seaplane took off right next to us, which was something I don't see every day. 

  So,  cool little run. It's been a while since I saw something new here, for which I'm grateful.  We left Manhattan in our wake and went straight  to our usual loading terminal for the next cargo. 

Next

We wrapped up the last cargo the other night. 2 nights ago? 3? Time has lost much of its meaning here for me, but I know I've been aboard for over 100 days and go home pretty soon.  

   On completion at the ship, having transferred the oil successfully, the charterer sent us back to the terminal where we loaded the standard black oil portion of the blend we concocted, and there they filled us up with good normal VLSFO, Very Low Sulfur Fuel Oil, which we then pumped off overnight, right back into the tank we just loaded from, to dilute any residual blended fuel trapped in our pipelines, pumps and the sumps, the low points in each tank.   We flushed them right out.

 Then we did it again. Loaded up again, pumped it all off again. 

            Yesterday I got us all fast at a lay berth in Elizabeth NJ close to Newark airport, fairly early, maybe 11am? I then spent the next few hours on the phone and up to my buttcheeks (is buttcheeks one word or two? I'm a grammar nazi) in paperwork.  Our cargo management software, which is half logbook, half tallybook and half ledger (equaling 150%, yes. Because why not?), didn't like the way the office set up the recordkeeping portion of it, and decided to make up its' own rules, like deleting some pages, or transferring load calculations to discharge records and overwriting the existing discharge records, things like that.  So I got to spend a couple of hours correcting things, chasing numbers, and occasionally having it happen again until I had enough data input for the People Who Wear Ties To Work to work with. 

 

I'm sure I'll get 30 phone calls on Monday, which, I just looked, is tomorrow. No wonder breakfast was so peaceful today.  I only got 1 phone call inturrupting my meal. That's pretty good and the dude on the phone is a bro, we got on and off the phone in under 45 seconds, and that includes pleasantries... and that's because he was a tankerman like me, though younger, and his heart gave out, literally, so he had to go ashore. No BS, dude's got a good heart now, but it's not an OEM. He had to get a reemie. 

       There is one deep truism here I have to share, and everyone who works on boats knows this.   You can't take a crap, eat, or cook without a phone call or an alarm going off.  I don't make the rules, I just live by them.   Every one of these moments, cook, eat, poop, has an intermission where business gets done. 

       Knowing this, if I am waiting on an important phone call, I'll go to the head whether or not I really need to, just to speed things up. 

           Strangely, this doesn't work at home, although it IS true that I can't take a dump without someone, usually my wife, needing something or wanting to talk.  I'm not one of those guys who sits on the can playing with his phone until his legs go numb, either. I grew up in a larger household with one bathroom. I'm programmed to be quick. 

 I'm not sure how that's related but I'm sure it is. 

        

      So we passed a quiet night last night and a tug made all fast to us earlier this morning after breakfast.  In a few minutes we'll cast off for the next cargo... a load of VLSFO  destined for a power plant I think... but a dock-to-dock cargo, not a bunker job. Kind of a treat, no ship to deal with. 

The New Hotness

 Well, today we're taking part in a trial run of a new product being floated by one of the bunker suppliers thst feeds the US East Coast.  A new, more environmentally friendly component is being blended into the fuel.  Big E loaded the base fuel componant last night in 4 of our cargo tanks, leaving them slack, which is to say, partially loaded.

     At the moment we're under way to go load the fancy foofoo cutter stock into the same tanks, at a different terminal, and I will meter and blend the new product into each individual cargo tank, mixing it well, thereby creating magic a blended fuel with pleasing qualities for the delicate and fragile, and also Europeans I suppose.

     It's performative nonsense, a better, more sustainable and socially responsible way to pander to a bunch of screeching scientifically illiterate IMO Luddite autists   be good stewards of the earth, yo. Namaste and shit.  

I could go on but I am after all, the goof they chose to deliver this baby. I'm like a big, hairy, kinda otherwise retarded  savant in this one job... doula. 

