HAWSEPIPER: The Longest Climb

I got steam heat

2012-01-29T11:25:00.000-08:00

OK, sorry for the obscure show tunes reference, first off.

Today's post was inspired by Borepatch's great mention of the ongoing saga of the S.S. UNITED STATES

Modern ships are powered with giant slow-speed diesel engines, ranging in size from that of a small house to that of, well, a larger house.

The era of sail may be over, but there are still sailing ships being built. So it goes with steam- the heyday of steam ships ended in the 1970's, but you will still find plenty of ships from that era working. While far less efficient than steam power in terms of fuel consumption per horsepower (burning 2+ times as much fuel per hour when compared to equivalent modern diesel engines) steam power still holds several advantages- a longer service interval for major maintenance, and instant throttle change variability and availability, as well.

Ships' diesel engines don't have transmissions- they're just too big for that sort of thing, and the transmission to handle that much power would be half the size of the engine itself. So, to go in reverse, the engine needs to be stopped and restarted in the opposite direction. A massive reserve of compressed air must be held in readiness for this purpose, but, even so, there is a limit to how often an engine can be shifted in a short time- I've never done anything but simulator time on a diesel plant, but the simulator I trained on was modeled for training on a top of the line ship, and had only 6-7 shifts available in a 15 minute period. This makes port entry a determined process- once started, it's not so easy to stop!
At sea speed, modern diesels must be throttled down gently- in the range of 1rpm at a time, literally, when shifting from sea speed to full ahead (full ahead is actually not quite 100% of the usual throttle range- it's the full speed available when throttling may be necessary. As I said, diesels don't like to change speed. Such a large engine must be cooled and warmed slowly to avoid thermal stress to the engine, so going from sea speed to a speed where the engine cools to a point where it can be throttled more rapidly is critical.

A steam plant requires changing the number of burners active, and opening and closing valves. There is infinite number of throttle changes and shifts available. No worrying about running out of air. To go forward, open one valve. Faster? Open the same valve more. Stop? Close the valve. Stop fast? Close the valve, and open the reverse valve. Reverse? Open the reverse valve. Faster reverse? Open the reverse valve more. That's it. 2 valves, and there are your throttle controls.

One is labeled 'ahead' and the other 'astern.' Pretty simple.

The steam revolution didn't stop at the turn of the last century. The last two generations of steamship were turbine powered- no giant cylinders turning a shaft like you saw in 'Titanic'. JUst two turbines in the engine room. For a single turbine array, there is a small, high-pressure turbine that takes steam direct from the boiler system, and then a larger low-pressure turbine that takes the now partially-spent steam from the high pressure turbine and gets some more oomph from it before returning the steam to the condensers and ultimately back to the boilers.

Silver one is the high-pressure turbine, and the larger one is the low-pressure turbine. This was the powerplant on a 700-foot tanker.

The boiler array is far larger than the turbines, requiring it's own room. The boilers feeding the above turbines were the size of a house- 3 stories tall and 60 feet wide, maybe 30 feet deep, and there were two of them.

I started out in the engine room of a steam ship. I planned on staying there. One long weekend spent hanging halfway out of one of these boilers during a breakdown in the Caribbean was enough to send me out on deck forever. Burns, heat, heatstroke, repeat for 3 days.

Connecting the turbines to the shaft is the bull gear, a transmission that takes power from both of the turbines, which are spinning at differing rates. Beyond the bulkhead in this last photo is the propeller and rudder.

pick-me-up

2012-01-26T07:15:00.000-08:00

Just some sumpthin sumpthin to get us all through the week. As always, direct from Brazil.

please help! Your support needed

2012-01-25T11:57:00.000-08:00

Please visit this site and support the author! After a rapid increase in violence, Capt. Peter Boucher has submitted the first complaint to the International Court of Justice ('The Hague') on behalf of the 300+ seafarers abandoned by employers and governments and held for ransom by pirates in Somalia.

http://nauticallog.blogspot.com/2012/01/complaint.html

It was great to hear that President Teleprompter authorized the use of force to retrieve apair of aid workers yesterday; notably, a pretty blond woman and her companion who were being held in Somalia when word was received that her health was declining rapidly. Of course, the 300+ seafarers who are for the most part, ah, the wrong shade of brown, can go pound sand. As you will read, there has been a drastic surge in violence against hostages now that the Somalians have realized that shipowners and nations have little to no interest in paying for the release of human beings, although cargo and pirate-controlled ships still gets ransomed nicely.

Personally, what do I take away from this? The most safe course of action that you can carry out as a professional mariner is to be blond with blue eyes, or at the least sleeping with someone who fits that description.

Ladies

I joke, but in all seriousness, I am also fairly disgusted that politics and appearances, and quite possibly boobs are the determining factor in who gets rescued and who gets left to go have their hands chopped off left to die at the hands of inhuman vermin who deserve a bullet to the brainpan and a piece of ham stuffed in their mouth before burial in the name of Habeus Corpus.

Done

2012-01-24T23:12:00.001-08:00

Finished reading Kevin Glennon's "Vikings,Vampires and Mailmen." Kevin was kind enough to send me to sea with an advance copy. I'll be posting a review soon, and, in the meanwhile, feel free to click on the "United States Vampire Service" logo.

I finished the book because I came off watch with a stick up my ass, and couldn't sleep, so I needed some cooling off time. We carried a cargo parcel a grand total of 5 miles, with about an hour between when the cargo surveyor (the guy who measures and takes the temperature of the cargo, to calculate volume officially for the refiner, as opposed to me, who calculates volume for the carrier (us) and for the official paperwork at the discharge port) left us, and the receiver's surveyor came aboard.
At any rate, in the hour between surveyor's reports, the cargo cooled a tenth of a degree, which meant that the volume changed about 1/8 inch in all of our tanks. The second surveyor, who smelled powerfully of foot and unwashed ass, kicked up a slight shitstorm over the volume difference. As I explained hemidemisemipatiently that the cargo was sold by weight, and not volume, (which he should have known), there would be no issue, as the volume could be calculated using a correction factor for temperature's effect on density.

At any rate, dealing with a man who smelled like hot spicy crotch did little for my patience, but I didn't let the fact that he was sitting in a chair upholstered with fabric throw me off too much. We have Febreeze on board for just that reason. Eastern European and a smaller proportion of East Indian engineers have the same deep abiding hatred of regular baths. It unsettles the humours, apparently.
After signing off of yet another surveyor's report, and opening all portholes, vents and kicking on the fans, I turned in. I quickly realized that the smell from the pre-discharge conference had wafted into my room. Goddamned common heating intakes. Faced with the vague funk of rotten onions, I read my book, and suddenly it was 2 hours later and the book was finished. Thank God I was most of the way done before I started, as I had to sleep prior to waking up for the midwatch.
A few hours later, I was awoken by the smell of the cargo surveyor, who apparently didn't take advantage of his free time by attending to personal hygiene. I asked my tankerman how long the surveyor had been aboard before I came out of the bunkroom. 30 seconds to a minute, apparently. Christ, that guy really left an impression. We then spent the world's longest hour ever going over paperwork. I set the land speed record for killing trees by trying to get the man out the door in 10 minutes or less, but it was not to be.
After the Hour of Power was over, the man was gone, and we were ready to sail. I remarked to the deckhand on watch that since the entire house smelled like an unwashed hamster cage, we needed to invite a dog in to shit on the floor to improve the smell.
But now it's 3am, almost, and we're at a lay berth with 12 hours to go before the next cargo starts. I shortened my lifespan with a rigorous fogging of the air with alternating batches of disinfectant and deodorizer, and the prospect of a few hours of peace before it all begins again.

Lazy effer

2012-01-22T07:48:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday, which means that when I'm not busy, I'm tidying my space.
With no prospect of going to mass today, as is the cast about 95% of Sundays while I'm at work, I have my little survival ritual. As things worked out, I rolled out of bed to take the watch at 0800, and finished up a cargo discharge in Howland Hook, NY. This left us with an hour's ride over to Brooklyn soon after. While underway, I sorted papers and vacuumed my galley and head.

I'm going to confess here that I have a weird bathroom here at HAWSEPIPER's afloat global HQ and gas'n' guzzle. Oh, shit, by 'head' earlier, I meant bathroom. Not, you know, head head or head. Anyways, my head/laundry has a turd burner.

A turd burner is an electric toilet. By electric toilet, I mean it bakes your biscuits until there is nothing left but sterile powder. It's like a crematorium for last night's steak. Anyhow, once every 2 weeks it's time to clean out the ash pan in the incinerator. This is why we have 2 vacuums. One for the deck and carpets, and one for the ghosts of dinner past. By royal acclaim, the captain on board has dooty duty. This is a distasteful but dramatic way to reinforce the concept that there is no job that is below anyone on a boat- the captain cleans the easy-bake poop oven, so the tankerman can handle periodically washing the fucking windows without any bitchery.
Anyhow, I managed to preddy up the place, although I'll leave it to my # 2 man (heh) to soogie the bulkheads later... soogie (soojee) means wipe down with a cleaning rag, btb. More mariner-speak for you there.
At any rate, we've moored at our new dock in Brooklyn- my employers found asuitable dock to rent located just 2 blocks from our NY HQ dock, so presumably I won't be spending so much lay time in frigging Port Elizabeth NJ, at the back of the ass end of nowhere at a container terminal. I'm hanging out with shore access today... however, it being butt-ass cold and me being lazy, I'm not going ashore between now and 1800 when our next cargo is fixed for. Instead I'm going to murder my inbox and hopefully have time to play a little Duke Nukem Forever.

I got your gas crisis right here...

2012-01-19T18:09:00.000-08:00

So last month, amidst little fanfare, Sun oil company closed their two northeast oil refineries. This is bad. Both refineries haven't been modernized in the past 20 years. Sun's current CEO, who is more interested in selling candy bars and slurpees at the retail level than making oil, has orchestrated sun's abandonment of these billion-dollar refineries. I say abandonment because Sun never reinvested in them, so while they're technically for sale, no one is going to buy them, as they will not return the profit of a well-maintained facility. Sun Oil is the funder of the Pew Trusts, politically-motivated clearinghouses for radical causes in 'social justice' whatever the fuck that means (socialism), and environmentalism. Sun is a very lucrative backer of green, Inc. But in the meanwhile, we now have limited capability of refining finished products (read: fuels) in the northeast.
To put the corn in this punchbowl turd, Hess oil is closing their St. Croix refinery as well, co-owned with PVDSA, the Venezuelan governmental oil company (the folks that do business as CITGO in the US. This represents something interesting here. Being located safely out of arms' reach of Hugo Chavez' nasty habit of stealing other people's oil-finding and -making equipment (this being cheaper than maintaining their own, thus saving PVDSA from maintenance costs) in Venezuela, taking a page out of PEMEX (Mexico's national oil company, who is doing miracles keeping their refineries sort of open using bailing wire, bubble gum and slave labor to save on costs)'s book.
Without fear of PVDSA pulling a smash and grab, such as the BS pulled by Venezuela last year on Chevron and Tidewater (both being American companies) and BP (Being British, and therefore somewhat used to appeasement at any cost, this being their way of survival in places like the Middle East where they lack access to shock troops like TOTAL (France) has with the Foreign Legion to keep the mongs in line. At any rate, Hess St. Criox is heading for mothballs.

St Croix is a great stopping-over point for foreign ships to transfer oil from VLCC's (Very Large Crude Carriers (which are far too big to get anywhere near the US except for a few mooring stations in the Gulf of Mexico) to Suexmax and AFRAmax (smaller, but still goddamned big tankers for delivery to North America. Since HOVENSA (the St. Criox refinery) and even the shuttered Sun refineries in Philly and Marcus Hook NJ will be used as tank farms, there will still be companies lining up to store their oil and release it at strategic sales times at the former refineries. There won't be any return trips carrying refined or semi-refined oil back to points East for the VLCC's, however, as was the custom before, which means more big-ass ships deadheading from Disport to Loadport in the far east. This is bad for shipping, of course, as oil transshipment is already fairly unprofitable these days.

One final thought: this is very reasonable proof that the people making the money off of oil aren't the people making the Oil. Exxon Mobil might be making massive bank, but they're doing so on margins that are an order of magnitude less than the speculators and money machines who are driving prices. I've said to friends (carefully, and looking carefully at anyone who might be in earshot) on several occasions that the oil companies aren't the robber barons here; you want to see who is making $10 for every $1 the oil majors are making, look at your retirement fund manager to start with.

I don't get it....

2012-01-17T03:10:00.001-08:00

So our elite, Ivy League-educated president wants it so that you need to show photo ID to buy god-damned drain cleaner, but not to cast a vote? Now, granted, when presented with ridiculous and spurious documents dreamed up by foreign-owned tanker companies, I usually sign my name "Abraham Lincoln" or "M. Mouse" but for some reason it would make more sense to want to be sure that the people voting are who they say they are. I get asked my social security number when I want to check the balance on my fucking cable bill, and yet the 'Progressives' want Comcast to have better security than the goddamn polling employees.

The wreck of the Costa Concordia: a confluence of downstream effects?

2012-01-15T13:13:00.001-08:00

With the sinking of the cruise ship COSTA CONCORDIA in the news, along with all sorts of facts, innuendo and wrong or misleading opinions being presented as facts, I thought I'd weigh in on what I know, what I see and what I think as a mariner watching all this unfold.

1). After the Titanic disaster in the last century, why did the ship sink?

The ship is reputed to have a 140+-foot long gash in her hull. While modern ships are made to stay afloat with multiple compartments breached to the sea, 140+ feet is a massive area.

