Oof, yesterday.
Yesterday started strong. With two days of rain and wind forecast, I ran a blitz out on deck in the morning and did my weekly walkthrough. We do a daily walkthrough as well as keeping eyes peeled every moment for things that ain't right, but in the weekly it's official, and once done I had found a few things to do and set out to do them.
The rain jadn't arrived but it was blowing pretty decent, a steady 15 and gusting around 25, and stuff was flying.
You'd be surprised how much dust and such gathers in a short while on a big steel boat. 'Sweepings' was the old word for it back before auntomation when you'd send 20+ guys out on deck before breakfast to tidy up with brooms. Hawsers chafe and shed flecks and bits of threads made of plastic as UV, use, and weather age them. These bits go where the wind directs them, usually into the lee of a piece of steel stucking up- pipe supports, stanchions, equipment, etc. The HQ has a pretty busy and obstructed deck- not as much open space as you'd think. On top of the sweepings we've been at anchor and the deck is liberally polkadotted with a lot of birdshit- there is an enormous amount of small bait passing out to sea right now from NY's rivers, and the seagulls are feasting. So there was thousands of dried bird shits and fish scales and dander and feathers everywhere, which is why I was wearing my sunglasses (safety sunglasses, too) out on deck despite it being gray. I was being sandblasted as the wind rose. Sweepings, scales, dirt, paint flakes, powdered birdshit. Yum.
...and something got in my eyes a few times, which I was able to get out... until the last time. Whatever it was, it got under an eyelid and lodged. Good times. We've all been there. Felt like an elephant, not a fleck of whatever, but I finished what I was doing pretty rapidly- I pulled a worn rope out of service, coiling it in one of the low-traffic areas where it will get hoisted ashore for disposal next time we're at the office. By the time I was done the elephant in my eye was roaring moderately well and I went to the head, washed my hands and face, and started looking for the fleck as I could. No dice, it was probably on the back of my eyelid.
Well, it's not fun but I dropped some artificial tears in, without success beyond my eye watering, and then switched to a full on eyewash. Used a liter of the stuff, ran a wet Q-tip under my eyelid (!), nothing.
After about 30 minutes I chanted some curses a and called the office. They had to send me ashore and I went to an opthamologist's office in a ... so-so neighborhood where I sat in a waiting room with a dozen elderly Jamaicans who were all chain smokers by the smell. Luckily there was some sort of rap on the sound system. Also, the doctor's office had a sound system. Which was playing rap.
The eye doc was a New York Jewish Doctor right out of central casting. Good guy with a good attitude. He said I was the first mariner he'd ever had as a drop-in patient and his office ladies were in a lather about how the people who got me an appointment were willing to just do anything to get me seen ASAP but in the most professional way possible.
Anyways the doc tortured me a while with an eye wash, an anaesthetic, (I really should turn spell check on, btb), then a VERY poky exam, and some flourescing dye to see the surface scratches on my eyeball, which were out into the white thankfully.
He swept (again with the q-tip) and flushed the blind area where he couldn't see, high under my eyelid, and said he got 'a little junk' but nothing major, which suggested to him that the elephant had been dislodged some point after my eye was so red and irritated that I couldn't feel the difference for all my nerve endings already saying F you to me at the time.
Oh, it was pouring, pouring rain when I got ashore, btb. I was cold and damp already and following my appointment, now cold, even more damp and with an eye so red it was glowing in the dark.
I'm in the Doughnut Hole as I type, the cell phone dead zone in NY harbor, so I can't send a photo. Imagine the cigarette lighter of an old car after you press and hold it for a full minute.
So, cold, wet and feeling glorious, I got a taxi to a CVS near the office, picked up some vasoline-like goop with antibiotics and antiinflammatories in it, and got back to the office, saturated, freezing, (it was like 53 degrees by then, not cold but cold if you've been huffing old people breath and sitting around getting sticks and fingers jammed in your eyes).
I hitched a ride on a tug and got back to the HQ out in the a chorage about 7 hours after I left.
Just... not a great day.
Today... today my eye's a bit sore but better, and no elephant. It's nasty weather still and we're getting bumped and shoved around a fair bit, as we've got barges rafted up to us and the River Rats aboard don't know how to secure a boat properly in a harbor, so they're clapping my cheeks accordion-style, stretching their lines for their sins, but beating my balls off for mine. Sadly, the river rat tankermen can't be taught to tie up properly, as they already know everything, though I did try, diplomatically.
Quoting myself, 'Hey, we're getting bashed together pretty hard. Can you pull your bow in so we're lying together snug? We're moving like an accordion now."
River rat: 'Naw, I ain't gonna tighten my bow and stern lines with hydraulics, they's finna snap.'
Me: 'They won't- you keep the barges tight, the lines can't surge and strain. They'll hold until the wind is sustained 60knots for 8-12 hours. That's the only way we found it to hold comfortably these last 15 years.'
River rat *looks at me dully*
I tried. So instead we get to spend today feeling like we're doing the cha cha.
So it goes.
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