Yes.  I am now the bunker doula. You may admire me now

 *scratches testicles*. 

     Ok, semi-serious now.  I'm not flattered that I was chosen to oversee this job but I absolutely am gratified. After all,  we're experienced, competent and really do take the process seriously on here. even when I'm cynical when I play games and assign meanings (that probably aren't there) to the people who actually matter in these things. Also, the HQ was available, and we really are the seniormost bunker crew in my employer's NY fleet now in terms of experience. In that respect I really am aware that I am here to represent the owner's interest in doing a job correctly, safely and efficently. My blog, online sarcasm, that's just my id taking a crap, in the exact same meaning and for the same reason a body does so.  

      As I am fond of saying, I don't give or expect credit for plans, just actions. Best I go be on about it then.

    

Please don't make me give a shit.

 I'd been finding it very peaceful not to engage in soapbox speeches or the online culture war, especially given the horrors of this past week. But I've dipped my toes in this week, which has left me with that same feeling I get when my hands are dirty and covered with grease, and I don't use enough soap to wash them off.  That feeling almost exactly, but the thin dirty grease layer is soul deep. 

    The young deckhands at work are circumspect about it, but want to talk. Many of them weren't alive for the September 11 attacks and this is one of their first encounters with humanity at our worst with a resultant cultural upheaval. 

Zoomers who choose to work on boats are politically tending to be conservative. These are kids who are afraid to speak their minds for fear of getting ostracised. They seem to be in need of fellowship more than anything. Kids who I've already taken the time to break the ice with, to get them talking about themselves so they'll listen if I can say or show them something to make them better seamen. 

Quiet at first. And underneath... so hurt and angry. 

 It's already happened 3 times.  A kid starts to talk topical, and trails off, leaving me to either pass on the elephant in the room or engage.

     Best I can figure, these kids, who live online in a way I do not, saw a mask slip on some people they liked, showing a lot of hate towards a dead guy they agreed with on some things... and then realizing how much the same people of course hate them too. It's not a stretch to see someone blood dancing online over a murder, and to realize that you'reseeing them for once, for who they truly are. Once that mask slipped off, some have not yet put it back on, either... and in a very clear way, a pussy apathetic disclaimer, which is even more common and less respectable, has widened the gap. They saw psychos and the enablers of psychos. 'Murder is wrong but...' 

       Murdering someone over words and ideas. If that's OK, when does it become ok to do so over politics and religion? 

    I've made peace with not speaking my mind. Rule 1 of good seamanship: One hand for you, and one for the boat. Rule 2: No politics and no religion in the galley. 

 I know the benefits of finding and focusing on things other than politics and religion. As a result I have several friends, some quite close, who don't share my politics OR my religion... all are people whom I care about deeply.

No buts are coming here. My point is these young guys have gotten a masterclass on the power of hate this week... and whether they're more scared or hurt? I dunno.  It sucks, to feel a sense of betrayal. It did for me when I realized I really didn't share some of the most important values, ideas and principles with nearly as many people as I thought I did. 

 I have my nuclear family, and my blood family. I have my extended family. I am deeply fortunate to be loved, even beloved. I have my faith, and I have friends, who I love as well, because we know each other, and despite that, they still like me anyways. 

   The hate?  I have hope they'll see they've put up an umbrella that's a hell of a lot bigger than what they maybe thought they were putting up. I'm certainly catching shade from surprising places... despite not being targeted, how can you not be, when realizing the same person would say the same if it was you dead, and they didn't know you? 

     'Murder is bad but I'm not sad he died.' 

     'Murder is bad, but my definition of what a nazi is is anyone who doesn't support the things I support.' 

      Translation: 'Murder is not bad, but I'm not saying it out loud so don't @me.' 

 

        I already retreated as far as I can, to be friendly, to keep friendships without being false. I'm ok with it, but I have a line I won't cross, and my heels are on it. No further, not one step. Not because of this week, but because I have everything in the world already, wouldn't gain by refusing to judge, and I already got enough shit to think about. 

