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.

          

Night time is the right time

 I'm in the middle of a marathon hitch. Not even in the middle, but getting there. 

         With projects in Brazil ramping up again, it is the right time for overtime, and this will be the longest hitch I've done since I left ships to work on tugs and barges.

    I have the opportunity to stay right on the HQ rather than jump around in the fleet for my OT.  Partner Big E is doing physical therapy after orthopedic surgery and has been out since this spring. So we have shoes to fill aboard. 

 Now I've been baking my balls off daily in the heat for 12+ hours a day, and now it's my time for the next few weeks to stand the night watch, 1800 to 0600, away from the heat of the day. It's better.  Night watch in the winter is brutal, but in the summer it's welcomed. 

   This week in Brazil, it's lamp and lighting buying time. So Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife bought some foofoo overhead lamps and shit for the indoor kitchen, entryway and living room, as well as lighting for the bedrooms and bathrooms.  I haven't seen any of it but then again I don't really give a shit so it works out. The plain truth is that the outdoor living part of the house is what interests me, as for all the drawbacks this city in Brazil has lovely temperate weather.  Low 80's in the winter. Mid 60's in the summer.

    I did take part in the landscape lighting and design of the outdoor areas, though. The future Don Paolo needs good ambiance to sit and smile and try to understand the big words in Portuguese without looking retarded. 

 

Feast or famine

 Hooboy, getting my ass kicked the last couple of days between the heat and the workload.  Today and tomorrow too, looks like. 

 I'm still caffeinating presently, in preparation for the upcoming day. We loaded deep 2 days ago, pumped off about 2/3 of our cargo until about 1am today, and are headed back to load 1000 tons more right now... just a splash, only about 2 hours to load, but 6 hrs with papers, key meetings, swinging hoses and shenanagans. I'll be taking us into Bayonne NJ in about 30 mins, sail with the tide at noon, and alongside a ship about the same size as us nearby shortly after for the afternoon. If all goes right I'll sail us around dinnertime and hand off to B once we're underway to rest this evening. 

 Rinse, repeat tomorrow.    Supposed to be 97 today, 98 tomorrow and much of the work will be out in the sun. 

 Crap. Maybe a little break midweek, as Wednesday I rotate into night watches for a few weeks so I don't put my head in the oven. The guy who seems to get skin cancer awful easy doesn't enjoy working in the sun all day. Imagine.   

Fat Aunt Fatima, RIP.

 So Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife lost another one of the old aunts last night. 

  There was Skinny Aunt Fatima, and Fat Aunt Fatima. Fat Aunt Fatima passed away last night. 

      Seriously, that's how they're separated. 

 Tia Fatima Gorda (fat Aunt Fatima) and Tia Fatima Magra (skinny Aunt Fatima). 

     Subtlety is not a Brazilian trait. 

   Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife is half Italian, half Indio (Brazilian Indian, a native). The indio side... well, Indio women are famous for their looks and also being able to catch pregnant from just a hug... which is why my wife has over 300 cousins.  

      As we discovered after my Mother-In-Law's funeral last fall, my wife will probably be the next matriarch of the extended family, after a fashion, as we plan to not be more than snowbird-style residents even after retirement. 

 But that's a thought for another day. 

   I got the renderings for my outdoor kitchen for the house in Brazil. August will hopefully see the bathrooms completed and the interior kitchen made ready for finishing, but the exterior kitchen will be the social hub, so it's set up for modular cooking, so it won't be difficult to cook for 2, or to cook for 50. Much of that will be hidden, to keep it looking simple when not in use. 

 The builder keeps jamming a car in the renderings. He's really not getting that I'm not using the side yard driveway as a driveway, (as I have driveway space on the far side of the gate behind the car in the photo),  but the pergola above it will be a grape arbor and the driveway an area for tables and seats for family. 

      Progress was scanty the past 2 months. We're entering a busy phase again, thankfully. 

Other People's Idiocy

 From my posts I sound like a hotheaded loudmouth. 

  I'm not really that hotheaded, though. I use this blog as a place for my id to go potty, and I like using sarcasm and snark to antagonize people far more that fists.   I've been punched in the mouth sufficiently to not enjoy the process, from my winters spent as a bouncer when I was a fisherman... but I'd gotten pretty good about knowing when I was close enough to goad someone into taking a swing at me, using words as a weapon. I avoid this point as an older if not particularly wiser person. 

        Last night the fools moored next to us had a very avoidable incident involving a lazy retard not doing the simple fucking job of standing his watch when they were idle and not working. 

       Even in a lay berth there has to always be a watchstander in charge on a manned vessel. And lay time is good time, especially at night. 

 Abyhow, some idiot wasn't doing his job, and a thing happened. 

   So I wake up this morning around 0430, and around 0500 I poke my head outside and walk the deck. I wasn't on watch, B is on nights right now but first light was about 15 mins before, and I'm still waking up.

   The retards from yesterday did it again. 

 I made a couple of phone calls, no answer next door.  I grabbed a 4-inch length of threaded rod with two inch-and-a-quarter nuts on it, about 3lbs, and threw it, full strength, hitting the house and waking somebody up. 

     Now, idiot me is heated at idiot all of them. I'm standing about 5 feet from a vent for my generators and when some fool I don't know comes out, I absolutely blow up. No cursing beyond 'you idiots gotta get your shit together, you're fucking up everything for all of us' repeated a few times. 

        The guy got the point, tried making excuses... I'm not his boss, it's not like I matter. I'm crossing over into busybody territory anyhow. Eventually he gets tired of my yelling at length and addresses the issue that caused all this.

     Looking back, he probably only heard half of what I was saying anyhow w/ the gen noises. 

  I HATE HATE HATE when people don't do their fucking job.  Pet peeve of mine. Anyone can, and does, fuck up.  Doing so twice means deeper issues. Not my problem, but it also is. When you work in a fleet, collective punishment is a thing. Nobody enjoys being punished for things they haven't ever done wrong, you know?