2). How did this happen?
No word yet. The Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) or 'black box' has been recovered, which should provide some info in the immediate future. The most experienced talking heads point to over-reliance and/or improper use of electronic navigation as the most likely culprit. Unfortunately, this is an experienced-based de facto position which is most often borne out as a principle cause of accidents.

Modern ships use unitized electronic charting systems called ECDIS (Electronic Chart Display Information Systems), which, across all ships, give operators a somewhat standardized suite of information availability, centered on integrating GPS Lat/Long position with a navigation chart overlay.
For obvious reasons, standard industry practice (and the law) requires the integration of 'all available' information in the execution of a navigation watch. This includes the Mark 1 Eyeball. As my former captain used to say, "Rule 1 of navigation is 'look out the fucking window.'" The grounding of the Queen Elizabeth II off of Nantucket shoals in the 1990's showed the world the limitations of relying solely on GPS. This example is used to emphasize the continued need for taking navigation 'fixes' (charting position at fixed intervals) regularly, using 'all available means,' which includes visual, celestial, radar, dead reckoning and, yes, electronic fixes.

On a somewhat more annoying level, Costa Cruises put a huge-ass foot in their mouth yesterday, when the head man, who is a hotel expert, and not a captain, showed off his ignorance of standard shipping practices and claimed that the ship wasn't off course, as the ship had no designated route to follow. This is not correct, as the ship is required to have a voyage plan, including a route to follow, before leaving port.
It appears that the ship was a few miles off course, but this will have to be borne out when the VDR data is made available.

3). Why are the captain and chief mate in jail?
This worried me, on hearing it, as an oil-industry mariner, everyone will assume I'm responsible and/or drunk (while using intravenous drugs having unprotected sex while taking the Lord's name in vain) if there is a spill, and therefore can be held in prison without charges indefinitely unlike any other citizen of a nation of law, but I digress) in the event of an accident.
Nautical Log's captain Peter Boucher, a retired cruise ship captain and true industry expert, has explained in his blog that this is a standard Italian legal practice employed in the course of an investigation, and legal under their rule of law. So, not something I'd be happy with as an American, but nonetheless, apparently this is not eyebrow-raisingly noteworthy. It does imply, however, that the chief mate was in charge of the navigation watch at the time of the accident, as the chief mate is the busiest person on board the ship, but does still need to stand bridge watch as the OOW (Officer Of the Watch) as part of his job on many ships.

4). The Body Count
Last I heard, 5 and rising. There were 4,000 passengers and 1,000 crew on board. The cadre of maritime officers and experienced mariners represents a miniscule portion of that crew, most of whom will be foreign nationals from the developing world working in hotel jobs aboard. The reports of people jumping overboard in panic may well be an indictment against standard passenger safety practices employed today in the cruise industry- a laughable attempt at an abandon-ship drill carried out shortly after setting sail after the start of a new voyage. This suggests that more is needed, which everyone but cost-control aficionados have been suggesting for some time. Crowd control represents the single greatest niche-specific job training required by cruise ship staff, as opposed to mariners like yours truly, who far prefer carrying cargo, not supercargo (eg, people). While it is not possible to manage the behavior of every person on board, it should be possible to impress upon them most urgently the need to stay the fuck out of the water if at all possible, and there is ample time to do this while the people are queued up to get on board, before the abandon-ship drill.

5). The receiving end
It appears that the captain left the ship before the last of the passengers did, and, if he did so knowingly, his career is over, certainly (actually, it is already), and his legal troubles are just beginning. As master, he bears ultimate responsibility as the owners' representative on board, for the lives of the crew and passengers. There is some question as to where he would be best employed to see to the abandoning of the ship- on the deck of a not-sinking lifeboat or rescue craft, or hanging on to something on board and spending his time not to fall to his death as the ship listed over. Regardless, the appearances don't look good but this is something that more experienced minds will mull over in future. This tragedy reminds me, however, that despite being tasked with the command of a $500 million dollar ship and 5,000 lives, there is at many intervals just one person who holds those lives in the palm of their hand. "The greatest gift" of command is an award of supreme confidence in the abilities of a mariner, but all mariners are people, and subject to whims and errors, whether isolated or endemic. Errors are not isolated, however, and are required to come in interlinked chains in order to bear fruit. Recognizing errors where they exist is a matter of seeing only one mistake in that error chain and preventing tragedy. In review, it is often difficult to see how errors failed to be recognized as they accumulated. This is emphasized in bridge resource management, a required endeavor for all deck officers. However, this doesn't error-proof a bridge. Nothing can, truly. Preventing accidents and loss of life is a numbers game, where minimizing incidents is the optimal practical outcome. Eliminating them, while a noble concept, is not something achievable.

UPDATE- according to Costa cruises, the ship was executing a close pass to shore to provide a scenic vista for dining passengers. This was done at the captain's discretion, and, according to the master, resulted in the ship striking an uncharted rock. Unfortunately, this is one possible result, however unlikely, of departing from an established passage plan.

seasonable weather

2012-01-13T15:12:00.000-08:00

...woke up from my off-watch nap to find a hard gale blowing outside. Our very busy port schedule just got porked. On the upside, this gives me time to recover from last night's Mexican food, which is cauterizing it's way around my innards, but on the other hand, 13 items are on my 'you go here' list, with no word yet on when the next terminal will open up a loading dock for us when the wind dies down under 35kt.

Long gone are the days of freezing my balls off on bow lookout in weather like this. Instead, I'm mostly sitting, pen in hand, running numbers and chasing after the phone. Not exactly the exciting life of a merchant mariner in the way that I once envisioned, but I guess seniority has a price.

Note the float coat, however. I have to poke my head outside every time I hear a boom or a crash, which is constant with all this wind. We've gotten spoiled aboard with the relatively fine early-winter weather up to this point. Today's gale is merely seasonal, but I feel enervated in a way that was once reserved for days long past when I used to get launched out of my bunk mid-sleep by heavy seas.

Flipside

2012-01-12T20:13:00.000-08:00

... 10 hours ago, I was fairly bent out of shape that I was left hanging in the breeze, being forced to discharge one small cargo in marginal weather requiring constant vigilance, while concurrently prepping for an immediate double cargo load with an immediate discharge following, located only 1/2 mile from the initial discharge port, only to discover that the load had been delayed 16 hours.

Well, while I was fairly nonplussed (read: throwing half-filled out forms everywhere and cussing) at the time, at this moment, approaching midnight, I am looking out my porthole, watching the wind-blown mist soaking my deck and enjoying the idea of a watch mostly spent moored to the dock.

why come ebery time...

2012-01-12T10:56:00.000-08:00

If, in the course of a busy day, I ask someone to give me a slow bell between cargoes loading or discharging close to our last port, so that I can prepare paperwork, file paperwork, take soundings, plan the next job, take a leak and maybe prepare the cargo program for the next evolution, I get rolled eyes and a laundry list of excuses as to why we must go at Ludicrous speed (Eleve11nty!!) to ensure that no one is prepared to receive us at the next dock or ship when we arrive and drift and blow the whistle for attention for 20 minutes.
BUT, when the phone calls start stacking up like 747's at JFK, and I've got everything humming on our end, pumps screaming at max, PLUS made room for a lube oil tanker to raft onto us and pump his cargo over the top of our deck, after I get everything prepped and readied for back-to-back-to-back cargoes, and have spent 5 hours doing 8 hours' work, I get a phone call "Never mind, the next load just backed up 12 hours."

Why the hell don't they let me know 5 minutes before we sail? How does someone go from "We'll be done at noon" to "Oh, 0400 now." in the course of an hour?
Grrr.

Greatest one-liner ever

2012-01-10T22:44:00.000-08:00

Discussing the feeble and rage-inspiring lack of talent in the Republican Presidential warm-body pool: Specifically Ron Paul:

"Is Ron Paul batshit crazy, or am I just sane?"

"He was never the same after Baggins stole the Precious."

Fossil Cruise

2012-01-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

Swapping stories this afternoon here on board, I contributed my bit about the time I very nearly run over a 100-foot multimillion dollar Herreshoff antique yacht during a sailboat race in Newport Rhode Island.

A few years ago, before I met the Mrs., out of boredom, while ashore for 6 months off from my regular ship, I took a job as chief mate on a small coastal expedition ship. This particular vessel was outfitted for 1-2 week trips taking very wealthy senior citizens hither and yon on themed cruises to non cruise-hub ports. The ship was too big to comfortably get into many smaller ports, but only just, requiring a certain amount of testicular fortitude at times. She could be shoehorned into Newport, Martha's Vineyard, some spots in Maine, and here and there in the Chesapeake, Savannah, and a few places in Florida, as well. Since the passngers were paying anywhere from $5,000-$10,000 per person per week, the food was French, the crew American, the staff attractive and college educated, and mostly female and under 25 (!) Quite a setup, anyhow.
My days were spent mostly putting out fires; managing the deckhands, sending runners here and there to bolster staff where needed ("Get 3 bodies from the laundry room and send them to help the people vacuuming the port-side balcony carpets. I want them done while the passengers are gumming their lunch."). When inward of the sea buoy, the Captain and I would navigate with the aid of a helmsman. The captain was like me- started out as a commercial fisherman, got a taste for commercial shipping, and hawsepiped into a limited license. Like me, he could be smooth with the (elderly)ladies, and we got to wear uniforms that reeked of Captain Steubing, which we would wear ashore periodically to get phone numbers from bored and lonely WASP's summering on mummy and daddy's dime.
Being an oversized boat in popular small-boat ports, we were often given a certain amount of deference in terms of our transit. Turning within our own boat length was a regular necessity, and thus the boat had twin powerplants and a heavy-lift bowthruster. By the end of the first week, my shiphandling skills had tripled, as had my blood pressure. Once the captain sussed me out, he and I were peas in a pod in terms of handling the boat- I've never so completely synched with someone else's style, to the point where we were working as a perfect bridge team, something (for you non-mariners, anyhow) to which any deck officer perspires over and dreams of in the way that a 12-year old with a locked bathroom door pours over the Victoria's Secret catalogue.

Newport was a regular port-of-call. We went in there once a week while I was sailing on the ship. Docking was a touch tricky, but the channels are for the most part wide and generously proportioned at the turns, which was a good thing. On the day in question, we were sailing in at about 8 knots down a straight fairway with shoal water outside the channel. There were a dozen antique yachts- 100-footers easy, sailing in a regatta on our port side, maybe broad on the bow.
As the situation resolved, I saw that a crossing situation was developing. I pointed it out, confirmed it with the ARPA (Automatic Radar Plotting Aid- the high-falutin' computer system that is Radar on speed- turning radar into an information platform), and stood on my course, as required at that point. I called the boats on the VHF to no avail. As the moments ticked by, I saw that the yachts were going to cross us, creating a close-quarters situation.
At this point, I could see on the deck of the boats all the crew and passengers in uniform. The men were wearing blue blazers and these completely gay hats, The women were in dresses and straw hats, all looking identical and just oozing douchebag entitlement- this was old money engaging in mutual masturbation among peers.
"Christ, look at these assholes. We let them, they're going to stand on and put us in extremis. Watch. " This was the captain. He blew the danger signal on the horn- 5 short blasts. We couldn't leave the channel without running aground on hard bottom, and with our mass, we couldn't slow much given the time we had. Running the throttles to full astern would set up a vibration that would throw the 100% elderly passengers around like beans in a coffee can, but that's what we did. "Full Astern!"
"Full Astern, aye" this was me. I dropped the throttles and took the helm from the bug-eyed college kid who was out helmsman. "You're relieved. You don't want to be involved in this if we bump 'em" As the vibration decreased, then sharply increased as the wheels started cavitating in reverse, I turned the bow towards the yacht, attempting to pass her stern with our bow. The pricks on the sailboat, 30 or so of them, studiously ignored us, even as our horn was surely and repeatedly painfully assaulting their ears. The captain had the button on the horn mashed down.
"Pricks!"
"Assholes"
"Fuuuuuuuuu..."
... and we passed the boat, having lost 1/2knot of forward speed, which was enough to make a difference.

The phone beeped. The hotel manager (ostensibly a supernumerary, but in reality almost as powerful as the captain) squawked on the other end. The captain said "Um hmmm. Um hmmm. Unavoidable, but it's over. Sorry about that." and hung up. And that was that.
"Paul, take her for a minute, would you? I need to shake a turd out of my pants after that." I put the throttles back up to half-ahead and the captain stepped into his room and returned with a couple of cans of diet pepsi for us, and we shortly after docked the boat and let the passengers toddle out.