       Not being a dick is a relative matter. I work with some real assholes, and I don't think anyone I work with who I dislike remains unaware of it... and I'm ok with that. I'm ok too with people who dislike me making it known provided we can still all go home at the end of the tour with a paycheck safely.  

     

    I've been sitting on this post all day, and have gone to delete it a few times but stopped. NOBODY comes here to listen to my thoughts. It's the dick and fart jokes and the job, and for some reason I've been picking up some extra hits daily lately. Wonder if I just kilt that off. I broke Rule #2 after all. 

   

I still don't know what to do with the young guys. We've been chosen to be the inaugural guinea pig in a new trial of cargo blend later this week.  I'll have extra tugs, and extra bodies, coming and going all week. You can only talk about the weather for so long. 

Better

 With all the horror this week, and America going mad, a light in the darkness got lit here on the HQ. Big E's home.  

      The HQ is unique in that we have no master aboard, no senior tankerman assigned as being The Big Cheese. We have 3 VERY senior tankermen, instead. B, 27 years in, Big E, 17, and me, 25, 17 of those here. 

   As to the why of that, having a fairly large talent sink, we get odd jobs, and the HQ, while small, can carry more grades of oil simultaneously than most while maintaining cargo segregation.  As such, redundency, utility and maintaining flexibility is one of those 'you can only have 2 of these' exceptions, as the HQ has been heavily modified several times. She's a good girl. 

...and E was out recovering from surgery for a lomg time. More than half a year.  Part of the reason I've been here for over 3 months now, and also why I can go home next month, finally.

 B and I hosted a couple of fill-in guys. It wasn't great. One of them was cool, but only there very briefly. The others? Either much too green or just some absolute short-bus seat warmers. 

But E is back and we're all right here.  Aside from being great shipmates working together, we're also all very good friends.  One of those things, and we all know it's almost impossible to make friends as an adult male... and yet here we are. So the company keeps us together because we keep our shit together. It's not like we're irreplaceable, after all, but why mess up a vessel that gets shit done right? The HQ was already Big E's when B and I arrived 6 years ago.  B and I have worked together for 15+ years, as we got matched originally when my company first established a remote operation in NY and they wanted 2 good guys to work overlapping, so one of us was always on board...and that's been our M.O. since. 

  I'm really happy to have my friend back. The OT was nice but we need rest, and it's good to ve able to sleep soundly, knowing the other guy 100% has your back and knows the job just as well as you. 

I don't need a soapbox

 Sure I have opinions on topical things. 

...and nobody who doesn't share blood or a bathroom with me cares. It took me much too long to figure that out.

     Now, having said that, a wonderful thing tangentially related to the savage and poisonous events that have happened recently has popped up. 

 Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife started shooting with me a couple of years ago. It started basically with her wanting to tweak the noses of her family back in Brazil, some of whom are far, far left and horrified at the thought of her with a gun like some American cowboy, and others who enjoyed the idea, her going full American Stereotype. 

      She's become a decent shot and range days have become fun days for us... plus she knows I'm more likely after to not wail and gnash my teeth if she wants to make a stop 'too queek' to look at a dress or ridiculously priced heels somewhere. 

        So this week my wife asked me to enroll her in a concealed carry class for when I'm home, and I'm just as proud as a hen with a new egg to hear it. 

        Only downside is I gotta find a nice set of Louis Vuitton grips for her Christmas present this year.

 

It happened at the crossroads

 

Grub run

 The larder is pretty bare here on board in terms of everything that isn't protein or caffeine. 

 In other words, I'm fine for now, but it's time to get groceries and stock up. 

  In the nearshore and coastal brown water merchant marine, we use the old school low class term 'grub' for food... because we're old school. And low class. 

    But yeah, grub's pretty light. Oh, we've got about 10 days' worth of chicken, rice, meat and coffee/soda, but we're well into the last bag of frozen vegetables and long since depleted the fresh stuff. 