 Anyhow +1 to the list of people who hate me, though I suspect the shithead in question won't be here long. 

Sunrise, 2025

 I've been more positive in general over the past few months. It's a work thing and I think it's carried over into my personal life, which is entirely a good thing, as I pretty much live st work and while I'm on the HQ, which is 8 months out of the year, I'm working. This is very welcome, as there have been challenges, as there always are, but having a more full tank of fucks to give, emotionally, has certainly helped.

 I attribute it to Situational Distress, or more accurately, getting out of situational distress. 

 I wrote about this some time back.  Situational distress is the 'silent accumulation of operational stressors that lead to distress: cognitive fatigue, emotional stress and performance degradation in the moment. These human factors are subtle, dynamic, and often invisible to traditional mental health tools, yet they’re the most common precursors to errors and accidents at sea' 

    Basically being in the shit, with hopelessness and no sign of an end to it. 

         That's how bad it was from last September until March.  Coming back from Brazil after burying my mother-in-law and having realized on the day of her funeral that we'd been fucked out of well over $100,000 bucks by the builder of our dream home in Brazil, the culmination of almost a decade of planning, overtime, etc, that spending 9-10 months a year at work, and my wife working 80-90 hours a week for 7 of those years... for nothing. You know I haven't taken more than 3 days in a row for actual vacation since 2010. 15 years, when I went on a road trip for fun with my family. 

 So I mean that sucked, but I was dealing with it. The problem...the REAL problem, was that work suddenly became awful right as my emotional resilience redlined. Constant maintenance problems leading to terrible living conditions aboard, nonstop work with no rest and the only reward for difficult jobs being carried out correctly was that peers who were fuckups started getting rewarded for being bad sailors by being given easier jobs...just no TIME for self-care, and seemingly no shoreside support as all this was going on, just a lot of sympathy, but no change, as they attempted to manage chaos. Things seem to be better for them too. Some new blood, some new efforts and I dunno, support for them too, maybe. Over my pay grade. I knew they weren't neglecting us, just things were tough for a time. 

 And then, the HQ went to shipyard... and I got some good assignments with free time, cushy spots normally reserved for the retards, losers and fuckups, leaving me with a chance to calm down, to sleep, to work on things beyond work while at work (which is a necessary part of shipboard life lived on a career-long timeline).  Then, being given time in the shipyard with the HQ, where I arrived just... better... I was more productive than ever. I've since been just locked in, getting shit done fast and right. The current HQ, outside and in, hasn't looked this good and run this well since... well, since at least the first time I stepped foot on it about 15 years ago when I filled in for a week on here. 

    That's the shitshow that is Situational Distress. You know things are bad and hope it'll get better, but the hope has to take a backseat to practical things like just getting the fucking day over with w/out sticking your head in the oven.

    I think blogbuddy BCE is having his crisis at that point right now. Signs are positive that he's coming out of that hole. 

 So, yeah. All that popped in my head this morning when I stopped and took a second to admire the skyline here in an otherwise butt-fucking ugly port. 

 It's been a long while since I looked at God's handiwork and was glad in it... which used to be one of my favorite parts of being a sailor.

 I'm glad I noticed today. 

      So, today... today I've got a modest load of heavy fuel oil and a splash of marine diesel to pic up for a Japanese car carrier.   We're moderately busy here on the HQ. I'll work 4-5 days, then get a day or part of a day off to use as I see fit, for maintenance and sometimes just reading a book or actually sitting down to eat. 

 Better. Much better. 

    Things are going better in Brazil too. More on that at some point. 

 Anyhow, time to sail. Tide's almost slack and our tugboat just cranked her engines to warm up. 

Big oof. Poor guy.

 So the cargo surveyor mafia in NY/NJ is run by Egyptians. 

   These are 3rd party contractors that go and double check all of our cargo volumes and calculations, as well as those of the shoreside tanks or ships we load from or discharge to, to give a 2nd opinion and keep everyone honest. ... and they're 95% Egyptians. They're also almost universally gregarious, honest and hard working. 

   Today I'm loading 2 products from shore tanks in Constable Hook NJ. The surveyor is one of the younger guys, maybe 28.   Poor kid is named Osama. 

       This must be what it was like to be named Adolf in the 50's. Poor kid. 

      I really REALLY don't want an Osama in my contact list on my phone, though.  No way that doesn't get me on a list somewhere.  

 Best I could do is put his name down as Usama in my phone.  It's enough I got a lot of Mohammads, Habibs, Beshoys and Ashrafs there.  Granted half of them are Copts, pretty much ancient Catholics, but still. 

       

Ordinary Time continues

     Well, I'm still here, and while it's another unexceptional day workwise, it's been a good chance to walk the HQ's decks in the heat of the day, when the metal is expanded, and look for leaks in the many, many connections, valves and fittings. Hydraulic fittings that are nicely sealed at 80 degrees start weeping oil at 95, in two cases here. Along with the expanded metal, I was able to crank down a touch with one of the cartoonishly long pipe wrenches we keep aboard, which should see that fitting truly sealed now, and possibly forever. I think rather than try to disconnect it now it might just be easier to sink the whole fuckin barge. 

        I've been cooking with a carbon steel pan lately. First time I'm aware of, and while I'm not sold on the whole "you can make it nonstick' schtick, as it seems my breakfast laughs at 3-4 rounds of seasoning the pan the day before, I actually like working with the pan. Even when I get stuff sticking, it ain't much and it comes off with an hour's soak in water, mostly.   Where I no longer have a working thyroid, I'm pretty well limited to about 1500 calories a day unless I actually work out or get my ass kicked on deck, so I gotta make the calories count and cook well. And I have been. I made cilantro-lime chicken w/ carrots, broccoli and a touch of rice yesterday. Today is Steak, beets and a caesar salad w/o croutons. Breakfast, well, I eat well too. But that's pretty much it for  the day, foodwise. No snacks, no 3rd meal.    I'm in a careful calorie deficit at work, as I am too old to be too fat now, and seem to be losing about 1.5 lbs a week this year, so... progress. 