2012-01-04T08:01:00.000-08:00

With the holidays behind me, I left home yesterday evening holding a curious mix of regret and satisfaction; my time at home was wholly successful and full of activity; regrets came in the form of a significantly thinned wallet and leaving the family for another month.
Most often, in my ride from Boston's 'burbs to Brooklyn, I get on the highway wishing very much that I was delivering newspapers or working at McDonalds in my hometown. By the time I hit the RI border, some 40 minutes later, I'm OK, and by Connecticut, I'm looking forward to getting the hell out of Connecticut and on board my floating tin can. Thoughts of home are relegated to pleasant past for the time being.
As I type, we are loading cargo in Bayonne New Jersey, a draft load that will put us within arms' reach to the water, which is intriguing in its' own right; it's good to be back to work, doing what I do. My liver needs a break. I enjoyed the hell out of my time at home.
The Holidays this year were mostly celebrated Brazilian-style; among family and loved ones, running far into the next morning. Christmas was a 36-hour affair that I will remember very fondly. Christmas eve started off with a world-class hangover, so it was a low-hanging fruit sort of situation anyhow; it was just nice not to feel like ass that evening.
I bought a big-screen TV and sound system for the living room at the Ant Farm; I assembled the ridiculously overpriced table for the TV (still pressboard? for $400 I should be getting at least some actual dead trees instead of laminated recycled sawdust), plugged everything in, lugged the TV in (no mean feat- this thing is twice the size of the largest TV I ever owned), programmed the TV and handed it off to my wife, which will be the last time I probably ever handle the remote; TV holds little interest to me, so why my wife insists that the talking heads be full-sized remains a mystery. Anyhow, yeah. Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife and The Boy enjoyed their presents. I got a Navy-Issue peacoat that fits like a warm, classy glove. Got to visit with family, including my oldest nephew, home from his first cruise at sea, a 'round the world trip on the shakedown cruise of the George HW Bush, our newest aircraft carrier. I'm proud as hell at how much he's grown up. My youngest nephew is also growing up; he's currently not speaking to me as I forgot to return his copy of the latest Transformers movie; his favorite film ever. As he's 4, I'm fairly certain that playing with the cardboard boxes his presents came in will be a balm to his preoccupation.
In the meanwhile, something awful stupid happened last night; I, a consummate consumer and passionate addict to caffeine, overdosed on it last night. I spent the night with cramps, and then chills and sweats, rather than sleeping before my first watch. Again, however, not feeling like shit is enough of a reward that being a little tired today is no big deal.
New Years' day's Blogger lunch was fantastic; I met great people, put some faces to names, and was singularly impressed by how much I immediately liked everyone I met. 'nuff said, beyond that I wish I could be there for the big dinner this weekend.
So it goes.

They Thought I'd Be Taller

2012-01-01T15:49:00.000-08:00

...upon meeting fellow 2a and fellow-travelling Northeast bloggers for lunch today, the overall first impression I received was that everyone expected I'd be much taller.

I'm 6-foot nothing. Not very tall, but tallish, right? I know I have horrible posture, and a somewhat wasted appearance what with the diet and all. But apparently I come off short.

Anyhow, it was great to sit and talk and meet up with everyone- if I didn't get to meet you today, I hope it won't be too long before we get to shake hands IRL.

Brevity being the soul of wit, I'll leave it at that. I'm down to my last few days at home, and will spend them with my loved ones rather than typing.

whee!

2011-12-30T15:02:00.000-08:00

Starting the New Year's celebrations tonight w/ drinks out with another couple, and tomorrow sees us at a party w/ family. New Year's Day, come hangover or no, is the day of the Northeast Bloggers Winter Lunch social.

Should be awesome. Hopefully I won't be feeling barfy.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T07:05:00.000-08:00

I'm home, happy to be here, and getting ready for a marathon day. We're celebrating a Brazilian-style Christmas, which means Christmas eve is a big party, presents get opened at midnight, and tomorrow is a recovery day. Pretty good so far.

yes!

2011-12-20T05:52:00.000-08:00

OK, I'm heading home in about 12 hours, and we just rafted up to another barge at our anchorage, so all is well. I'm going to leave you with the best, funniest, well written goddam story I've read in a long while. Like all good stories, this one needs to start with the traditional benison:

This is no shit.

You're welcome

2011-12-18T20:58:00.001-08:00

With only a few more watches to go before I head home to wife and son and scotch and liver strain, I couldn't leave without sharing this month's beautiful women from Brazil. With Christmas coming soon, and the prospect of moving this June, it might be a while before I return to South America again, anyhow, but at least we have the internet. Just keep those hands where we can all see em.

As always, when visiting a place with hot-and-cold running beautiful women, it's best to stick with a local guide, even an online local guide like yours truly. As my wife warned me when we were getting ready to go to dinner in Salvador "Hohnee, be careful, hmm? Not averee beautiful woman is a beautiful woman here." That beautiful woman in the first picture at the top of this post is a dude.

Told you to keep your hands on the table!

roundup

2011-12-18T13:02:00.000-08:00

Lots of Maritimey things going on this week.

One big one for me is that Seaboats got bought by Kirby marine. Although Seaboats is a small company, this is Kirby's first major purchase of an oceangoing fleet since they bought K-Sea last year. The Seaboat fleet will presumably be folded into K-Sea, which is good for K-Sea, since their fleet is primarily made up of used and abused or worn-out pieces of shit that no one else wanted. (with some exceptions, but really, their asset inventory reads like a Tijuana used-car lot).
At any rate, my employers were in negotiations to but Seaboats, but something happened and they walked away. K-Sea picked up the deal, but Kirby promptly shitcanned all the employees. I'm not sure if this was done ipso facto or if it was done with the aim of allowing the employees to reapply for their jobs and thus end-run any continuity issues with regards to pay or benefits. Regardless, K-Sea is going to be strengthened for having made the purchases.

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The American Phoenix (pictured below, photo courtesy of Mid-Ocean Marine) seems to be coming along well.
This was the ship originally partially built and financed by my last employer, who went tits up a few months after I left the company (Coincidence?). She's scheduled to be ready for sea trials in the next few months. I once entertained fantasies of an officer's slot on this ship, but that was a lifetime ago.

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Finally, one upside to the utter lack of leadership in Washington was that the Fed finally sold new leases in the Gulf of Mexico, the first least sale since the BP disaster. Apparently Conoco-Philips was the heaviest investor for the 191 blocks covering 21,000,000 acres, scoring 75+ of the blocks for $157 million.

food

2011-12-14T08:01:00.000-08:00

This shit is going to give me a complex.

My company moves oil. Our overpowered tugboats move barges to refinery terminals. The terminals pump oil from their tanks to ours. Our tugboats move our barges to a receiver- either a ship or another terminal. We pump the oil from our tanks to theirs. Repeat. THE ONLY TIME WE GET PAID IS WHEN THE OIL FLOWS FROM AND TO OUR TANKS.

So my job is over oversee our tanks. I walk around the top of the tank, fix things that are broken, record significant events, and open and shut the little openings to and from our tanks. That's my job. I do the job that gets everyone paid. It isn't the pinnacle of life, but it's a good job that pays the salary of the tugboats, the office staff, and the good people who make sure my insurance premiums are paid on time.
So why is it that I have to kiss some major ass to get some God-damned food? I'm out here for a month, and I have a certain affinity for wanting to live to see retirement, so I live on a balanced diet. Unfortunately,fruits and vegetables do not last for a month in a fridge, and that's the truth. Unless I want to live on Dinty Moore and die before I'm 50, I have to have food that doesn't arrive in a can.
It's not so easy. Being the popular, ever-sexy swinging pickle here in this particular floating hot dog cart, there often isn't time to moor alongside a dock with shore access. And, for some mysterious reason, vegetables bought in New York city, even in high-end groceries, wilt and die after about 5-7 days, especially salad. Salad at home, mysteriously, is good for a week, 10 days at the outside. It's a head-scratcher, but one that requires that I grub up with fresh produce every 10 days or so here. And yet, when we are not allowed shore access, somehow it comes as a terrible shock that I want to get food every now and again. Getting to my truck is viewed as an excess, apparently.

Paul and the B.O.B. being disreputable again

2011-12-12T21:49:00.000-08:00

While I was home last time I managed to get good and drunk with former captain (and employer) The Notorious B.O.B.
Bob and I fished together for many years on the RITA C., a 42' lobster boat originally owned by Bob's father, a man who could sell ice to eskimos and who managed to shove me off the fence when I was managing a small fish farm and considering giving it all up to go back to being a lobsterman. This was 11 years ago, I believe. I spent the next 8 years fishing with the B.O.B.
Bob and I are dangerous together when we're off the water. Although both of us have more legitimate jobs nowadays- me here, at HAWSEPIPER's global afloat HQ/hot dog sales emporium, and the B.O.B. as the director of afloat operations for a marine research laboratory, but back then we were just lobstermen. But I digress.
So while I was home, the B.O.B. and I got together at a bar (!!!!) and proceeded to drink too much. This is significant in that neither of us are heavy drinkers (now), but have a history of drinking too much together. And we didn't fail to live up to our standards from the days of yore.
I'm not sure what it is about nostalgia and "what the hell happened to us?" conversations, but the beer was disappearing like it was going down the drain, and we managed to have a great time just warming a pair of barstools, completely oblivious as to the people and place around us... and you know, I can't remember the last time I genuinely had a time like that, laughter, commiseration, foolishness and, yes, alcohol. It was a wonderful time, and sure I spent the night on the couch after rolling over to hug my wife in my sleep and grossing her out with stale beer breath once too often, but I woke up with a touch of the 'zaclies and some great memories. I think.
Being a lobsterman and drinking beer aren't as synonymous as you might think. It's often burtal work, and you come to the dock at the end of the day with wet clothes and a tight back, and as nice as a beer would be, a shower is often more appealing, as is time with family. At that time, however, the B.O.B. and I were bachelors. I had just started dating an Inappropriately Hot Foreign Girlfriend, and was living in The Pickle Jar, the ultimate bachelor pad, so with no one waiting at home for us, the B.O.B. and I would drink at least one beer together at the dock at the end of the day most days, and considerably more some days. It was certainly cheaper than a barroom. Like as not, after a beer or two, I'd swing over to the dry cleaner where my girlfriend was working, and rush inside, stinking of rotting fish to demand a hug and make her gag from the smell of me. Some days, however, especially Fridays, the B.O.B. and I would drink 3 or 4 cans of beer each, retreat to our homes, and meet up at a local biker bar later on and continue the foolishness. An appropriately disreputable bar won't boot you for realizing that the smell of fish is still coming out of your pores after a 45-minute shower, so this was key.
Anyhow, sitting here in my chair at oh-dark-thirty, at anchor a few hundred miles away from that old dock, I really, really miss almost every aspect of those days. Somehow, it's harder to remember the agony of slinging 50-lb lobster pots with an already-sore back, of slipping and falling on seaweed, of being so riddled with diaper rash in midsummer that I could barely walk, and of my hands being so dried out that the skin on my fingers would crack open and bleed from the abrasion from unzipping my fly to take a leak. That stuff goes by the wayside. The being dead-ass broke part doesn't fade quite so quickly, which is the only reason I'm not fishing right now. It wouldn't be the same without the B.O.B. anyhow. In the 8 years we fished together, the time went by in a flash.

chaos

2011-12-10T23:27:00.000-08:00

We've got a new ullage program on the Pimputer here at Hawsepiper's global floating HQ.
For those of you not in the know, ullage refers to the space between the top measuring point in an oil tank and the surface of the oil in the tank. It's how we measure volume. For example, at an ullage of 3' 4" my tanks are 97% full, which is enough to make anyone nervous, but not enough to set off the overfill alarm, which, appropriately enough, sounds like the end of the world (because it pretty much is).

So, with that in mind, my employers decided that our current system for load planning created too many individual quirks amongst the fleet in terms of reporting, so we've moved to a standardized calculating and reporting system that makes sense for the customers but is quite soggy and hard to light for those of us who carry multiple cargoes for multiple customers (but awesome for the lucky ducks who only carry one or two cargoes at a time). So be it. One size fits all, though a blivet may result.

Regardless, this week I got to give lessons in the new system to my right-hand man, who is not a lover of the Pimputer, nor computers in general.

The 1984 16mhz 486 Pimputer, nerve center of HAWSEPIPER's media empire.
Paint by Krylon.

At times I feel disheartened that the last three years have seen so much additional labor added to the process of pumping oil into a tank and then pumping oil out of a tank. Adminstrative jobs are expanding at an exponential rate ashore, and yet administrative tasks are increasing exponentially aboard, as well, begging the question as to what exactly on God's gray earth is the reason why more administrators are needed when the afloat staff is doing all the secretarial work?
Sadly, this is not a particularly novel question, but it does affect job satisfaction. If I wanted to be a fucking paperpusher, I'd still be a goddamned scientist. At this point, I should have saved the $80,000 and gone to secretarial school.
But, sadly, this is the future of working on the water. Being good at your job is no longer enough. It is very important to also be good at the job other people are supposed to be doing ashore, as well. Then again, you can't expect too much from the shorebound. They have bars there. Lucky pricks.
Still, I'm aware that I'm pissing uphill. I'm also not being particularly serious. I like my job. I have my beefs, and who doesn't? It still beats being a biologist. And the paperwork? Everyone's killing more trees in the name of information no one needs or wants, and that's not the fault of the folks who are trying to make a living; that's our bloated bureaucracy pissing from waaaaayyyyyy up on the top of a hill in Washington, and I'm not going to complain that the folks who are upstream from me can't shield me from all the crap that rains down. Ultimately, we're all at fault for not demanding better from the people who work for us.

How do you say "WTF" in Portuguese?

2011-12-09T04:28:00.000-08:00

Without going into details, since apparently Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife has discovered Google Translate, I developed a serious listening disorder last night. When I started giggling because I realized that my wife has learned english with a Boston accent, and it's not physically possible for Brazilians to say the letter 'R' properly anyhow (they say it like we say the letter "H,") I must have laughed a little too much. She banged the phone against the countertop, hard, and now my ear is ringing.

This is my life. It's funny, at times, but probably more so if you're not me.

Anyhow, now I have to send her flowers.

Merry Christmas (to me)

2011-12-08T05:20:00.000-08:00

Bought myself a Christmas present, as Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife insists on buying me clothes and shoes and crap like that for Christmas, when all I want are toys (tools. And actual toys).

So I bought a set of boat plans, and I'm going to build a little rowboat for myself, something to exercise with next summer. Nothing special at all, but it'll keep me out of the barroom this winter, anyhow.