    Yesterday I emailed the loggie boys and asked them to find us a berth in Red Hook in Brooklyn to get grubbed up in between jobs on Friday (today). We're presently underway for Brooklyn, about an hour away, which works out well, as the foofoo grocery store I like doesn't open until 0700.  

 I don't love the foofoo grocery store's prices, as no bullshit they're DOUBLE what they are at home because New York is awful, but shopping there is more about how bad every other store is moreso than the fancy store being good. 

 By the time you actually buy vegetables and meat and chicken in NY, the stuff's pushing its sell-by date before it even hits the shelves. So 1-2 days after we buy anything, the greens start becoming the browns, beef turns gray and chicken gets that fermented sour smell that we all know and wonder about. 

 No, the foofoo place we get 4-8 days of green, and the chicken/meat can get portioned out and frozen before it starts to smell. 

 People smile when I say New York is now a 3rd world city. But I'm not smiling when I say it. 

     Now, there's a Trader Joes and a Whole Foods not that far away, so I don't have to deal with the white guys with dreadlocks and their blue-haired hairy-legged womeneither at the foofoo grocery store, praise God. They've got their own places to buy their matcha-flavored toilet paper.

 But yeah, so today we'll get all fast, I'll jump on our assist tug to get a ride to our home pier, hop in a taxi, grub up, hop in ANOTHER taxi, do a bag drag down the pier to another tugboat, and get back to the HQ, hoist our grub up on deck, do another bag drag in the house, and stow the grub. All this so we can eat salad. Plays merry hell if you can't get the fiber in middle age and there's no way on God's gray earth thst you can have a nice day after 50 if you can't take a decent shit at some point. 

    

Big Doings in the US Merchant Marine

It's been an exciting month for those of us in the seafaring trade... But first the bad news with a side of digression. 

  

       There's a private equity company that got into the Jones Act shipping (US coastal trade) trade by doing the shell company game the way that Private Equity does, with a twist that this company is just rotten with a layer of beltway insiders on top of it... has failed. No matter how many layers of company titles you have, you still gotta produce, and if the shell company staff don't get along... things implode. 

      Marshals came and turned the lights off for most of the units they bought at auction from Morty the rich asshole. 

    For background, Morty's story is that he's a bad person. A shit born with daddy's checkbook in hand who himself rode his father's tug and barge company into the ground. Morty is a foul human being and is hated by everyone...and is a spoiled little tyrant degenerate who got what he deserved, which is to lose everything... that being said, his former employees, toxic themselves, some of them, but mostly decent people living with PTSD and Stockholm Syndrome from exposure to Morty, are victims. There were plenty of middle aged guys working who had to start over somewhere else very late in life when the company cratered. It's really hard to Rise And Grind to reestablish yourself when you're at the tail end of a career that is enormously wearing, physically.

     

      Strangely enough, my employer, who also runs a multigenerational family-owned shipping company, is doing just fine. Being a decent human being and having a family policy where every son starts out by sweeping floors, cleaning toilets and taking their turn working their way up from deckhand to management has something to do with that.  

       But, sadly, this batch o' bankers and investors is in a bad way at the moment. Infighting and what seems to be a contest in backstsbbing and who can fuck each other over more. At least it looks like that from the outside. As a result there's some skilled mariners headed out hat-in-hand looking for work this week. 

     So, the bad is bad. I hope one of the bigs with actual shipping experience rather than a combo of investing and lobbying experience will either buy some of these big boats or get hired to right the ship. 

    I just don't think it's possible to own a maritime business without longevity being the first or second priority.  If, as the saying goes, the purpose of business is business, than making MORE money over time, vs short-term gains, tortoise v. hare style, isn't antithetical to good business practice.  But good luck explaining that to the scumbag circus out there. 

 

     Now the good.  But first, more bad. 