             I didn't get a science job I bid on, which is a bit of a bummer, as it looked like a fun project- creation of an artificial wetland in an office atrium space with a footprint that is too small to concentrate enough surface area to do the work intended (water filtration), but with a limited electrical budget allowing for moving things vertically... making a stackable series of artificial wetlands. 

  Anyhow, my 2-page proposal, with cost and energy budgeting listed, was apparently not enough. Truth be told, artificial wetlands are not my forte, but it did look fun, and it was in Texas, where I'd like to visit sometime, just not in Beaumont or Houston, where I always ended up before, and which always wasn't that much fun. 

    Well, next month there's an RFP going out for another gig, a little more up my alley. 

    I have a friend, now retired,  who made a name for himself as a botanist specializing in using plants to pull heavy metals and other toxins out of otherwise arable soil.  He basically seeded fields with weeds that had an affinity for certain contaminants, and then kept goats and let them eat the weeds. Twice a year the goats would come in, then the soil turned over and reseeded, rinse, repeat . Cost is about 5% of carting off the soil for incineration and interring in a sealed landfill but it takes a couple of years to work. And the goats don't live to a ripe old age, lol. 

   I don't know where it's a matter of no longer having the intellectual chops or just having a shorter attention span, but I like limiting myself to ideas that are helpful, that solve problems, but which can be reduced to fundamental concepts and carried out and expanded upon by anyone with a little time and experience, and not at a technician's level. 

         Well, in the meanwhile, I gots to go put the oil in the hole and turn the round things to make the oil go in the hole or not. Sadly, I am not being paid to wax orgasmic about the ideas people didn't want to pay me for this time. 

Ordinary Time

 Well, I'm on days now. Since B and I are staying aboard until Big E, our other partner, comes back from med leave, we decided to rotate watches every 3 weeks. So for the past 3 weeks, which have been damn hot, I've at least been out of the sun and working in the cooler parts of the day... until now. 

       Today we're on standby with no time yet fixed for the upcoming cargo sitting on our books... which means it will either be in 48 hours or a case of 'surprise, losers!' and 30 minutes from now. 

        In the meanwhile, we took on stores this morning and I was able to grub up (get groceries) on Monday so we've got what we need to work.  Among the boxes and the like, the company sent us 2 new mooring lines, as UV, wear and age did for several aboard here. We use synthetic lines, which break down into little fibers over time, and shed like a Portuguese girl in the springtime. Stuff gets EVERYWHERE, including in our eyes, which is a cast-iron whore to get out. 

 In the olden days on the oil tanker I worked on, I could consult with the 1st mate, get some eyeball anesthetic drops, and fish out any crap in my eye. These days, if eyewash and a little probing don't do the job, we gotta go ashore, which means a NY clinic or hospital, so you get to spend 8hrs to get seen while 600 illegal aliens are in line before you, getting everything for free. And nobody wants to go to the NY doc-in-the-box and get cholera or smallpox from some foreign mong in the waiting room. 

     But, at any rate, we're deep in the grind here and the days sure all seem the same. 

Happy Birfday America!

 Got a nice view of the NY  fireworks from the HQ tonight, as we were moored on the edge of Brooklyn Bridge Park. 

 For 25 minutes it didn't suck to be in New York. 

 It being a holiday I celebrated with a steak. I have 3 good picanhas in the deep freezer (sirloin cap, or culotte to the French). My metabolism being disordered, sadly it was only 4oz but on the upside it was delicious.  The new reality is that if I wish to see retirement, I should be eating very lightly, so cooked up broccoli and diced a zucchini. 

 And it's been great to have the night off. Back to it tomorrow. Got a pumpoff of some leftover oil, amd then loading more of two different grades.

balances and compromises

 I had a long couple of days but we're off for the night here at the HQ.  

      When nothing goes right, not a single thing beyond that you didn't fall down or crap your pants? No, I guess it wasn't that bad, but there was an unusual aggregation of shit going south this week. 

          The HQ has been modified several times to change how and what it can load and pump off. Originally it was designed to carry two separate grades of oil that didn't need to come in contact with each other- each with it's own pipelines, manifold and  multiple block valves, so that all the tanks *Can* be made common and can be used to carry just one product, or we can subdivide, and where the pipelines meet, we have multiple block valves so there is never less than 2 block valves keeping for example, gasoline and diesel fuel, so if one fails they still can't shake hands. 

 The HQ had a 3rd manifold and pipeline  added so we can carry 3 grades separately.  Loading or emptying the tanks pushes the hull deeper in the water or more shallow, and which tanks we use, and on which side (every tank has a number and the side designation- the bow tanks, called the #1's. have port and starboard sides, divided at the hull's centerline. So filling one and not the other rolls the hull over some. As we move aft, we pass the number 2's, 3's, 4's, etc.  This is important because we usually load two products at a time and often in unequal volumes... and sometimes we load such small volumes that we have to just use one tank, because we need a minimum volume of fuel in the tank in order for the cargo pumps to catch prime. 

  So we have to load our oil with a mind towards list (port and starboard tipping), trim (forward and aft tipping) and hull stress too.

    Tankships are made of steel, which is quite a bit more flexible than you'd think when you're loading tremendous mass on it. Ships MUST be flexible, as the enormous amount of energy the hull is dealing with- gravity, buoyancy, not to mention that the loads aren't static- they change as the hull bobs around, the metal MUST bend a bit to bleed off the forces involved, or it will shatter like a dry stick. So I also gotta load with a mind to not overstress the hull too. It has a limit on how much it wants to bend. If I load, say the aftmost port tank and the forewardmost starboard tank... have you ever snapped a Kitkat bar in half? 