Ephemera

2011-12-04T21:21:00.000-08:00

Woke up at 2330 for watch, (I got the 0000-080 or 'balls to eight' today)only to discover that my relief made me a small Stromboli for midrats today, which covers 1/3 of my calorie count for the day, but all the same, beats the hell out of oatmeal and a goddamned banana for wake-up food.
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I went to look for theatre tickets to catch a show in Boston when I go home at the end of the month- something to do one night between Christmas and New Years, you know? No, I am not going to pay $375 for ticket to nosebleed seats for Peter Pan. Fuck them right in the ear, I could go see a Broadway show in NY, where they employ real actors, and stay overnight in the city for less. It's not like they're spending the money on scenery anyhow- this version uses projection screens instead of backdrops, so bullshit.
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One of my pet peeves at work is when we've got multiple cargoes on board, destined for multiple destinations, and then the order of discharges is reversed completely. As an example, at 0300 we'll start the first of three cargo discharges, and, instead of discharging as ordered, I'll be pumping oil to the last ship (as originally planned) first. This will end with me having oil in the extreme ends of my tanks, so we'll be hogged hard, well within limits, but all the same, I don't like trying to get oil pumping from all the way up forward through a couple hundred feet of ice-cold pipeline. Heavy fuel oil doesn't move at temps below 46 degrees, and, barring any good fortune, it's going to be like trying to drink cold molasses through a straw.
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Hawsepiper cooks dessert

2011-12-03T13:54:00.000-08:00

So, the other night I made a fast dessert for a bunch of folks who were visiting my little slice of heaven on the harbor.

Olhas De Sogra ('mother-in-law's eyes') is a Brazilian treat made to accommodate their ever-present sweet tooth (well, semi-sweet tooth- the brazzers aren't actually huge fans of sickly sweet sugary stuff like we are). It's incredibly delicious, lasts for a week in the fridge, and the calorie count is really not too bad if you're like me and attempting to shake off an equator-sized waistline.

Now, bear with me, because there are prunes all up in this thing.
I know, prunes, right? Nature's perfect laxative? Turns out, pitted prunes provide a tart sweetness that doesn't include a sugary taste, which makes them perfect for this dish. Coconut and a little sugar do that.

You will need 14-16 ounces of shredded dried coconut. Here in the US, the shredded coconut is too coarse, so you need to grind it down some in a blender or food processor, until the flakes are only 1/8 to 1/16th of an inch- about twice as finely ground as it comes out of the bag. Easy.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup water
1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar
14-16 oz finely shredded coconut
whole cloves
1 bag of pitted prunes

Boil 1/2 cup water in a saucepan. Add 2 egg yolks, 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar, and the coconut mix. Cook under low-medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Set aside to cool.

Roll the prunes into a boat shape in your hands. Using your fingertips, press the coconut around the prune, making the bonbon shape look like a rheumy eye that is always judging you and never in a good way. Jam a clove into the eyeball and place on a tray or in a container. You may roll the bonbon in sugar if you so please, but I find it too sweet that way. Place in the fridge for one hour. Remove the clove before eating, unless you're OK with chewing a whole clove (which I am. Tastes wonderful, but strong).

Disclaimer- this dessert does not work as a laxative. I suppose if you ate 2lbs of these things it might, but I ate about a half dozen one night when my wife made these AND gave me liquor, and I was fine for the next day, which, considering the caiperinha I drank, was a pleasant surprise.

Lazy ass midwatch

2011-11-28T20:12:00.000-08:00

So I carefully crafted a goodnight voicemail to Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife tonight before going to bed. Unfortunately, it was lost in the ether, so she called me back about 1/2 way through my off-watch period, when I was sleeping. After a short, ironic good night conversation, I couldn't sleep, so I heaved my ass out of the rack. On the upside, I made soup before hitting the rack, so, you know, soup is nice.
So, now, without a decent evenings' nap under my belt, I'm dreading the prospect of getting out on deck to jog in circles for an hour. As a fat man, jogging is strenuous at best, and with my now deflated beer belly, somewhat ridiculous looking anyhow. Jogging with no energy just doesn't have the appeal of reading my book 'Evil for Evil' by KJ parker and eating more soup.

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Extortion and Fraud of Sailors.

2011-11-28T05:33:00.000-08:00

Special hat tip to Manu for bringing this rage-making news to light:

Do you remember the Von Trapp family? You know, the real family who inspired the story from 'The Sound of Music?' (Oh, wait, if you're under 40, did you know that this was based on a true story? I did, but only because I had to be told that a dozen times as a kid).

Ever wondered what happened to the Von Trapps after the kids grew up? Well, apparently the fam learned a thing or two about oppression and the wonders of being on the White side of the fence in the master race argument, except they've decided to be the bad guys in this case.

Vega shipping of Germany, (well, Vega - Reederei Friedrich Dauber (GmbH & Co.) KG) founded by the Von Trapps, is a large shipowning/vessel management firm located in Germany. The ITF, International Transport Federation, the principal body involved in maintaining, polling and attempting to enforce basic human rights for seafarers, busted Vega shipping for carrying two sets of logbooks for paying crew wages- one showing wages paid out according to the international minimum wage, and then the real book, showing back wages due of $230,000.

Vega shipping, caught with their hands in the cookie jar, ADMITTED WRONGDOING TO THEIR PORT REGISTRY, and agreed to pay the crew wages due. They then waited until all inspectors and port officials left the ship, and flew a representative in to take the money back from the crew, threatening 'legal action' which means blackballing, (being illegal, of course). An ITF representative returned to the ship hours later, to discover that the crew had 'voluntarily' returned the wages. Two weeks later, the ITF returned to the ship at another port, along with Port State Control, to oversee the crew being repaid. Again.
After being paid this second time, it was payoff time for 7 of the crew... time to go home. Vega Shipping called the hotel where the sailors (all Filipino) were staying in the UK. An ITF representative was on hand, so the Vega rep claimed he wanted to take the sailors 'to dinner' and that was the end of that attempt.

BUT, it doesn't end there. At the airport in Manila, Vega waylaid 6 of the crewmen at the gate (the 7th left from another gate), and, according to witnesses at the airport, kidnapped the 6 men AND THEIR FAMILIES, brought them to Vega's crewing office, and allegedly threatening to have them all arrested for 'theft' of wages... and the 6 men gave back their own hard-earned wages. Again. So that makes fraud, theft and extortion, all carried out by a well-regarded European shipowner.

The 7th crewmember is said to have been blackballed by POEA, Vega's overseas manning agency, since he actually got his wages.

So, to the Von Trapp's, I urge them to seek out a decent, LEGAL solution to this issue, which I'm sure will never happen. If given a chance, I'm sure they'd find a solution. A Final Solution.

If you're interested in seeing how Vega operates in the Philippines, look at this story where VEGA asks for the names and addresses of the witnesses who saw the scene at the airport. Maybe they want to take those witnesses to 'dinner' too.

I'd like to think that Georg Ludwig Ritter Von Trapp would be doing the Charleston in his grave if he saw what his hands had created. I can't think of a less fitting tribute than this.

You can read the ITF's press release here, too.

No dock for you!

2011-11-25T18:15:00.000-08:00

Wow, tough crowd.

Pulled the nuclear option tonight in the hopes of getting moored in Brooklyn while we await orders for our next cargo ('could you berth us in Brooklyn? I'd like to go get groceries and go to church tomorrow') but failed to impress, I'm afraid. Instead on the Pimputer (our galley computer is tricked out with gloss and chrome and mirror finish, but is otherwise a 386 running DOS 1.0 with a "Pentium" sticker on the case. But it's a hologram-y sticker, so, you know, tech.) it says we're going to the bird shit sanctuary.

New York's seagulls are real dump ducks. Fat to a fault, ill-tempered, and capable of remarkable feats of elimination. And we're now anchored in their restroom of choice, just offshore from the Statue of Liberty. And Thank God, too, because there's so much new paint on deck, and it'd be a real shame for it not to be beshitted 3 inches deep before sunup.

leftovers!

2011-11-24T22:15:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there, especially to our soldiers and sailors and those who work in critical services, those who had to work to keep us safe and our system secure... like the poor pricks who work in retail and had to do the Chew and Screw tonight after dinner to make sure the soulless soccer moms and hipsters could line up and consume like good sheep should. Hope that TV was worth it, asshole; you just canceled another holiday for the working stiff.

unhealthy and healthy

2011-11-23T19:23:00.000-08:00

So on board we've been watching Chef Rick Bayless' TV show for the past two months. For those of you not in the know, Chef Rick is arguably the premier Mexican cook in the US. Being that he's about as Mexican as I am, this is an eye-opener, but it does show the passion that the man brings to the table for authentic Mexican cuisine.

Anyhow, with food porn on TV daily, we've been stocking up on chiles, peppers and other hot stuff to perk up the cooking on board. Thus far we've managed to avoid disaster, though the healthy-yet rich belly bombs that occasionally get made are surprisingly decent. My Tilapia fish tacos are the next creation that I'll contribute aboard; as I've already tried them out on my family, and failed to kill anyone with them, I'll next try to recreate the magic here in our galley.

Tonight my counterpart here made a quart or so of particularly spicy salsa. Sort of a shame, in that the bog bag of tortilla chips got tipped out of the grocery bags as they were swung aboard this afternoon. Dammit.

At any rate, check out Rick's website here at Rickbayless.com

like a dog to its vomit...

2011-11-21T05:35:00.000-08:00

so returns the fool to his folly. Tomorrow night I drive back to NY and start another month of presumably both hi- and lowjinks out on the water.

Didn't lose a hell of a lot of weight while here- a mere 1.9lbs in 2 weeks, but considering the financial support I gave to the Jamison and Budweiser family, I did pretty good. The last time I wore jeans and a shirt this size, I was 14! To Wit: This is me wearing last years' winter coat. This year I can wear the same coat, with my 8 year old zipped inside. I've lost 1 The Boy in 3 1/2 months.

week 2 begins

2011-11-14T14:48:00.000-08:00

Looks like I'll be home for another 7 days! Let's all celebrate and go to the bar. Right now. Before my wife gets home.

homeward bound

2011-11-08T12:26:00.000-08:00

I'm going home in about 5 hours. One one hand, I've got to run the gauntlet to get through Brooklyn and Queens, bu then it gets really bad. Connecticut- rt 95, the worst length of highway on the eastern seaboard strictly because of constant poorly-managed construction. At the end of the road, when I get home, maybe 2am, there will be a glass of scotch and a shower and the big bed waiting.

Oh, speaking of which, a careless tug captain (from another company) bumped us so good last night that it blew me right out of my bunk. Hell of way to wake up.

wake up, captain crankypants!

2011-11-05T08:28:00.001-07:00

Being chased out of bed to address a water leak is no fun.

we're smack in the middle of 30 blissful hours between cargoes.

Yesterday was a great opportunity to load up on stores, the supplies that we need to keep running in a somewhat clean and efficient manner. So, although my day yesterday started at midnight, I spent the afternoon alternating between updating paperwork and running one of our cranes, then taking my turn sorting and stowing the goodies that we ordered. In the late afternoon, I took a much-appreciated walk through Brooklyn, cranking out a good 6 miles or so across town. It was a beautiful fall day, and, although the scenery in Brooklyn doesn't appeal to me in any way shape or form, the people-watching is fantastic, so I enjoyed every bit of my walk.
Although I know better, I spent the evening in my bunk, engrossed in a fun book. 'Monster Hunter: Alpha' by Larry Correia, if you're interested. Stayed up too late and finished it.
Anyhow, I woke up this morning to take a leak, and that was the end of it. My second man had shut off the water pump aboard because of a leaking pressure sensor valve, then went back to watching TV. With no water, I wandered over to the galley and my guy explained what happened. Now, I'm not a passive person. I squatted down in the puddle, looked at the pump, pulled apart the hose running to the sensor, trimmed the end of the hose, stuck it back on the sensor, and started the pump. Cost: fuck all, and some wet underwear.
Unfortunately, dipping one's nethers in cold water is somewhat refreshing, so that was the end of my night. On the upside, this gave me the opportunity to go to the real, actual calibrated scale in the office and check my weight, which is still creeping downward.