 US shipyards are in a bad way. Obsolete tech, minimal automation, insane labor costs (a moderately experienced shipyard worker is at least journeyman-level equivalent in 2 or more skilled trades and thus can just work in one of those trades, so they need to be paid!). It costs 3-5x more to build a ship in the US than it does in Asia, but ships that travel between any US ports MUST be American built and American crewed, per the Jones Act, our cabotage laws. 

      This is done because we NEED to know how to build ships as a nation (we currently suck at it, which is a massive gaping nightmare), and we REALLY NEED people who know how to crew them.  We're currently about 100 fleet oilers (ships to run fuel for military use) short of what we'd need in a major war just to keep the lights on and bellies full. The beltway neocons, scumbags like senator Mike Lee, are screaming bloody hell because our present admin was able this year to put 10 civilian tankers on retainer as willing to jump in if ordered to help.  Senator Scumbag wants to import 3rd world foreigners and foreign companies to move all our oil, food and goods, internally and externally, including taking over our military's logistics, and getting the US out of moving things by sea as a trade. 

  Imagine just the 1000+ tugs on the Mississippi and connected rivers, moving oil and goods into the midwest and grain and beef out, all controlled by Europeans and Asians along with ADM and a few big ag companies that want to fly in Indonesians, Indians and Pakistanis, and hand over the keys to our food and energy so they don't have to pay lower- and middle-middle class wages to American mariners, or buy boats from American shipyards. 

 

Yeah. That's not even the least bit exaggerated. It's that fucked up. No security as a nation, whatsoever. No knowledge of how to build a ship.  A bunch of foreigners, some of whom are hostile to our interests, in charge of our oil and our food supply. 

 Globalists, lobbyists for big ag, and scumbag politicians, like that feculent shitbag senator Mike Lee, like and want America to be weakened, because it's profitable for them and their buddies and they LOVE the destabilizing effects. 

     So, that's the bad part of the good part. 

    

Now, the good part: with our shipyards being in a bad way, in conjunction with the present presidential admin's goals of improving our maritime security, one of the Korean megashipyard conglomerates, who can build damn fine ships damn fast, bought the Philadelphia shipyard, one of the only 3 (!) American shipyards that can build merchant ships. 

 Well, for values of 'American.'  It was owned by a billionaire family of Norwegians as one of their several shipyards globally, then spun off with the usual shell games that bankers get all on about... but still owned by Europeans, titles aside. Like most of our shipyards. Newport News is BAE, the Brits. Great Lakes has Fincatieri, Italian. Philly had Norway, now Korea. You get the idea. 

            But, Hanhwa Philly, now, is looking interesting. They're almost done with building 5 schoolships for our maritime academies, which double as disaster relief ships at need. After that I think they've got a couple of containerships on order for the Hawaii/ Alaska and Puerto Rico Jones Act service. 

    Hanhwa, on sealing the deal, is gonna throw 9 figures into modernizing and expanding the yard, which means local jobs and vocational training for Americans, and immediately put orders for over a dozen ships on the books, including building the infrastructure and training to build Liquified Natural Gas carriers, something the US currently can't do. They've already ordered 3 of those, so you're talking about over a billion bucks already. 

 This is huge. 

       Now, I have no idea if any of these ships will enter Jones Act service, although I assume some if not all will. More than anything else, it's the institutional knowledge that is the treasure here. Hanhwa is going to have to fly in experienced people to teach, and I'm ok with that. Aside from the international relations aspect, which has something to do with Korea wanting to cement ties and placate president Trump, it's also a good way to keep America invested in Korea's security too. 

 I hope Japan is watching.  

Anyways I'm much too retarded and willfully ignorant to really discuss such things at length. Still, it's a big step forward, and if we can put a boot on the insanely anti-American neocons' necks and press until our feet touch dirt and enjoy the music they make trying to breathe, perhaps we'll be ok. 

 

 

Father Time Is Not Kind

That's me, age 38 or so. 