Same reason trees are made to sway in the wind. Good one, God. 

For maximum versatility,  some of our tanks are dedicated to one type of fuel or another. #1's are for ultra low sulfur, #2's, are for low sulfur, 3's are for diesel, etc... each pair of tanks is reserved for one grade of fuel.  This is done because sulfur content is critically important. Plenty of companies have had 7-figure fines for burning the wrong fuel in the wrong place... yeah, the ocean has emissions control schemes. Some countries have more strict regulations than others, and there's a global limit on how high a sulfur content you can burn at all. Sulfur provides lubricity to the parts of the engine that are exposed to the fuel, but it's also a deeply noxious gas in terms of emissions. There's a balancing act there. We don't lump all the like product tanks together because sometimes we load just one product, and we have to distribute that weight evenly for trim, list and stress, too, especially because the other tanks that carry other products will stay empty.  There are plenty of times I will, for example, load tanks towards the midships and fill just one tank on each side- for example, I will fill #2 starboard and #5 port.    Ballast is often used to even out hull stresses, tankers being double hulled, the space between the outer hull and the cargo tanks can be flooded with water to weigh the ship down or even out stress... but the HQ is the right combination of built heavy and built for non-oceangoing service, so we don't need water ballast while bunkering in protected bays, lakes or sounds.  Keeps things simple. 

 Now, next thing is ensuring I can empty the tanks. Each tank has a sump, a low point, where the suction pipe is.  The sumps are located in an aft corner of the tanks, and closest to the centerline. The tanks have a flat bottom, so the higher the difference between bow and stern draft of the hull, the more that the oil flows 'downhill' so the dregs come off faster... but it's black oil, thick stuff, and it clings to surfaces, so it's impossible to get rid of the last little bit. In winter, when the hull is cold, the cold steel makes the oil solidify, so any sort of downhill difference becomes even more important so as not to end up with 'heavy bottoms,' or a deep sludge of solidified fuel.  By end of February, this is almost inevitable to greater or lesser degrees. 

    Now, we have loading programs that help us calculate hull stress and predict trim and list to help us load and discharge safely... It can also be done by hand using a calculator, pen and paper and some charts the builder gave us when the hull was new, but the truth is that the programs are a backstop against experience and understanding. Now, we MUST use all tools in our toolbox to do our job right- that is, if you have two ways of measuring something, two is one and one is none- that is, you are obligated to use every tool appropriate to the situation... and the present HQ is almost an identical hull to my last HQ, so I have 15 years of experience with this hull and its' idiosyncrasies. I know what load plans work well and what doesn't, off the top of my head... but more important, I know that when I am NOT dealing with a gimme of a cargo load, which is about 15-20% of the time,  I know the process and the parameters that keep things bulletproof in terms of safety...There's still an experience factor though, a point where the computer can tell you stress levels on the hull but it can't tell you if you'll be able to do a job if the volumes change and a ship decides they don't want all the fuel they ordered and now you have, say, 400 more tons of fuel than you had expected, causing a port list, when you had loaded based on the presumption that you'd have an even keel and that tank empty when you started pumping off another tank. 

   Just an example.    Just like my post from last week, my poo writing skills make this sound much more interesting than it is. Ever try to cook in a skillet but you went a little light on the oil and you have to tilt the pan to get some more from the edge of the pan?   Same same. 

      

  

Father, the Sleeper Has Awakened!

 

Double standards

 Well, the ride across NY harbor to go pick up tonight's cargo was done with one of our real A-squad tugs. It was a good chance to catch up a bit with people I really like and the captain absolutely greased the docking. Like buttah. 

       We have some tug captains and mates who I like, who range from the best of the best to... not really very good, lol. 

      Today's move was... no notes. Ideal.  When it's someone who's not a good boathandler, but whom I genuinely like at the wheel and they've absolutely fucked the dog on a job, well, we laugh about it and wait. 

    When it's someone I don't care for, OTOH, I am just with child, waiting to be displeased, lol, even if they're slicker'n goose shit and a pro, I'll give respect readily but grudgingly. If they're hsving a bad day, though, I'll admit to being on stamdby ready with foul language and a show of patience... you know, like an asshole. 

 If it weren't for double standards, after all, I'd have no standards at all. 

Ladies and Gents, just so you know, I'm packin.'

 Well, I'm working nights here on HAWSEPIPER's Afloat Global HQ/ Center for Involuntary Abstinence. Has anything new been going on in the world? 

Crazy days. 

 I was unhappy that while I was at home the first week, we had a completely scratch crew aboard- I did a good handover, taking the time to walk through with the ride over crew, go over the books and my copious notes on what they needed to know. 

    I mean, nobody drives the car like the owner, of course some things aren't going to go smoothly, and I assume there'd be a learning curve and some sequelae I'd deal with on coming back to work, but we're professionals, sorta, and the senior of the fill-in guys is no spring chicken, and jumps around a lot working over on his time off. Guy would know a few things about a few things, and did. But not everything, and of course he's got no vessel-specific experience, which is a very valuable thing. No matter, he arrived behind the 8 ball at some level, which is what happens on your first time on a new vessel. You do your best and your past experience gets you through. I knew the guy wasn't going to  sink my HQ. Still, one of my biggest concerns was that no matter how experienced a tankerman is, many guys lack the experience and patience to properly 'run in' a new deepwell cargo pump, at least to what my standard (and that of the guys who taught me) is. 

 So we have 3 different cargo pumps on the HQ, segregated within 3 separate piping systems so that we can carry 3 different grades of noncompatible fuel at the same time without the need to flush and wash the tanks and piping when we change products. specific tanks on board ONLY carry specific types of fuel. 

For our cargo pumps, essentially we have large diesel engines mounted on a platform, with a transmission and reduction gear bolted to it, that is connected by a 6' stub shaft to a right-angle drive, which is bolted to the top of a pump shaft that runs deep in the tanks. 