Vinegar and Honey

2011-11-01T17:38:00.000-07:00

This past week has been damn busy. Good to see, from a business perspective, that the Port of New York has been in need of bunker oil for ship traffic. This time of year also sees a lot more smaller oil parcels being handed out, as heating oil season kicks in and smaller tankers make the run north.
Under normal circumstances, we get shoved around by a lot of different tugboats. 95% of the time, it's one of our boats doing the work, but every now and again another company's boat will fill in while ours aren't available. We spent the weekend before last in that fashion.
For the past 7 days, we've been working with pretty much the same boat. Good people on that tug, some of the first people I got to know on a first-name basis when I joined this company almost 4 years ago (!).
The AB deckhand on this particular tug is a very decent man, about my age, maybe a little younger. We started at this company at roughly the same time. I remember the man well because he was being badly abused by his captain, the first time I encountered such behavior with my current employer.
I want to set the stage here and let you draw your own conclusions from it. Imagine things from my perspective- new hire in a new company, working with tugboats and tugboaters, which was completely new for me. I'm seriously impressed by how pleasant my new coworkers are, and, on a one-on-one basis especially, the proportion of nice people to work with is greater than at any other company I've worked for. The asshole factor is pretty low- a few guys with reputations, but nothing too bad.
Anyhow, one brand-new tugboat had a very talented captain; great boathandler, not a bad person in conversation, but he rode his greenhorn Ordinary Seaman like a donkey to market. This guy was nice enough with me, but to his deckhand he was outright abusive. I was shocked at the mean streak this guy dsplayed. And he got me involved. He'd call out to me as they were making up to my barge: "Look at this fuckin' guy. Hey! Numbnuts! Not like that! Jesus, who the fuck taught you how to throw lines? Are you retarded?" Then, and I remember this clear as a bell, he looks at me, and then down at the man on deck, catches the guy's eye, and says "You know, you can't fix being stupid."
As I mentioned, I was disgusted by the guy's behavior. The deckhand, inexperienced as he was, certainly didn't get any sort of constructive guidance by this- if anything, the guy was desperate to just get through the next 5 minutes without being completely castrated by the prick at the wheel.
Over the next year, I ran into these guys a dozen times or so. Always the same M.O. The captain yelled, called his deckhand 6 kinds of bad names, and the guy had to figure out what he was doing to make the captain unhappy purely by process of elimination. No advice, no guidance.
So, When I transferred to New York a year ago, I didn't see these guys anymore. The tug in question was mostly based in Philadelphia. About 6 months ago during crew change, I ran into the deckhand, however, who had transferred onto a smaller tug based up here, a tug populated by a particularly decent crew.
This past week, we've had this tugboat, with the crew I just wrote about, and it's been a pleasure to work with them. The deckhand who had taken all the abuse is now an experienced, highly trained part of the crew, a man that I certainly enjoy working with, and who has made mooring and unmooring a hell of a lot easier for me, along with being good company to pass the time with.
A cynic or a simpleton might be tempted to believe that it was the constant diet of abuse that made the man a better sailor, that the abusive yet talented captain made a seaman out of a greenhorn, but that's absolutely not the case. A peaceful environment where teaching and patient training put the shine on a deckhand who had been roughly formed. A happy coincidence of an open position on a happy boat allowed this guy to achieve his full potential.
You might not believe it, but the abusive captain has been trying to lure this deckhand in question back to Philadelphia. I certainly wasn't surprised. The guy's good. I can name this tune in 3 notes, anyhow. I'm sure that the captain would justify his behavior by saying that he wants his men to care about their job, and gets frustrated when people don't seem to care... but that's certainly a distortion of the way things are. Training a good tugboat deckhand takes time, years, really. Screaming and pointing without ever correcting isn't training. It's being an asshole.

I've yelled. I've complained. It's not fair to be abusive to a subordinate who can't really respond in kind without jeopardizing his job. I tend to cool off quickly. Point in fact, I'm kind of a prick to work for, from what I understand. I like things done in a seamanlike fashion, and I rarely miss anything out of place. I don't beat people like a rented mule, however, and neither should any other mariner.

from the archives...

2011-10-30T17:13:00.000-07:00

So, I'm happy to report that I'm down 55lbs from the day I started my new diet. Things are working well there. I can see things that I couldn't see for a while without a mirror and/or a backache.

Example- picture taken July 2011. My sweaty 282-lb self in Salvador, Brazil.

October 2011, 227 lbs. Possibly 226 if I shaved the beard. Which I think I can do now, since I'm pretty sure my chin has been exposed again.

At any rate, so far so good. about 35lbs to go.

But, that's not why I called you all here. I found some old pictures taken from before I became a brown-water sailor, aboard the ancient and mighty king of rustbuckets, the SS New River. Look:

Merry f'n Halloween

2011-10-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

After a grueling watch spent mostly on deck in snow and freezing rain, nothing, but nothing puts me in the Halloween spirit like doing it again in the dark. All this Global Warming is killing me. We've got a couple of inches of Climate Change on deck already, and here it is October 29th.
Never mind the bushiness of squirrel's tails or what the Farmers' Almanac says. My bruises (from falling on a section of deck that some dope didn't paint with nonskid paint) say it's going to be a long winter.

Now hear this!

2011-10-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer:

when I say "I'll give you $10 to eat a hot dog underwater" I'm not responsible for injury, drowning, emotional damage or your fantastically shameful new nickname. I'm only responsible for the $10. And your fantastically shameful new nickname.

This is the sort of thing you're missing out on by not linking to my facebook page, where people I work with don't get to look inside my twisted mind.

peace and quiet

2011-10-22T19:37:00.000-07:00

Tonight's watch has been one of my better watches. When things get busy, idle time on board is at a premium, so it was with some relief when I woke up to discover that the cargo discharge planned for this evening had been pushed back. This gave me time to do paperwork properly at my desk (as opposed to hunched over a countertop, trying to chop vegetables, make a salad, (eating healthy takes longer, which is probably why our microwave has more wear marks than Madonna's inner thighs.), sign my name on 20 documents and fill out the many,many tax forms that go along with moving oil into foreign hands, answer the phone and email the office). I also got to walk the deck and perform my weekly inspection, then I went inside, cooked dinner and watched 'the Expendables," which was like taking 90 minutes of my life and wiping my ass with it, but with more explosions. Seriously, if you haven't seen that movie, everything explodes, everywhere. The end.

I also cut a new notch into my belt the other night. Not because I got laid, but even better, because my waistline is now 6 inches smaller than it was on August 1.

you have two more wishes...

2011-10-20T00:28:00.000-07:00

Now that we're on the downhill side of October, thoughts here turn towards warmer places, so here are this month's women from Brazil.

Mystery solved. Where is the press now?

2011-10-17T13:41:00.001-07:00

OK, grab you a soda, pint of lager, shot of whisky, twist of chew or an 8-ball, because I'm about to sex you up with SCIENCE! and I want you to remember to be enthusiastic and to call me 'daddy' during. Not after.

Do you remember last month, when the press halted the 24-hr a day Lady Gaga news vigil to report about the exciting news of things travelling faster than light? The press was churning out 'Einstein was Wrong' articles at a remarkable clip. For a day or so there, Buck Rogers was all in our grasp.

We have seen the future, and it is good

I wrote here that it doesn't do to try to get all up in Einstein's bidness, because Einstein was the scientific equivalent of Shaft, Chuck Norris and the Honey Badger all in one.

At any rate, the press was very quick to discount the last 1,000 years or so of scientific thinking, and pretty much was on board with giving up on Physics research in favor of Making Shit Up.

What happened was this: Experiments found that subatomic particles seemed to be moving from one place to another faster than is theoretically possible. The time differential between the starting point of these particles, and the ending point indicated that either the particles were moving faster than the speed of light OR that the experiment was flawed in some way.

Well, shit, the press forgot about everything after the 'or' in that last sentence.

The authors, being unable to find any flaw in the experiment, published it in the hope that someone else could help them. Again proving that to be in the press, one doesn't have to be able to count to 21 without unzipping their fly, the press took that published paper, and believed that they found 'proof' of something.
Devil's in the details. The flaw was found, and yet FUCKING NO ONE is reporting on this.

Turns out that the distance between the source and the sensor in the atomic collider was measured by GPS coordinates. Yes, those satellites in the sky, up in space.

Fuck me, how did we miss that? The distance between the satellites and the receiver is largish, and the satellites are moving through the universe in a different place than we are. In other words, there is a relativistic difference in their velocity compared to ours. Since time is experienced more slowly as velocity is increased, the satellites' time signals are slightly different than ours, and the authors of the study forgot to apply a relativistic correction to the GPS data.

Honest mistake, and the system worked as it was supposed to. Now some new and exciting and actually USEFUL data can be looked at. But where's the press? Wher's Wilma Whatsername in spandex? Dr. Theopolis, nowhere to be seen. Bullshit.

Where's the press? This is Science, goddamit!
Oh, wait, they're back on Lady Gaga. I don't get it. That's like the ugliest transvestite ever. Guy's not fooling anyone.

Pimp, Scholar, king. Albert Einstein wins science again.

For sale

2011-10-16T18:56:00.000-07:00

If anyone's interested, and willing to go to Massachusetts for pickup, here is a lovely 1072 Oldsmobile Cutlass, with a modified 350 rocket engine, currently configured to produce in the range of 400hp, which can easily be modified to go far higher. The car has a metallic gold finish, a restored interior (original w/ an 8-track player, plus an upgraded stereo slung under the dash). The front grille needs to be rechromed, she needs a new lock on the trunk, and the front end could use a rebuild in the next year or two. This is my big brother's car, and he wants it gone ASAP. $5,500 or best offer. Anyone interested, please email me.

hat trick

2011-10-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

3 good weekends in a row. This weekend we sat at anchor and cleaned up the place, which was a serious mess, but now approaching Bristol Fashion. Last weekend I was in Maine, having a wonderful time, but got involved in an issue that prevents me from writing about it too much until the dust settles. Awesome time, anyhow. Weekend before was a getaway with the Mrs.

All of my last 3 weekends had some bad mixed in with the good, but, on balance, were wholly positive. Weekend in VT included unscheduled off-roading because the roads were gone. Maine had the thing that shall not be named yet, but which will make a great post when it is not prejudicial to write about. And this weekend? Well, the wind backed hard, just this evening after sundown. The wind swung fast enough that we were still facing the current and taking the wind dead astern, which I didn't notice right away when I stepped aft for a much-deserved pee over the stern. Which was directly into the wind. You'd think, sensitive parts in the wind would notice, but no. Not really.

Anyhow, thank goodness I didn't have any asparagus.

Adventures in Vacationing

2011-10-13T06:04:00.000-07:00

I've been working extra weeks out here on Steel Beach for a while now.

When my Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife successfully guilted me into a world-class and life-altering vacation to Brazil earlier this year, I started 'working over,' filing in on tugboats and oil barges when I was supposed to be home relaxing on my scheduled time off. This had the tripartite effects of adding to the bank accounts, weight gain for me, and the beginning of what I suspect could have been depression had there not been an intervention.
Now that Brazil is just a memory, and Ye Olde Chequing Accounte has finished hemorrhaging my hard-earned shekels, for the first time in 9 months, I worked a mere 28 days and went home for the next 14.
And it was good.
Our time off started with a romantic weekend in Vermont. I was already patting myself on the back for coming up with this- my boy was to stay with his Aunt, Uncle and nephews, and Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife and I had our first ever solo weekend together.
Whoops, forgot about Irene.
Turns out, while I was getting damp about the ears from hurricane Irene, Vermont got nuked. I never knew.
The ride to the mountain Inn and spa was pretty and also romantic. Until we came to the washed-out bridge and saw the busy and inspiring level of activity that Vermont has pulled out in their reconstruction efforts. So, rerouting around a mountain pass, we found another closed road. What followed was a 3-hour tour that culminated in a drive up and down a mountain (unpaved) road and, eventually, to the inn. Which was nice, and quiet. Then it rained all weekend, which killed my plans of horseback riding, but had the ancillary benefit of a good excuse to stay in the jacuzzi and drink.
So the romantic weekend was a bit of a draw, what with the environmental damage, but we met some great local folks, and had some nice 1-on-1 time.
Fast forward another 2 days and I was up in Maine.
In my undergrad days, I worked in Downeast Maine at a remote biological field station along the Canadian maritime border. Later, after I changed careers, I became close friends with the chief mate on my ship, who was from the same area. So, for the past almost 20 years, I've been coming up to Maine to blow off steam. More drinking, more outdoorsy stuff. Last week was the most fun I've had in years. Since Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife is reluctant to put on less-than 4" heels, downeast Maine isn't really the place for her. I went up for a weekend of manly activities- hiking, fishing, eating drinking, lighting things on fire and drinking more, you get the idea. It was awesome.
So, in my 14 days home, I actually spent 5 days at home. I packed a lot of living into my time off. Isn't that what we're supposed to do?

back

2011-10-12T05:57:00.000-07:00

Back aboard here at work. Spent 2 weeks of intensive activity while I was off, including some quality time with the fam. More later.

2011-09-30T07:40:00.000-07:00

My giant forehead looks like a drive-in screen in this pic.

My boy, Genghis B, is ready to roam the Steppes.

home!

2011-09-29T12:16:00.001-07:00

Back soon. Went home. Party ensues.

Also, passed the 40lb mark on my diet. Pretty damn excited.

idiots, being idiotic. In print.

2011-09-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

So you've probably seen the news about CERN finding neutrinos that appeared to be moving faster than the speed of light, right? Time travel, Einstein is a big old dead wrong poopyhead?

Yeah, I've seen that shit too.

http://news.yahoo.com/faster-light-discovery-raises-prospect-time-travel-204403395.html

The members of the media who actually finished high school are waxing poetic about E=MC^2.

No one has actually read the paper, of course, in which the authors suspect a math or data contamination error, but can't find it. Yet. Being a diligent bunch, they're looking for folks to repeat the experiment and see what the hell is happening.

In the meanwhile, the media and poor saps united across the western world are booking flights to their nearest time machine.

Now, I'm not a physicist, but I had to suffer through Physics classes in college. And the psychotic, indecipherable Eastern Europeans who taught it, too.
I'm going to try to be topical, yet explain why I think this is probably another climb up Mt. Molehill.

For an object with mass, the faster it travels, the more energy is required for it to accelerate. Think of your car, and why a 60hp Dodge Neon can do 100mph, but a 120hp Toyota can't go 200mph. You need in the vicinity of 400-500 hp to get there. An 5-fold increase in power to double the speed. As you approach the speed of light, the force necessary to accelerate increases to numbers ever approaching infinity. So that's out.

I'm excluding relativity here, but I can't for long. Massless objects like Neutrinos and photons have it easier, in theory, except for the gamma value that doesn't get addressed in the simplified E=MC^2 equation. As objects move faster, they appear to move more slowly through time. This is relativity, and this is the gamma value. At speeds approaching the speed of light, time changes start to become measurable and noticeable. Gamma starts to approach a value of 1. This is why the speed of light is the speed of light. This is the speed at which the particles no longer experience time.