 

  Here's me yesterday, at 51. 

Fffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.... 

              As I'm elbow deep in the longest tour I've done since I left blue water shipping, and I haven't buzzed my head or shaved since June, I'm really hoping I won't look like a caricature of myself when I get home and 

clean up again. 

   You know what's weird? I was a reddish blonde until 40. Now my hair remaining is brownish. And white, obviously.  Generally I keep the hair on my head at a #2 buzz, as I lost the male pattern baldness and my hairline is more like... ever see a coyote with mange? Yeah, like a mangy coyote's ass. 

 The white beard is a bummer. More smelly homeless guy than Sean Connery in Red October. 

     Also as I age, the gin blossoms I've carried since age 8 look more and more like a garden-variety alkies' face.

       I fell in the water in January when I was a kid and my idiot friend and I decided to walk out about 1/2 mile offshore when Boston Harbor froze over.  Ice broke under me, etc. etc. by the time I got out and walked to my parents' house I was blacked out and my father, to his credit, threw me in a tepid shower fully clothed until I came to, started screaming from the burning water, and spent the rest of the month grounded while my ears and cheeks turned black from the frostbite. 

   My father knew a thing or two about it, which was why, as mad as he was, I never got more than grounded and a talking-to.  He got knocked in the water in Antarctica, as he was on oceanographic ships before he swallowed the anchor, and got flash frozen himself.  As an adult, he told me he was most angry with himself, as I was the son he didn't expect to die dumb, my brothers being somewhat feral as kids. 

           Seeing myself in that picture, maybe I shouldn't be so mad that everything hurts when I get up in the morning now, until I can stretch and then the hurts recede to their homes in a couple of spots to their background susurrus. Ah well. At least the phase at 45 where I looked like Dollar Tree Louis C.K. is passed anyhow. 

Hip deep

 Not much to report. B returned on Wednesday, so I've been able to sleep through the night, which has been good.  It's busy, though for some reason only truly busy during the day, so while.I'm running around like a cat trying to bury a turd under a marble floor, B has been more or less just ballast thus far, standing his watch and, well, watching, as the loading and discharging ops have been smallish parcels of cargo and the moves mostly in daylight. 

 That's the way it goes sometimes. It'll swing the other way in my favor at some point. Always does. We have 3 grades of oil for 2 different ships at thebl moment and if the schedule does not change, B will handle some or most of the 2nd ship tonight and I'll finish it tomorrow morning. 

     The sun's rising noticeably later these days. 0615ish now. Quite a difference. 

    The late sunrises at home (and earlier in the winter I suppose) are always an adustment, as is the much shorter twilight period. The sun always rises somewhere around 7am, year round, as we're further south. Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife is a night person, so I'm pretty much stuck in bed in the mornings, my own preference being to rise with the sun, but we try to start and finish our days together, they being so limited. 

Training Day

 I've had a fill-in guy on board the HQ this week, and he's pretty green as a proper tankerman.

    I say 'proper' in that he was an Inland and Mississippi river tankerman... different animal from what we do. 

 So, in inland waterways, oil is moved by barges small enough to fit through the canals and locks, which limits their size. For the most part, filling and pumping off tanks is a matter of sticking your head in a tank and filling it up as you're told by the office, often a matter of filling it up to a rung on a ladder in the ladder nounted inside the tank hatch. It's a job that any idiot can do... but one requiring strength and stamina, as getting large multi-barge tows through small locks is physically demanding in a way that a tsnkerman in ocean service does not have. We don't do multi-barge tows at all. Ocean waves prevent it. 

     So, to contrast, in ocean or coastal service, we have more constraints and considerations, larger and more complex equipment, and more to do... not to say it's a particularly complex job; it's not.  We have more training and more responsibility sure, but I still work with some idiots... just better trained ones, and someone only half-retarded like me can feel superior.  