  I'm not showing you pictures of my setup, because I didn't ask my employer if I could. It's a respect thing, even though they'd probably be cool with it. 

Similar to this, just much bigger. 

The pump shaft is a steel cylinder that runs from deck level to the bottom of the cargo tank piping. The piping sits about 2 1/2 feet above the bottom of the tanks and runs through all the tanks with t-connections to sumps in the individual tanks- We have two pipelines that run fore and aft down the whole hull, and each branches to each tank, and one set of tanks midships that have their own pump sitting on deck above them.  At the base of the pump shaft is a 3-stage impeller that forces oil upwards, where it hits the top of the pump shaft and exits into the above-deck pipelines. 

close enough. This actually shows a mechanically-sealed pump, whereas I have a stuffing-box seal, seen below.

     The shaft seal at the top of the pump shaft is a packing gland, AKA a stuffing box.  I work with diesel and heavy fuel oil, which thankfully have not-so-explosive vapors compared to gasoline or naptha or other nastiness.  Those fuels use mechanical shaft seals with similar pump setups. very different animal. 

The packing is fine-woven teflon-impregnated synthetic material (used to be greased cotton), cut into ring shapes, and compressed by a bronze collar down to the bottom of the stuffing box by bolts. The tighter you compress the packing down, the more it expands outward.  This generates heat by friction. Now, working with oil, heat is bad when there is a lot of it, of course. My big concern is that not all tankermen have experience in running-in or repacking worn out packing in a stuffing box. Many just call and ask for an engineer to take care of it.  On the HQ we only get an engineer on-scene if we make a phone call, and being handy guys, can do many tasks ourselves (which used to be required), and like many old-school tankermen, we've all fucked around with stuffing boxes much much more than we'd like... but we weren't there. The riding-over guys were there. 

    Now, 'running in' a stuffing box isn't rocket science. When the pump is first used (and not run dry, actually pumping fluid), at low pressure you have the collar that pushes down the packing set fairly loose, and wait for the fluid to work it's way up through the packing material as pressure rises inside the pump. when it starts dripping (if it starts dripping. It might not until the pressure gets higher), you tighten down on the bolts that force the collar deeper to slow the seep, 1/8 or 1/4 turn at a time on the nuts. When the seep slows, you sit back and wait. After a few minutes, as friction builds, the packing material now has oil soaking in it too, and the oil is getting hot, along with the teflon-impregnated fibers and the heat will transfer to the stuffing box and shaft too. After a few minutes it will start to smoke a bit, at which point you shut down the pump, and let it cool for 20 or so minutes. 

     Now, you want the collar that compresses the packing to be made of bronze, because it's more ductile and wears easier than steel. Going back and forth tightening and loosening the nuts that force the collar down  isn't' a precise process and the collar is fitted closely to the drive shaft. It WILL rub against the shaft at some point, and being made of bronze, the bronze will heat up and start to wear away a bit (and there being oil seeping out, will smoke too. It will melt if you let the heat build, but in my experience it's not unusual to see some fine powdered bronze around the collar after it's worn in. 

  The takeaway here is that the heat has to be managed, and it's necessary. I WANT to see the heat build, as everything wears in. I'm hanging out with an infrared thermometer or a Mark 1 Index Finger, and when it gets hot and smokes or just starts feeling hot hot, the pump is stopped and it's time to let it cool. 

     When the pump is stopped, the oil in the shaft falls down to the same height as the oil in the cargo tanks, and the heat dissapates rapidly, as the heat was limited to a very small area. Before the heat dissapates, though, the friction actually bakes the shaft packing material, hardening it at its' surfaces, and making it less permeable. After the whole works cools to the point that it's merely warm to the touch, the pump can be restarted, and the  oil will usually seep at a much lower rate or not at all... if it still seeps at a high rate, the nuts on the collar can be tightened down a bit more, and then if all is well, I watch the heat again. Ideally, the heat will not rise to anywhere near what it did the first time. If it does, the pump must be shut down again and the box allowed to cool, rinse and repeat until satisfied. 

       Now, that was a lot of typing to describe, badly, a VERY simple process...which the fill-in-guys emphatically didn't do. They didn't blow up my barge, thankfully, the system is more retard-proof than that, but the fill-in guys sure  made a mess, which they should have known how to avoid. Without airing laindry publicly, knowing what I know about the people involved, I guess I shouldn't be surprised... but in a stroke of good luck, my partner B arrived a week before I came back to work, and found that the engineers had been called to unfuck things and the fill-in guys tidied up halfassedly at least... and B is a guy who abhors disorder. I arrived to find everything suspiciously as good as new, which is odd in a not-so-clean process, and got the 411, and all is well without my having had to do squat. Which I like very much. 

   Anyhow, that took way longer to write about than the download I got from B over what happened. 

"What happened here?" 

"That shithead _________ guy fucked up and killed the packing on the port pump.. He had the engineers unfuck it 'n repacked 'afore I got here." 

"Well I told the guy the pump ain't been run-in yet, before I went home. How bad was it?"

"Bad enough."

"Damn."

"Damn." 

We're coming up on 15 years of working together, B and I. We don't have to talk much to understand each other on multiple levels. Benefits of working with a good guy for a long time. 

Big Box Race Relations and other deep things.

'Tis the day before crew change and so I have arrived to NY and as always it's a gray, foggy, shitty day. Appropriate. I feel... funereal.   Had a great 2 weeks and other than still having a second asshole on the back of my hand courtesy of the cancer fairy and my dermatologist, it was a good 2 weeks. Restful. 

Tomorrow early I retun to the HQ to see how bad the fill-in-crew fucked it up. I heard bad things. 

 But that isn't why I am writing. 

 So I changed my big box store membership from Cosco to BJ's about 5 years ago. Both have stores in Brooklyn, where sadly the HQ is homeported.