So the obvious question is how can something that isn't experiencing time be moving through time? If gamma can't exceed 1, but particles are moving faster than that, what is more likely, Einstein is wrong, or there's a bug in the experiment?

Never, ever go up against Einstein.

shame on me...

2011-09-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

Well, September is almost over, and I almost forgot to post this month's beautiful Brazilian women. Shame on me. Anyhow, in the name of science, International Relations, and good genetics, I give you this month's proof that God loves us and wants us to go to Brazil again. Or me, at least. God wants me to go to Brazil again.

Time flies

2011-09-21T08:55:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of my dad's death. It's amazing how quickly the time passes.
I grew up in the shadow of my older brothers and my sister- not a black sheep by any means, but quieter, nerdier and absolutely more awkward. I followed in my father's footsteps, after a fashion, though I went wide of the path by ending up becoming a marine biologist, after listening to his stories of living and working on oceanographic ships, and later, to follow his example more closely and become a merchant mariner.

I never had to experience months, or even years of absence while my dad was at sea;my father swallowed the anchor just before I was born, though it pained him to do so and he never quite recovered from coming ashore. He was of the last generation of true globe-trotting mariners, the men who signed foreign articles bonding them to a ship for 1-2 years at a time... yet he was sympathetic when I sometimes bailed out after 100 days.

One of my fondest memories of my father came a few months before his passing, when he was in the hospital after having a new defibrillator implanted in his chest. It was in the evening, and I had gotten home after 4 weeks in Philadelphia aboard a bunker barge. I dropped my bags, and my wife and I drove into Boston to go see him. Must have been 9 or 10 at night, long after visiting hours were over. My father was reading his Office (The Book of Hours, a set of prayers meant to be read daily as part of prayer and meditation for particularly devout and scholarly Catholics) with the TV on mute in the background, and his face lit up when he saw us.
I have to back up a bit and talk about my wife's relationship with my father; my wife lost her dad early in life, and she became instantly devoted to my father when we were dating. My father was tickled by this. Without thought, once hugs and greetings were exchanged, my wife climbed into the hospital bed with my father and lay beside him, talking animatedly in her particular version of English. At that moment, seeing them together, I realized how well my father had taught me to value family, and the deep emotional connection that transcends barriers of culture, pain, anger and the million distractions that family life throws up. My dad's contented smile was wonderful to see. Although his body had been failing slowly for 25+ years, one of his favorite pastimes through the years was always to just sit and gab. Although he didn't pass that particular trait on to me, my father was rarely happier than at the moments when he was surrounded by family, simply talking to pass the time.

I'm aware that my family will be reading this post, and this is mostly geared for them. Except, of course, I'll have to run this through Google Translate for Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife's sake.

running start

2011-09-19T05:30:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I let myself get so fat, first off.

I've been on the verge of being grossly obese for a long while. My weight in college was usually around 230-240lbs. I'm sort of built like a cinderblock, so I always figured it was no big deal. And so, as more weight was added and my waistline expanded, I wasn't particularly worried about it. Working as a bouncer during the winters while I was fishing for a living, it was to my advantage. With a good running start, no one stays on their feet with that kind of momentum during a dive-tackle. Plus, in my capacity as a lobsterman, the extra weight wasn't a great impediment.
Working on a ship or tug and barge doesn't require one to be athletic. The job involves short bursts of great effort, not cardiovascular endurance. And, truth be told, I've never been overly embarassed about being overweight. It's just me, after all. I have a trophy wife, which is still crazy to me, but true. I must be doing something right.
Going to Brazil in July was a game changer for me. There aren't any fat guys in Brazil. There's some fat old men, and mentally challenged folks, I guess, but you won't find Jose Lunchpail wandering around with the equivalent of a 7-year old slung around his middle. In my whole life, while I have occasionally been embarrassed about how I look without a shirt on, I've never been ashamed of myself, and in Brazil, I was. Having my wife's family discuss my fatness in front of me, not realizing that I understand Portuguese pretty well, but don't speak it much made me embarrassed an angry. When an aunt said that I must be very rich for her beautiful neice to have married a balea (whale), I simply said "Sabe, Eu falo Portugues un pequino, mas Eu entiendo tudo, vaca" ('You know, I speak Portuguese a little, but I understand everything, you cow.)'.
On my flight back home, I realized that it is time to make changes. Being embarrassed for myself is bad, but being embarrassed for my wife was a living hell. To have family question whether or not my wife is a golddigger was a low moment in my life, and it's left me angry.

Unfortunately, anger and anxiety push me to raid the fridge when left on my own.

I did something that Jay G suggested when I first started reading his blog. I kept a diary of what I was eating, and meticulously calculated the portions and calories, and was deeply disturbed and surprised at the results. After 2 weeks of doing that, I spoke with my doctor and a dietician, and via email (being at sea, I was stuck, but damn my doctor is awesome), I started on a healthy, low cal, low cholesterol and low sodium diet, and started exercising daily; mostly walking around my deck in circles, and doing calisthenics at first.
Turns out, within a few days, I discovered that exercise is a great substitute for tamping down anger and anxiety, rather than simply filling my stomach and falling into a food coma.

I'm eating well. I'm eating foods I like- granted, there's no fried chicken or thrice-weekly steaks in my life, but I'm eating healthy, and I feel good. And I'm down 35lbs. The exercise has been a real boon to me- there's stuff going on that is making me heavily stressed out, and I find that the time for myself, the daily hour of walking and 30-45 minutes of weights and calisthenics every other day are really helping me cope with stress and anxiety from things that weigh on me.

And I look better, as represented by my waistline:

That's my belt. I'm drilling holes in it about once a week. My clothes are looking decidedly gangsta, hanging off. My goal now is to get down to 190lbs, which for me would be flat-stomach skinny. I've made a hell of a start.

What's in a name?

2011-09-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

First off, you have to understand that life on a coastal tanker can be boring.
Life on our coastal tanker was less boring than most. The permanent crew (Captains, mates, Chiefs, 1st assistant engineers, pumpmen, bosuns and 3 of the AB's) (half of whom would be home at any one time, and the other aboard, of course) spent half or more of the year together, and our bunch was a tight knit group even so. We had plenty of characters; Eldon the pumpman was a Honduran who would eat anything; honestly, the man was half seagull, and never, ever said a cross word in all seriousness in the years I knew him. Juan the cook was an Argentinian with a similar attitude, who could boil a boot and make it look good. Ernie the other cook was trying to poison us most of the time, I suspect, as chronic diarrhea was the norm while he was aboard.
One of the chief mates is to this day one of my best friends. How the hell that happened I don't know, seeing as we first started hanging out in our off time while I was still an Ordinary Seaman. He lives in a remote place up in Maine, where I happen to have lived a worked for a time, so we knew some of the same folks. Kindred spirits, I guess. Regardless, after a few years of working together, we had adopted our own rhythm in working; stripping out the final cargo in a tank was always a race between us. Port and starboard, we'd work our way down the deck, and the mate would always goof on me if he was ahead, and become curiously silent if I was. There being other folks on watch at the time, I rarely said anything too risque, as truthfully it would be weird for morale to have an unlicensed guy buddy buddy with the mate, so we did a pretty good job of being professional, when we were working, anyhow.
When we weren't working, or when we were just talking, word games were the norm; finding synonyms for anything became high art, and figuring them out only less slightly so. Examples:

Up Spermforter= down comforter
New Hampshire valves= main valves
Exotic dancers= stripping valves
scrote= bag

...just to name a few. Example: "Ask the bosun for the ditty scrote. I tore my up spermforter. On your way back, make sure the exotic dancers are all secured."
Now, any new guys would be mystified and possibly made uncomfortable. This was just how we passed the time. There's only so much that 20 men can do for entertainment when there's no drinking allowed.

Please remember in your thoughts and prayers the 400+ seafarers being held hostage and tortured by pirates in Africa, and join me in condemning all shipping companies who fail to report pirate attacks in an attempt to save on insurance costs.

that new blog smell...

2011-09-13T09:30:00.001-07:00

A big "Welcome aboard" to The Gormogons, a blog containing some wonderfully thoughtful commentary on news and politics. In the week since I've been reading, these guys have become one of the first blogs I check on in my daily rounds.

Also, I am receiving a lame-duck mate on board today, a guy we specifically sent elsewhere a few weeks ago for reasons of being a shitty shipmate. Boomerang effect. Bummer.

flying solo

2011-09-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

Today ended up being a down day, where there wasn't a cargo to keep us busy. We were fortunate enough to dock in Brooklyn, at my employer's dock, which gave me the opportunity to go ashore for groceries and my daily walk.
Today is September 11, and that's a whole other story, one that I'm not going to share, this year. This weekend has been marked by a frenzied police presence, for certain. Maybe it wasn't the best day for a walk in New York, but I was tired of my usual multiple circuits around the deck.
I should digress here. I have anxiety about visiting New York. In the 9 months since I transferred here, I've wandered around on foot exactly zero times. Even in driving here, I've driven to and from my home in MA, and to the grocery store, and that was it. This city intimidates me, or should I say, intimidated me, as that time is finally passing. I've now driven around Brooklyn, and even walked around the area where I park my truck now. I was pleased to find that it's actually a nice place to walk- lots of shops and cafes. With the eyes of the world focused on Manhattan today, it was also pretty quiet, which is a wholly positive thing.

I don't get it....

2011-09-07T12:33:00.000-07:00

...you offer someone a sincere complement on their mustache, and suddenly she's not your friend anymore.

can't forget

2011-09-06T21:58:00.001-07:00

...3 years ago today, aboard the somewhat unseaworthy steam tanker "New River," we started preparing for hurricane Ike, loading storm ballast and securing everything on board in preparation for a direct hit by the hurricane. Ike devastated the Galveston, TX area, and after dragging us nearly 300 miles backwards over the course of three days, spat us out on September 11, 2008.
I still have bad dreams about losing steering while at the helm on the last night, and the ship getting into a parametric roll that threw most of the crew around the house like coffee beans shaking in the can. Under extreme circumstances, the captain made several key decisions that saved the ship- storm ballasting among the most important. I often wondered if the ship would have lost stability had we not loaded down some of the cargo tanks with seawater.

thinkin' bout it.

2011-09-06T05:42:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about what makes me happy as a person.
When my wife and I decided that we'd visit Brazil this past summer, everything was geared for our trip. My already scanty free time (2 weeks at home after 4 weeks at work) was cut in half (I went to 5 weeks on/1 week off). In 2011 I've had 6 weeks off, including my 2 in Brazil. Essentially, I've had 28 days to spend with my family. Of that time, I've had maybe seven days to do what I like to do. Brazil was an exception there. Being a tourist is fun. Being a tourist tied to my wife's apron strings viz a viz the language barrier... not as much fun, but still fine.
2011 has been the year of no fun, despite the amazing vacation in Brazil. My weight ballooned from stress and lack of exercise. My patience is AWOL.
August was a bit of a watershed month for me. With a week's preparation, on August 1st, I finally started a program of healthy eating and exercise, which I continue daily. My weight is falling fast, as it should when one is obese and no longer eating everything in arms' reach. In addition, I vowed to not work extra more than twice in the next 12 months, so I'll be back to having more free time.
On my next payday I'm going to send a check to a marine architect and have him send me the plans for building a small rowing dory. I love building boats, and even with my limited time, it should be possible to cobble something together. I'm hoping to engage one of my brothers in the project, as I have a certain lack of facility in cutting smooth curves, and it would be nice not to spend 200 hours on sanding the waves out of my cuts, as is my usual M.O.

So things are already looking up. Also, after a 3(!!!) year hiatus, I'm going to go back to my favorite place in the world, Downeast Maine, to visit some friends early next month. Bliss ensues.

an unfortunate thing

2011-09-06T05:39:00.003-07:00

I've been a little out of touch- but I'm back now. Expect awesomeness.

Damn seagulls

2011-08-31T05:51:00.000-07:00

Ugh.

