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.