 Cosco has more of what I want and is much closer to the office and lay beths... but Cosco Brooklyn is a hell on earth.  Overrun by ultrarude elderly asians, the women especially, as they love to stare at you and yell when you're, God Forbid, eyeing the same selections as them. Waiting politely is not a thing.  To be fair, to a lesser extent the Jewish grandmothers also can be a handful, and they shop in groups, taking great joy in harassing the register clerks and causing delays. 

   BJ's while not as matched to my interest, is further out, close to JFK Airport, and going there means stacking up butts-to-nuts with surly and kinda rude assorted Slavs who also don't jive with waiting politely but do so in a more passive-aggressive manner than the Wrinkled Yellow Menace, and who yell a whole lot less, sharing the Use-Your-Indoor-Voice values I enjoy. 

 Today something was off at the BJ's. Not one shopping cart to be found in the parking garage... and an unusual number of very short very dried up-looking ladies loading things into minivans while slightly less short old men smoked and made gestures and pointed at where the old ladies were to put their bulky shit in the minivan, all without helping.  

 Asia has invaded my Bohunk BJ's. Inside?  Thunderdome Rules. 

 Well, I've been here before. My Cosco days taught me a lot. Male eye contact. Do not slow down and try never to let the cart roll to a full stop or gridlock happens and 5 old prunes will start throwing gang signs and caterwauling a mile a minute in foreign, while staring out from under little hats with unusually long brims. 

The day after the perfect day

 I feel great this morning. 

    The sun's out, I slept in (for me. 7am) late, and I appear to have suffered no negative consequences for having spent an entire day dedicated to flirting with overindulgence of many sorts. 

      Yesterday was a gorgeous hot Florida summer day. I knocked out chores and errands by 10am yesterday, and so just before noon Inappropriately Hot foreign Wife and I loaded up a half-bushel tin with beer, ice, water and soda, opened up the umbrellas that keep me from dying of sun exposure in my own back yard, and jumped in the pool, where we stayed for the next 7 hours. We mostly didn't tune out the world, but conscious that this is my last weekend before what will of necessity be be a big push at work for the remainder of the summer, we avoided serious business, and proceeded to drink, eat (I ordered a big mess of Korean BBQ wings), and swim and be... languid? No, wrong word. We alternated between swimming, floating around and generally enjoying each other's company while maintaining a moderate buzz with the beer. 

   My wife would occasionally come out of the pool to load up on coconut oil and sit out in the sun, and toasted to the gorgeous bronze color, the one that Brazilian morenas (brunettes) are famous for. I mostly managed to stay in the shade, as I already have had skin cancer twice (more on that later) and am a believer now that the horse is well and away out through that barn door.  Still, I got pinked up pretty good, even with sunscreen, because short of wearing a burka, I am going to burn when I'm outside between spring and fall, and I have worked outside pretty much since I was 8. 

      Thing is, we drank a lot of water (and diet soda too, for me) and after the pool day was done, we drank more water and spent the evening mostly on the couch before going to bed around 2300... and so, today, armed with plenty of vitamin D, I'm well rested, and while not sore from the exercise of swimming all day, I'm also not hung over or dehydrated... in fact, I feel pretty good, and yesterday was the first day my hamburgered hand felt ok too, and it's still OK today. 

      The morning after I got home from my last trip, I had an appointment with my dermatologist to get the back of my left hand chewed up and burnt to shit, as I had skin cancer starting in one spot but caught early enough that they didn't need to cut on me, but rather scraped my hand raw and then burn the shit out of a quarter-sized area with a cautery to kill any leftover cancer cells that might have escaped being scraped off. Turns out, if you remove about a sixteenth of an inch of depth of skin and then light it on fire, it hurts more and for longer than simply slicing it and stitching it shut. Who knew?   For the last week my hand has been blown up like a cartoon character and hurt like balls any time that my hand was positioned below my heart. Hydrostatic pressure hurts burns. I've mostly been letting the area dry out and scab over, but cover it when I go out, because it looks like I have a second asshole growing out of the back of my hand and who wants to see that? 

 But, it's healed enough and yesterday it felt ok, finally... and spending the day in the water washed away the scabbing, and there's already mostly nice smooth pink skin underneath. I have a little scabbed area, maybe 20% of the scar, today, but the other 80% appears to be healing well, so when I do go back to work, maybe I won't look like I've been chosen to bear the stigmata. 

 I'm hoping it will look like a bullet wound, and not like someone put out their cigar on my hand. 

______________________________________________

 Now, we got a nice surprise in the form of news from Brazil, too. Construction is  showing some real progress, and the city where our house is located finally approved all the paperwork that wasn't filed as required by the original contractor who embezzled from us, and yesterday the title of the property arrived at our lawyer's office, only 18 months late, so there's a little city at a crossroads in Brazil that has a globetrotting local girl who lives abroad, and her participation trophy husband, with a residence now on the tax rolls there. 

   So, yeah, holy shit I own a house in Brazil. 

The breeze feels good, gravity does not

 Fridays at home are for day drinking and swimming. We've been in the pool for 3 hours and a rack of beers. 

     I got out of the pool a few minutes ago for the first time. Gravity was a stone cold bitch after 3 hours without it. In the pool I am a more buoyant version of my 20-something self; outside? Joint aches, hard stone decking... it was awful. 

 I have a 12-foot umbrella over one corner of the pool to rest under while I scorch in the sun and Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife bronzes herself into Brazilian tan perfection.  

A huge day happened in Brazil for us while we were slapping on sunscreen this afternoon too; more on that later. 

Everyone's being an asshole...

 I missed the last 3 days in the pool on account of a sunburn... what kind of dumbshit with skin cancer gets a sunburn? 

 The kind who lives in Florida in June I guess. Whatever, I swam 3/4 of a mile after 4 shots of whisky and 4 beers and getting the back of my hand hamburgered w/my latest skin cancer removal. 