It was a beautiful night out in Gravesend anchorage in NY harbor. With a break between cargoes, we're moored here in the anchorage awaiting orders. Last night was one of the most comfortable, pleasant evenings I've had on the water; the kind of clear, cool night just made for staring out at the visual beauty of the New York skyline.
Today, however, is a different story. The seagulls found us during the night. My deck looks like someone slaughtered a pack of dalmatians on it. Black and white and red all over. Gross.

brushie brushie

2011-08-27T04:55:00.000-07:00

Part of my ritual when we're not pumping cargo is a morning (or evening) walk, an hour-long loop around and around the perimeter of my deck. This gives me a chance to eyeball everything, ponder the ponderables, and dig the logopoeia, I suppose, as I'm also usually listening to my mp3 player. Anyhow, this morning's walk was done in some stank-ass weather. It's not raining yet here on NY harbor, but the air is thick and warm, and FAC (Flat-Ass-Calm), with a very pregnant sky and a distinct lack of birds or other signs of life. With the hurricane some hours away, I, of course, came up with an updated to-do list in preparation, which included moving my precious supply of diet pepsi indoors lest something untoward happen, which would require me to lay about all and sundry with a fire ax (I loves me some diet pepsi). While doing so, I noticed that the shipyard workers who were aboard these past few days got into my outdoor grub locker, where I keep my sodas and dead hookers. Fuckers laid waste on my soda supply, but, thankfully, I have enough to get through the rest of my tour here.
Anyhow, I'll be outside again in a few minutes to help with the lashing and securing and yelling and pointing. I came inside to cool off, as between an hour of walking in a big rectangle and doing pushups against a nonskid deck, I'm sweaty and my hands feel hamburgered. I don't care how tough your skin is, a fat person doing 100+ pushups over the course of an hour is going to have sore hands, I suppose.
Anyhow, other than an hour or so of final bits and bobs, all we have to do is secure the hatch to the house and we're ready for Irene, that bitch.
My wife called me at midnight to express her concern regarding my well-being tonight, which was nice. As I mentioned yesterday, she's never seen a hurricane. I explained to her that it was no worse than a winter storm, just longer in duration, and with the wet ground some trees are sure to fall. The nearest tree being far beyond shouting distance here at the dock in Red Hook, I feel pretty safe. My kid's freaked out, which is too bad. My parents practically had to tie me down to keep me from running outside during hurricanes at his age.

screw your contingency plans

2011-08-26T17:33:00.001-07:00

So the Captain of the Port moved up the deadline for maritime operations in NY harbor by 1 hours. This means that I've been running around like a madman closing and dogging cargo hatches and access ports as the shipyard workers finish douching out each of our cargo tanks. I have 3 1/2 hours to finish making the deck ready for sea. Very do-able, but unpleasant work, helping the graveyard shift guys coil and stow oil-stained hoses, vacuum lines, Wilden Pumps, air compressor hoses, etc. We scored a sweet spot to ride out the weather, though I'll have a ringside seat to watch my truck go underwater if the surge beats the predictions. Not cool.
Anyhow, either way, by the end of this watch, I'll be done with this phase of operations. Next step is to ride out the hurricane, then back to work on Monday to reconfigure the deck for clean oil service. I'm already looking forward to Tuesday night, when I'll shift to my regular home away from home.

battening down the hatches

2011-08-26T02:51:00.000-07:00

...with a little less than two days to go before hurricane Irene makes herself known, we're sitting here with our drawers unbuttoned and puddled around our ankles, which is not the place to be.
On Wednesday warning I again left a perfectly good and warm sleepy wife at 2am and went back to work a week early, this time to babysit a barge undergoing a thorough cleaning and scrubbing and mucking out here in NY prior to being put into clean oil service down south. This mostly entails me watching other people work and occasionally helping out, and included my first ever tank dive aboard a barge- funny how the compartments are so small compared to a ship's. All the same, here we sit on Friday morning, with a hurricane poised to come up our back passage, and the hatches are open, hoses snaking everywhere, and barrels of crusty oil residue sitting quietly at the deck edge waiting to be hoisted off. It's hard to picture the clutter being cleared off in time to brace for weather, but I'm told we'll be sailing in a little over 24 hours.
If all goes well we'll be mooring in a sweet spot tomorrow, as there's more work to be done at a well-positioned yard along the Gowanus river here in NY, protected from all sides, more or less, with only the wind and storm surge to worry about, if we can get the deck preddied up and everything not tied down tied down.
Anyhow, it looks as though this hurricane is poised to land squarely between our cheeks. Too bad. Not my first, and likely not my last. My wife and son are certainly going to be in for a surprise. They've never seen a hurricane. In that sense, I wish they could watch it from the big windows at my mom's house, where the action will be up in the Boston area. Last time, my brother, my dad and I watched the waves breaking over the roof of a neighbor's house while my mother yelled at us for being idiots and taped the windows with a big series of X's to keep the glass from flying if it shattered. Which it didn't.

Anyhow, for folks in the east, I wish you all well and will see you after. Going to be a busy couple of days.

Crap. I just realized that my truck might be in the surge zone too.

new, shiny, nice smelling.

2011-08-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

Couple of things.

1). New!!! After over a year of not updating my blogroll, I have updated for you my list of what's good on the web besides pictures of a wet and partially clad Salma Hayak.

b). Nautical Log Captain Peter D. Boucher, retired master mariner draws from years of experience serving as a watch officer and later, master of ships. An Irish transplant living here in the US, I'm sure Capt. Peter has to listen to tourists from Boston tell him exactly where in Ireland their parents come from. It's the Bostonian-of-Irish-descent national pastime.

Also, Capt. Peter reminds us, as mariners, to be mindful and remember to tell others of the suffering of the 800+ hostages being tortured and imprisoned by Somali pirates, so that maybe some of the d-bags with the ability to do something will do something.

# Thrice

Wasting time with Mike & Ari deep mining the web for the best/worst of everything, and this despite a deep (and righteous) fear of Cher's naughty bits.

(audi) Quatro
The Feral Irishman fellow-traveler and fellow enthusuiast of guns, breasteses, and poking holes in popular figures' egos. Also, my #1 suspect in where the hell all my good sci-fi books went, 'cus my mother totally says she didn't throw them out.

FIVE! (is right out)
Bore-Head007- now loathed by the corruptocrats in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, Bore-Head is a champion of the pressured and rapidly disappearing small family-owned commercial fishing business. Along with several other brave professional and para-professional reporters, men like these have exposed to Congress a viper's nest of corruption in our nation's largest scientific organization.

%
Knuckledraggin' My Life Away- definitely semi-nsfw! Wirecutter's got a great mix of all the things you should be looking at, including jokes, boobs, jokes about boobs, and American history.

hi mom
Mental Poo- midgetmanofsteel may well be a soon-to-be-famous humor writer, like a dirty Dave Barry. Awesomeness ensues.

Please remember the 800 of our fellow seafarers held captive by pirates both ashore and off the coast of Somalia. Also the coast of West Africa which is suffering attacks, many of which go unreported because of concern for increasing marine insurance rates. It seems shipowners are interested only in their profits and not human lives.

Never forget

2011-08-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I've been at home, and went all-in in trying to get shit under control that needed getting under control. In the meanwhile, This:

Also in the news: the very first Hurricane EVAH may (but may not) hit the northeast. The media is showing footage of people loading up at the grocery store for Hurricane Katrina. Since no one is loading up on groceries for anything anywhere right now, except maybe Miami, which gets hit by hurricanes weekly (and twice on Thursdays), the Scare Factory is ramping up to full Chicken Little levels.

Granted, it's been 20 years since New England had hurricane-force win... oh, wait, New England gets winds equal to Category I hurricanes once or twice a year during the winter, so... yeah. Not impressed. I remember an even half-dozen hurricanes in my yoot, and though damaging and scary, somehow we lived on. So I just turned my TV off.

Disposable sailors and the price of piracy

2011-08-15T10:44:00.001-07:00

I'm going to repost an op-ed piece that left me furious, regarding modern piracy. You can read the original HERE. Highlights follow.

Anti-pirate strike by seafarers not a good idea

by Greg Knowler.

Seaman’s unions from Hong Kong, China, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and even Russia all agreed that their seafarers had the right to refuse to board ships sailing through high-risk pirate areas.

It was estimated at the summit that around 100,000 seafarers man the ships that carry trade between Asia and Europe and if they all refused to board, well … that would be a disaster.

Seafarers are people too, of course, and like most people they don’t appreciate being detained, tortured and sometimes killed. But it is difficult to see any refuse-to-board initiative actually taking hold, even if the move could gain popular support.

Shipping associations and various carriers have described this latest move as a grave threat to world trade, which it certainly is.

In fact, if all the crew of all the ships planning to sail through the Suez Canal stayed on solid ground and refused to board it would do far more damage to trade and industry, and to world shipping, than could ever be wreaked by pirates.

There are so many vessels in operation that port windows are tight and relatively inflexible. Delays quickly snowball into congestion and any coordinated Asia-wide action would result in a mess of biblical proportions.

OK, so far a fairly cogent argument. The author contends that because (in his opinion) there is no immediate solution to piracy, business must continue as usual. Now, damn it, where have I heard this argument before?

THE SPICE MUST FLOW!

Oh, right.

Now, before we all sharpen our pitchforks, the usual pablum must be shoveled down our throats.

Naval patrols are welcome but they need to start boarding and scuttling mother ships that supply and allow the pirates to operate far from shore. Put armed guards on all vessels in danger areas and make sure their rules of engagement give them the authority to shoot to kill.

The Asia-Europe trade lane is quickly falling into the hands of pirates and it is time to take it back.

...and we must have ham if we are to have ham sandwiches. The usual statements are made.

Today's pirate-infested waters (as opposed to other remote places in Africa, the Carribbean and South America where piracy is an unusual, mostly opportunistic, but extant problem) share common geography with the pirate-infested waters of the middle ages. This isn't a new problem. However, the solutions employed two centuries ago aren't politically expedient these days.

I'm happy to see shipowners are starting to get nervous. Seafarers are being tortured and killed in sufficient number to make certain voyage routes unpalatable. The status quo is bad enough for them to make unionization possible, if only remotely so at this point. Now, with news that shipowners are pressuring seafarers to not report pirate attacks to help keep insurance costs down, it becomes blatantly obvious how little regard the well-being of sailors is being considered.
I'm not pointing my fingers at shipowners purely, either. There is an institutional disregard for seafarers, most of whom spend their lives without permanent employment; as such there is little incentive to worry about the well-being of casual employees who themselves owe no loyalty to ship or company. That's just the way it is.

I don't want to part here without mentioning again that I believe that the author is wrong in begging the question as to the issue of seafarers taking collective action in staying out of certain trade routes. The honest truth is that the process of getting a job on a ship, in most coutries, is so full of corruption and criminality, that an expedient solution to manning shortages, should it come to that, would be to simply have manning agents lie about the ship's plans during the hiring process. Once a seafarer is aboard, few of them have the financial ability to walk off a job should they refuse to sign on. The cost of an international flight may exceed the entire voyages' payout. As such, in my own opinion, it may be worthwhile to combat piracy through legislation; making it mandatory to protect the well-being of crew and vessel has always been the only way to ensure that there is even a modicum of protection available. Shipowners aren't going to volunteer to spend money. Who would?

2011-08-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

So my new tankerman out here is a cowboy who breeds and raises horses.

Christ, I need a better hobby. My amazing plans of going home and maybe wax my truck just got made ridiculously lame.

Word.

2011-08-11T18:58:00.000-07:00

With thanks to the Misunderstood mariner for this excellent piece again: Every year or so I repost this for all the non-mariners and armchair admirals out there who want to experience the dramatic, sexy life of a mariner.

Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your spouse whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble "sorry, wrong rack."
Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of your bathtub and move the shower head down to chest level. When you take showers, make sure you shut off the water while soaping up.
Every time there's a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and rock as hard as you can until you're nauseous.
Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it to "High."
Leave lawnmower running in your living room six hours a day for proper noise level.
Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
Once a week blow compressed air up through your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot across and onto your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you.
Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.
Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread, if anything. (Optional: Canned ravioli or cold soup.)
Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator.
Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get dressed as fast as you can, then run out into your yard and break out the garden hose.
Once a month take every major appliance completely apart and then put them back together.
Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5 or 6 hours before drinking.
Invite at least 85 people you don't really like to come and visit for a couple of months.
Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.
Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills on your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.
Lockwire the lugnuts on your car.
When making cakes, prop up one side of the pan while it is baking. Then spread icing really thick on one side to level off the top.
Every so often, throw your cat into the swimming pool, shout "Man overboard, ship recovery!", run into the kitchen and sweep all the pots/pans/dishes off of the counter onto the floor, then yell at your spouse for not having the place "stowed for sea."
Put on the headphones from your stereo (don't plug them in). Go and stand in front of your stove. Say (to nobody in particular) "Stove manned and ready." Stand there for 3 or 4 minutes. Say (once again to nobody in particular) "Stove secured." Roll up the headphone cord and put them away.

what's good

2011-08-11T18:46:00.000-07:00

So for the past two nights aboard, we've had the spanish channel on, but muted. As far as I can tell, from 5pm-10pm, they run their version of the Benny Hill show, but with scantily clad women dancing in the background. This is, in fact, the same as Brazilian TV. And you know? When muted, this is way better than a bunch of attention whores vying for some prize, or some sex (if the two are, indeed, any different as presented on TV, anyhow), which is what is on American TV in the evening. At least the people on the Spanish channel don't make me wish for mass spontaneous sterility, a la 'Children of Men.'

sharing is caring

2011-08-05T19:22:00.000-07:00

With a new month well underway, and 3 weeks left to go on this voyage, I haven't forgotten about why people mostly come here to sift through my crappy sea stories: to that end, I give you this month's photos from Brazil, in an effort to get people to stop asking me why I hope to retire there and take up mixing Viagra and brown liquor full time.

There's only one real problem with the high proportion of attractive womenfolk in Brazil. For example, this healthy young lady in the peach bikini:

The problem isn't that her bikini top is too small. This is a photo of a MAN.

Haahahahahahahahahahaha! You were checking out a dude!

WTF?

2011-08-04T23:26:00.000-07:00

So, with things humming along smoothly here on board, and Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife and The Boy returning to US soil in less than a week, things are looking up.

My wife called tonight to tell me that some of her 60-something first cousins are throwing her a goodbye party over the weekend, and, by 'throwing a party' I mean they're looking for me to buy everything they need to feed an army for 12 hours.

So, being a cheap prick, I told my wife that she can raid the coffers, but has to tell everyone that I'm throwing her a goodbye party, and have hired her many, many cousins to manage the event, and also, the cousins, especially the male ones who fed me moonshine while I was blacked out, have to be referred to as 'my bitches' for the duration of the party.

I'm an awesome husband.

6,000 miles away, and I'm throwing the social event of the season in my wife's city of Burnt Testicle, Brazil.

Where's your copy of the CFR's?