   At any rate, now that my company is recruiting river rats, men who pride themselves on their experience suddenly find themselves inadequate to the work, which creates a dichotomy; men who are resistant to retraining, and try to justify feeling stupid by being resistant to learning...and those who are not. 

      My fill in guy? He's young, able and learning. Pleasant company.  Of the things he knows he is very particular; but of course of the things he doesn't know, he has to be taught or learn by painful experience. 

 Thankfully he has no problem waking me up to verify, ask questions or seek help. Consequently I'm not sleeping much. It's a quirk of my personality that I don't wake up grumpy when woken up. I WANT him to be careful. But he doesn't know what he doesn't know, and so around midnight last night I woke up to hear a very stressed out mooring line singing out that it was thinking about a divorce from it's other half. 

 I got up, shoe'd up, and went out. I saw the new guy running around and way past the point of task saturation and firmly in the middle of analysis paralysis... Inexperience prevented him from managing the workflow, and the barge was working him, not the other way around.  So I came out and told him to shut down for a few minutes, and we slacked mooring lines, adjusted the fendering between us and the other ship, changed how he was pumping off tanks, had a look at the documents, and took the pressure off him. Since it was a teachable moment, and not a near miss, we talked about managing the workload, being a seaman first and a gas jockey second,  working at a safe pace vs a fast pace, and I was able to pass on I think (I hope) that workflow is something proactive, not reactive. I mean, shit happens to everyone sometimes. Shit mitigation is a part of every job and situational awarness is a learning process. After we unfucked the deck, I hung out for an hour with him while he restarted and worked at a more humane pace, while the guys on the ship, who were pressuring him to hurry up, looked on bitchfaced 

 The kid gives a fuck about his job. That alone puts him on a positive track.  I don't have it in me right now to be a designated trainer, but I'm hoping him sort of getting a trial by fire from the HQ, which AFAIK does the most blending and mixing and small-parcel oil deliveries in the area, so green tankermen suddenly have to juggle more variables and work through informal decision trees to  manage 3rd and 4th order effects, which, on rereading, is just a fancy way of saying we have to account for things that might happen 3 or 4 cargo moves and/,or transfers and gravitations ahead, that just can't be planned in a loading program. 

      Anyhow, he's doing well enough but tomorrow B returns and maybe I can get some damn sleep. 

Yup

 

7/10, would poop there

Things in the ongoing fustercluck that is the house project at my house in Brazil are starting to come together. 

       As I've mentioned, the house is pretty modest. Around 1400 sq ft, with 3 guest bedrooms, 2 with their own bathrooms and then one general bathroom off a hallway. As I think I wrote about, we don't intend to live in the main house, rather we have a little separate outbuilding that will be a master bedroom, sitting room and the head. About 700 sq ft all told between the 3 rooms there. 

     With the civil suit still pending  with the embezzing scumbag builder who stole all my money (well, building materials and money), much of the interior work is a redo of the original efforts... and the sad truth is that the big money we spent on marble, bold Italian tile, etc, was used to buy close-outs and seconds worth about 10% of what we paid for. So we had to demo everything, anyhow. In the end we bought neutral colored granite and tile, as we just didn't have another 100k floating around... It's... very beige. Inappropriately Hot Foreign wife says that with the cabinets, mirrors, brackets, lighting and hardware it'll come to life, but right now it looks like a pleasant if uninspiring place to bark one out... and in the end, they're guest bathrooms, meant to be simple, easy to clean. 

One of the weird things I'll never get used to in Brazil is that they don't have a raised footing for the shower doors. They get bolted right into the tile and subfloor, as bathrooms usually have 2-3 floor drains, one inside the shower, and 1-2 more outside.  Brazilians in general prefer to shower twice a day, morning and night, so bathrooms get used a lot- condensation and water puddles collect mildew and mold, so they don't let standing water stand. Sloping the floors subtly enough to not make you fall on your ass is a bit of an art there. 

Still, giving the utter shitshow of the past 2 years, it's good to see the place finally taking form. 

Nice night.