 Not bad .

Don't Make Me Be The Adult In The Room

I'll admit that I looked the gift horse in the mouth. 

        Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife started her new job yesterday. Losing her last job a few months ago shortly after hsving committed to spending a whole shitpot of money on construction of our house in Brazil, we've been running redlined for some time, and the new job was very welcome. 

    Sadly, many months ago I had rented a little cabin in the Blue Ridge mountains, set for next week. This was to be our only little vacation for 2025, and with the new job, we won't be going. I feel worse for her, really.

 I mean, I'm as pleased as a hen with a new egg simply for being able to go home for 2 weeks straight. It's a bummer we won't get to travel, but I'll be at home and there's whisky there and a pool and my wife and kid. And for some reason, my wife, who is attractive where I am not, seems to enjoy my company. Cry me a river, right?  

We're in our 50's.  She doesn't age much, whereas I am apparently Dorian Gray's picture, aging for both of us. 

Plus, last week my sister, who hasn't been in good health for some time, slipped and fell in the kitchen and broke 2 vertebrae, had a spinal fusion done 2 days later.  So I'll be able to visit her in the rehab as she's hobbling about with her walker. Between her and my wife's last job, April and May were the only 2 months in the past 6-8 months or so where I didn't spend a couple of days in a hospital. I will have time to visit now, be the giant ray of sunshine that I am. 

      Now, my company tacked a cargo on us last minute that will fuck with crew change (as is tradition), which kilt my sleep last night what with the wailing and gnashing of teeth and all, so I was up at 0200, but regardless, in 7-8 hours I should be set ashore, I hope, to make my way to the airport for my complementary bag search and handjob. 

    

We're now 4 days into the high holy month of Gay Ramadan. Working on boats means I don't get bombarded by it. We'll see what happens when I get ashore.  I don't really get into it. I'm holding out for July, which is Sloth month. 

        

Disappointing but not unexpected

 Some crappy news from Brazil.

    The prosecutor's office reported Friday that they decline to indict the builder who ripped me off during construction of our house in Brazil. 

         Persuing criminal charges against the guy was always going to be an uphill battle. As the builder was married to a 3rd cousin (who was also my wife's childhood best friend) much of the rehab work on the house was done without a contract and without a set salary being paid to the builder. 

 And sonufabitch we got suckered. You know that motherfucker picked me up in a Toyota Hilux to bring me to my mother in law's funeral. I paid for that fucking truck, I realize now.  The balls on him.

      The prosecutor's report said that proof of intent to defraud was unlikely to be proven, as the issues at hand could be more easily explained by incompetence, negligence and gross mismanagement of construction, and with no contract to provide a framework for payment and construction milestones, the builder could cite subjective difficulties in construction with minimal evidence. 

 Other countries have weird legal standards. IMO.  

   The upside here is that the report also said that there is ample evidence of mismanagement, negligence, misrepresentstion of credentials and failure to abide by existing agreements and required construction standards to justify a civil suit for damages.  

      Well, it would have been nice to see the shitheel get knocked in the dirt, but more importantly, as we're out over 6 figures worth of cash we worked (and work, as in present tense) insane hours to send, I want some of my money back, and we have good odds of getting it... though whether it can be collected from the SOB is a nother matter. 

         I'm saddened but not surprised by all this. Brazil is not famed as a shining beacon of justice in the world... and by not operating under a contract, I put my dick on the chopping block and can't be too self-righteous that I didn't look whether or not I was being made guest of honor at a very aggressive bris. 

           I did my wailing and gnashing of teeth already and I'm tired of mourning. 

        Now, the NEW project manager is co-organizing with the new architect and does have a contract. The house is enclosed, and waiting on finishing touches- tiling, installation of sinks, cabinets, toilets, counters, lamps and the like. Done in 1/3 of the time that the dickhead original builder took to get half done. 

 The facade is under reconstruction now. The facade looks a lot like a storefront to me, but it's just a visual block. Going through the door just puts you in an enclosed foyer. There is also a gate that opens to the driveway. It looks nothing like a house to me.  As of a few weeks ago it looked like present-day Gaza. 

The yard, outbuildings, pool, outdoor kitchen and mother-in-law apartment (which will be where my wife and I stay, as it's built to be airy and sunny for my claustrophobic ass) are still all in states of  suspended construction. I hope to resume there this fall if I can scrape the money up. 

Pictures eventually.

 Anyhow, 2 more days and a wake-up and I can sit in the pool at home and marinate over it. 

 

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. 

Ass: Kicked. State: Happy

 I had a good week.

       I mean, it's still going but it's been a good week. We don't have days off here at HAWSEPIPER's Afloat Global HQ. 

        The HQ sailed from the shipyard on Thursday. We were working right up until sailing. When our assist tugs arrived to pull us out, we still had a half dozen shipyard workers aboard grinding and welding the last project, modifying the cradles for our deck cranes. 

  After I got done with the interior work on the house, I worked outside with the shipyard project manager and the yardbirds. What followed were some days of climbing and crawling, turning wrenches and making and checking off lists. I'm going to bed sore and tired every single day, but you know, I've been enjoying it. 

      Bunkering near enough to nonstop has been bad for me mentally. I'm not good at repetitive mindless work and I didn't choose to work on the water to do the same bullshit every day with no pleasure to be had in the process. I think the last 2 months have been very good for me in that regard. I'm doing different things and seeing different places. 

       ...So we're back in Brooklyn now, but the work's not done yet. Before we go back into service next week, the Coast Guard has to come inspect us and give us their blessing for what we've done. And I have to finish putting the HQ back into service, which is mostly a matter of stenciling objects, inspecting safety gear and overseeing a thousand little things.  

    As an example, I had to spend 2 hours yesterday dealing with scupper plugs. All oil tank vessels have deck containment- that is, the perimeter of the decks are ringed with a short steel wall, so that any spilled oil can't go over the side. On the HQ the deck containment is a 10-inch tall steel plate welded to the deck that runs the entire cargo deck.  Rainwater and oil pool if left to accumulate. In theory the  containment should hold thousands and thousands of gallons of oil, keeping it out of the water... but we're damn good at keeping oil in the tanks, so instead the deck containment mostly traps rainwater. We have big rubber plugs to block off about 20 scuppers, drain holes around the perimeter, and they stay in at all times when we're working, being removed to drain water only when needed and only under direct supervision. We're funny about that. 

 Well, yesterday I had to find them all, (they were removed for shipyard) inspect them, replace any with damage or dry rot, and hammer them back in. While doing that I had to make lists of supplies I need, answer phone calls, talk to anf work with our shoreside support, managers, the big boss, give tours to show off the work done, etc. 

      It being a holiday weekend, the staff all bailed out in the afternoon, and I had a couple of blissful quiet hours, stenciling pipelines, running down papers, and dodging the on and off rain. 

     Oh. And my partner B came aboard. His temporary assigned barge is still ongoing, but he was moored down the street and had time to inspect the work done and move some of his things back in. It was mostly just good to see my friend. For the past 15 years we've spent 6 months out of the year together at work 24/7, so not seeing him for 2 months, it took some time to catch up. 

   Today being Saturday on a holiday weekend I have work to do. More stenciling, more inspecting, more log-keeping and today, oil changes on a generator and at some point we'll take on fuel for my own needs too. Since we burn low-sulfur MGO (marine gasoil, a type of very clean diesel oil) same as our tugs, one of my company's tugs will come alongside and we'll take on a chunk of their fuel. Generally the tugs carry 50,000 to 70,000 gallons of fuel so they can spare me some of that. 

      I do plan to wrap up early today, not quite banker's hours but a 9 hour day, and get some hardtack, rum and salt beef (by which I,sadly, mean salad, diet pepsi and chicken breast) as well as some sundry office supplies for work. 

 Back to it. 

 

Man at work

 A couple of busy days later...

      Ok, wow, so there's been a lot going on here in the shipyard. I've been working with my employer's project engineer, the guy in charge of shipyard stuff, and he's one hard working dude. Good guy, too. He's mostly left me to do whst I want to do, which is to get the HQ ready to go back to work, and it being a zoo outside with workers everywhere, I've mostly been inside, painting, scrubbing and the like. 

      I had a good talk with the project manager about how influential living conditions and ergonomics aboard are on attitude and productivity. My company has newer vessels and barges- the HQ just had her 20th birthday and had a 30 year life expectancy when built I believe... the ergonomics of the living quarters are good- better than the newer tank barges, which have larger quarters but terrible ergonomics which make them far less pleasant. For some reason my employer builds tugoats with beautiful accomodations, fine finished wood, plenty of stainless steel, and durable surfaces... it certainly wows new hires and guys who have worked elsewhere... the tankermen, OTOH, get formica, linoleum, OSB plywood and ABS plastic. BUT, as a good sailor knows, a little putty and paint makes a finish what it ain't... and the shipyard manager even let me borrow his gorgeous F350 diesel pickup to hit the hsrdware store for putty and paint. 

  I'm working 7am to 6pm. Taking it easy, lol. Just 11 hours. It's been great to be mostly let to do what I want, since what I want is for my barge to be productive and pleasant to work on, and the shipyard is putting a lot of new pump parts and hydraulics in. Things are looking well. 

 

The Half-Assed Frabjous Day

 It was a good moment, walking onto the HQ for the first time in 2 months yesterday. I have been waiting for the day. 

   Every 5 years, my company (and pretty much everyone else too) pulls all their tugs and barges out of the water for major maintenance. Yesterday morning while I was on my way here, the HQ was launched back in the water and moved to a berth at the shipyard, where work on her internals continues. 

     Yesterday was messy. As I wrote in my last post, I effed the dog and left some stuff at the office by mistske, which I realized an hour after my taxi left New York. We had to turn around, and got into the city during peak rush hour. Fun stuff. My driver, whom I know well, normally looks like a short, chubby and jolly Osama Bin Laden... I'm definitely on his 'bomb him twice' list this week. 

    I got to the shipyard after 2pm.  The yardbirds had already connected shore power, and there were electricians and mechanics up the wazoo in the gen house. The old and underpowered generators are in pieces... but sadly weren't upgraded it seems. 

    The house?   It was bad. Guys had been working on the alarms and upgrading the tank monitoring system in the office, so it was a mess, but also they were uding the head, the toilet, as an outhouse.   Without power and running water, a marine toilet is just a fancy hole to piss and crap in. Which they were doing.  So the entire house smells like a side street in Mumbai. 

    I spent 5 hours cleaning, and they gave me a yard worker to help, which was nice. Jesus, who's a little Mexican bro, and myself, dug in and got the quarters livable. He went home at 4, and by 8pm I had my bunk made and made a BLT for myself.  Most of my cleaning supplies everything not bolted down is gone, stolen by the yardbirds, which is called Cappebar, a nasty but historically traditional practice, but I found a bottle of bleach, a bottle of dish soap and also some sort of cleaning fluid and a box of rags, as well. I tried mixing the bleach and cleaner, as it wasn't a very good cleaner, outside of course in case it turned into foofoo gas, a variant of phosgene, which is good for killing Englishmen in trench warfare but not great at cleaning counters. 

       Today is more of the same. I'm focusing on the house, and unfucking it for my own sake. I've got to hike to town today to hit up the local grocery for more cleaning supplies. Tomorrow and this weekend I will be outside putting stencils on things and getting us compliant with Uncle Sugar's rulebook.   We should be back in service in about 10 days. In the meanwhile, I'm enjoying working alone when the yardbirds aren't here.

    I will say that this area, the Hudson Valley about 100 miles north of NY, is really, really pretty.