 I'm in Bayonne NJ tonight, but despite that, it's still really nice out tonight.  We're loading up a couple of grades of oil, slowish, so there isn't the rumble of 60psi oil cavitating in the pipelines and vibrating the shit out of us. 

      Air temp is great. 68? 70? Whatever it is, it's nice and not too humid... it's the first night in a few months that reminds me that the summer won't last forever. 

 Sadly, I gotta switch back to day watch on Wednesday. 

The decline in conscientiousness

   I thought this was interesting, and it tracks from what I can see in general.  People, younger ones especially, are not grinding, not following through, and not maintaining social cohesion. 

 Yeah, so I was introverted long before it was cool, and I don't appreciate all these douchebags trying to copy my style. 

 Look, I view going out in public like a trip to the zoo. I chose my life and lifestyle, and THEN I deliberately cultivated it in such a way that I have to deal with people mostly ONLY when I am in the mood to do so... within limits of course. 

     That being said, I try pretty damn hard to be agreeable when I can. It lubricates the wheels on which I roll, which generally translates to I have a timeline in mind when I want the time to be social to end, and this time is a target for me to try to hit. 

          I think that's part of the reason I enjoy traveling to Brazil so much. The above? Not possible. Life from what I can see down there, revolves around moving people in and out of your circle, like a team-building exercise that doesn't end, and it doesn't matter if the team is trying to win on joy, work, pleasure, what have you. You do it together... and damn, it's something I really enjoy down there. A counterbalance to my ways at home, maybe. I can be very social when the mood is right... but there's something to be said for existing in a condition where your mood doesn't matter much. 

    ... and that sort of dovetails into being able to keep promises, to grind at and finish something that you start... that's a side of conscientiousness that is also being lost.  It's also one of the few things that I considered beating into my kid, as he started out with that same issue, and it wasn't until adulthood that he finally listened and started changing when I explained how much of life depended on him never, ever leaving the right thing undone. By the time this came up, several of his friends were already on a bad path to sucking at life, and I was able to parlay that into a warning message right before he hit the age where it's no longer appropriate to command and the best you can do is to suggest. 

 As for the why behind it, go look it up. Social media, multimedia, ease of avoidance... all that. Smarter more patient minds than I have written think pieces on it already. 

          As far as agreeableness, you know I've never punched anyone in the mouth since I started working at my present job, 17 years ago?  Oh, it very much still happens on occasion on boats. Sometimes people forget that a punch in the mouth is a very valid response to a disagreement.  In many ways I believe that it should perhaps be more common, as awareness of this fact does a great job in preventing escalation of conflict in isolated work environments. Some people just haven't been punched in the mouth in too long.  

      As a result of this, and the line of punch/no punch being a bit subjective but very individual in nature, being polite becomes a survival trait... which is exactly what it has always been. As a result of this unspoken awareness, disputes are settled more amicably, where, if not with smiles and rainbows, the ability to walk away and maybe even resolve something is possible. 

                 One other reason for me not to work in an office, in that I believe in natural justice, the sort where bad actors certainly deserve a beating to reestablish the social hierarchy and proper decorum in social intercourse. That's not cool among the people who wear ties to work, who seem to prefer seething followed by resentment and maybe followed up with some angry masturbation at home. 

       The information on the graph is worrisome to me. I think of modern day Japan when I see those figures. The disaffected, unhappy, disengaged men and aggressive overbearing women who like them... and very, very much vice versa.  I don't want that for us. But I also grew up somewhen else, the past being a different country, as the saying goes. Maybe this is social evolution... and if so, just as I am now, I gravitate to those who gravitate towards the counterculture. 

     Not the sort of dick and fart- related content you've come here to roll your eyes at, sorry. As always, just because I am writing superficially and sillily, which is now a word, that doesn't mean anything except that I don't share my deepest thoughts with anyone online. What you see ain't what you get, is what I'm saying, unless you see I'm retarded and juvenile, which... yeah. Guilty.