2011-08-02T21:34:00.000-07:00

Dinner tonight was something different- after a long, long and hot day spent hunched over a needle gun and a buffer, I was pretty burnt out, and the SPF64 made the dust and rust scale I kicked up particularly annoying all over my person. This is pretty much my recipe for summer when we're not loading or discharging oil. I'm a big fan of therapeutic chipping and painting, as there aren't a lot of opportunities for mindless labor to lose oneself in out here.
At any rate, in the late afternoon came the unwelcome news of a cargo that was fixed at the last minute. So be it. With my turn in the barrel coming up, my opposite out here fixed a beautiful, big chicken pot pie. We invited another crew to come aboard if they'd bring salad and a veggie for us... This resulted in a decent dinner with good folks at my table, and a rare opportunity for relaxed, extended conversation about the usual things that sailors talk about. Sex, work, and how fat we're getting.
One thing that came up was a great discussion about how we react to negative events out here when we're dealing with dock or ship staff. Everyone had a story about the one time they blew up at a corrupt Russian engineer who wanted to sell back some of the fuel the ship had just purchased, for a cash discount. Reactions usually started off with polite refusals, degenerating from there.
Aside from the humorous, the more serious issue of Letters of Protest came up, naturally, as I received one last week and all. One captain talked about his most ridiculous letter (which he countersigned "For receipt only, Dickhead" (which is hilarious if you're in the biz, but mundane as balls if not)). The most significant part of this exchange was the discussion on variances between how shipping companies interpret the MARPOL ( International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution From Ships, 1973 as modified by the Protocol of 1978)
treaty around the world. In the US, we all run deeply scared of the US's OPA90, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, and sometimes forget that MARPOL has teeth, too.
What came out of this discussion was pretty basic. We all need a well-thumbed and bookmarked copy of the Code of Federal Regulations at hand, and access to MARPOL's salient highlights, as well. This can help bridge some gaps (the most popular reason for a Letter of Protest to be issued in bunkering, aside from cargo shortages or bad blends seems to be witnessing of representative samples). While none of us could fault MARPOL from designating the receiving ship's manifold point as the de facto official sampling point, it is possible to violate OPA90 by leaving one's own vessel unattended to witness samples elsewhere, and, if the other tankerman is roused, a busy barge can then violate the work-hours limitations set by the DOT.
For these reasons, the astute tankerman has to question whether to expose oneself to liability, or the company, potentially, if anything gets overlooked or if something goes sideways. It's almost impossible not to be involved in a lose/lose situation if the tankerman on watch isn't careful with the CYA part of the job. Leaving one's vessel is against internal policy by most bunkering companies, and is stupid besides, as it also leaves one exposed to multiple legal risks and the potential for an injury that would involve a multinational pissing contest with only one possible loser. Rarely does this become an issue, however, as there's little difficulty in tasking the rating on watch at the ship's manifold to look over and watch the samples being taken at the barge manifold. When a new or particularly officious engineer takes umbrage at this, however, a pissing contest can unfold, and letters of protest get written in a massive show of CYA. To counter this, every piece of paper must be available as a legal shield, and every individual tasked with a fuel transfer should be able to defend their actions at all times.

personality conflicts

2011-07-29T14:56:00.000-07:00

In the 5 years (!) I've been writing online, in both this blog and BLUE WATER, its' predecessor, I've made the mistake of airing dirty laundry only once, but it came back hard to bite me on the ass, so I write this post with a little trepidation and a LOT of editing. Be warned.

Although I wasn't involved (this time), there has been some dust kicked up as of late by one personality here on NY harbor. Not every evolution can go smoothly, and not all personalities mesh together- When tug operator and tankerman on watch can't agree with the best and safest way to moor a barge to a ship, compromise isn't always possible, and the evolution can devolve into a pissing match in which the potential for trouble exists, where it isn't strictly controlled by a team-effort approach to safely mooring the vessel.

Tankermen have a set goal in mind with mooring a bunker barge to a ship- a fueling hose has to be able to pass to the ship's manifold connection, mooring lines have to not interfere with the operation of the barge and an equal strain applied to all lines, which means the barge must be kept relatively snug to the ship. This means that, effectively, that spring lines and breasting lines have to both be effectively and thoughtfully placed- headlines, of course, are nice, and optimally, headlines can be placed to act as breasting lines where possible, in that their primary role as shock-absorbers to motion can be rove to advantage by creating a more obtuse angle between the headline and the mooring point on the barge. Again, this is an ideal, and not always possible, as it's rare to find a ship that is rigged to moor a barge alongside properly. For me, headlines that are actually run properly are a rare treat. More often, compromisory configurations are employed. So long as the end result is safe and effective, the configuration isn't as critical so long as the end results in a secure arrangement that won't kill anyone or result in a breakaway if one mooring line is lost.

For the tugboat operator, priorities shift somewhat. The tug operator has to make a controlled crash landing against a ship while dealing with currents and wind. Once in the neighborhood of the ship's hull, presumably the tug captain wants to gain positive control of the barge with a line secured to the ship, so that the tug and barge unit can be moved into position by slowly slacking the mooring line(s). In the meanwhile, the tug captain is trying not to poke holes in the ship with the barge, or sweep the bow of the barge under the turn of the bilge in the ship (or swing the tug under the ship's bilge, too, for that matter, if they're so pointed). The truth is that I'm not a tugboat person. I can handle a boat well enough, and even a ship, for that matter, but tugboats, no. I'm not an expert there.
So, when a pissing contest erupts between tankerman and tug captain, the first thing that comes to mind for me is who is officially in charge? A loose tug and barge, the tug master is the master, period. When a barge is moored to a ship, the tankerman on watch starts to assume more responsibility, and here's where trouble starts when there's a disagreement.
I'm a firm believer in going along to get along. I don't like to fan flames when there's headaches. Ultimately, the tug operator has a hard job to do, and I want everyone to collect a paycheck and continue on as before. BUT, what if the tug operator hasn't put the barge in a position where it can be safely moored? This was a recent issue for a co-worker of mine. The first document that the tankerman has to sign attests that the barge is safely moored. But what if it isn't? Either the tankerman must hope for the best, or he has to take control of the situation. In a recent incident, the tug operator ordered the tankerman to run a breasting line in such a way that it would impede the movement of equipment on the barge. The tankerman, who was already taking umbrage at being told how to do his job, refused, citing a safety issue, and a disagreement ensued. So it goes.
Ultimately, a disagreement that can't be settled in situ represents a failure on one or both parties to find an optimal solution. Worse, by dragging outside parties into the mix, it shows that one of the personalities involved doesn't know how to do his job well. This can be attributed to a variety of reasons, or, in the best case, a failure in perspective. When this issue begins to show up repeatedly with one of the parties, however, it may be troubling for both morale and efficiency. This troubling issue comes with a cascade of effects, however. In the case of a marked personality conflict where an individual repeatedly comes into conflict in operational evolutions, the downstream effects can be used to point to the source of the problem. In the case of a tug captain with a reputation for being inflexible or unwilling to take input from tankermen, the tug's deckhands may be reluctant to pass information along to the captain from lookouts, for example, knowing that the captain will ignore any external input. This leads to information gaps, of course, and a disconnect between people meant to be working as a team. For a tankerman who views the tug's master as merely a set of hands to move the barge, it may be possible to ask for the impossible, or to forget that an experienced mind is also watching the mooring operation from behind the windows; for my part, the tug crew has corrected me several times in making small mistakes, or has pointed out better ways of doing things; this is the benefit of a team environment. When a hardhead is involved, however, and looking for a pissing contest, quality control goes out the window.

The Onslaught

2011-07-27T18:26:00.000-07:00

I wrote a longish, rambling post about the annoying prick who gave me a Letter of Protest yesterday during a bunker transfer, but ended up deleting it after the rage subsided.
For the most part, getting a Letter of Protest happens because either we screwed up legitimately, or the Chief engineer or captain of a ship wants to play CYA or is angry that I woulndn't bend or break the law for them.
Normally, I don't worry when a ship gives me a ridiculous Letter of Protest. I've gotten one because the Chief engineer on one ship was angry that he didn't get the top copy of a form that came with multiple-color carbon copies. Dude was mad that he got a blue paper instead of white.
Yesterday's letter was almost on par with that last one. Today I got phone calls from concerned parties (which never happens in the case of BS letters) shoreside, who were obviously worried that I failed to wake up with a headache, and felt the need to ensure that I be properly discomfited.

perspective

2011-07-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

A shipmate lost his wife last night after a long, long battle with cancer. He was able to be with her at the end, due in part to the compassionate folks in management at my company, who arranged for him to fly home while he was on the clock, when it first began to look like she was having a bad spell with treatment. While a small point, for people living with a costly and debilitating illness, the necessity to pay the bills often impinges on time spent together. I, and my fellow shipmates, are fortunate to be working for an organization that doesn't force us to choose between paying the hospital and being there for our loved ones when they need us.

The ironic part for me is that I was in the middle of a long-winded complaint about missing my wife when I heard the news. Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife is spending a week on a fazenda, a giant farm in the Brazilian backcountry, with no electricity or running water, or phone service, and I missed being able to talk to my wife fairly strongly last night. Nothing cuts through the bullshit like tragedy. It'll be another 5 days before I can talk to my wife and son, but so be it; for the grace of God, it's only an inconvenience.

The 5-day hangover

2011-07-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

I split my time in Brazil between a modern, touristy city on the coast, and a poor sprawling city on the plains far inland. Salvador, the city on the coast, was my kind of place. Vitoria Da Conquista, the inland city, was not. But, my wife's family is mostly centered in said city, and thus a 6-day trip ensued.
Meeting my mother-in-law was pretty much as I expected. Awkward with the language barrier, and my mother-in-law has been blind for about 5 years now, which also makes non-verbal communication something of a one-way street. To lubricate the wheels, my mother in law procured 5 liters of Cachaca de Alambique, a super-potent moonshine made of ultrapure white rum. Now, I've been drinking Cachaca for about 4 years- it's a beautiful liquor, with which one can make Caiherinhas, Brazil's signature cocktail. But the stuff's strong- a little more potent than scotch, as far as I can tell. Thus, I never, ever drink more than three, which is enough to make me pleasantly happy but unable to drive a vehicle.
So, over the course of my welcome party at her house, my mother-in-law and her friends gave me three shots of straight moonshine on the rocks. Nice stuff, and I relaxed enough to push the boundaries of my Portuguese language skills.
...but then, suddenly, it was 4AM, and I was barfing into the toilet in my hotel room. Confusion reigned. Why was I so sick? It didn't occur to me to wonder why I was in my hotel room at the time, as it felt as though the world was ending, and I was calling ralph on the porcelain phone, which took up much of my focus. Anyhow, I stumbled back to my bed and flopped on top. My wife sleepily asked me if I was finished arguing with her now. I believe I groaned, and curled up into a ball.
However many hours later, my wife pushed me out of the bed again as it was time to meet another series of relatives. I proceeded to dry heave for a few minutes into the bowl, again, and shower. At this point, I realized that there were some gaps in my memory. Now, almost 2 weeks later, I still don't remember any of it.
Apparently, my mother-in-law and her friends discovered that I will drink anything placed into my hands when drunk. I drank a lot of something far, far stronger than I had ever had before, and blacked out early on. I apparently drank about 10 glasses of almost pure ethanol, to the amusement of the folks in the room. My wife, however, was in the other room talking with old friends, and occasionally popping in to check on me. I was cheerful and funny, being my usual goofball self, if somewhat buzzed, and it wasn't until I had had 6 or 7 extra drinks in me that my wife realized that I had no idea what was going on around me, and brought me back to the hotel. Luckily, I was pleasant and polite, and behaved like a more sober man should behave at his mother-in-law's house. However, there is a 4-hour gap where I can't remember anything.
I do certainly remember the hangover. I barfed and napped and barfed every 20 minutes or so until 9pm the next night. I lost a whole 24 hours to the demon alcohol, and, I suspect, came very, very close to being poisoned by it, moreso than at any point in my life.
By 9pm I had managed to eat some crackers and was chatting with my wife, listening with shame and fascination as she relayed the argument we had had in the hotel the night before, when I swore up and down that I was OK, and she had been a party pooper by bringing me back. None of which I remember. After a blissful hour of not gushing from one end or the other, my stomach gave an audible growl, and I ran at full speed for the bathroom, and it started again.
Here's where it gets dicey- I drank the water. In Salvador, the water is treated, and it's fine. In my wife's city... not so much. Montezuma's revenge, and a more potent case I had never heard of. My body, already beat down with the hangover, simply protested, however feebly. The feeling was distinctly similar to that of a hangover, so I pretty much had a hangover for 5 days, which was unpleasant. I was able to work through the last two days so that I didn't miss out on too much, but it was something of a struggle. Nothing feels so good, though, as when pain stops, and I was ready to celebrate when I finally felt better. This next celebration involved no alcohol.

more pictures from Brazil

2011-07-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

Salvador is famed for having 360 churches- some of which practice a disturbing combination of Catholicism and Candomble, a religion based on a combination of Christianity and African deity worship.

The Miracle room at Sao Bonfim ('Saint of the good death'). Apparently you buy a wax limb and pray that yours heals well. When it does, you hang it up on the wall and make tourists like me extremely uncomfortable.

Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife, at ease. After 12 years in the US, she would speak to me in Portuguese, then speak to everyone else in English, confusing all.

My ass fits in the plane seats, but my shoulders not so much. Great way to get the stewardess' attention, anyhow.

Lighthouse at Praiya Forte, a beautiful beach.

View from my room. Not bad.

The waitress at the hotel bar was so friendly she bought my wife a traditional headscarf, since my wife, who is from this region (Bahia), shouldn't be travelling the world without representin'

This is the equivalent of Wollaston beach back home- not somewhere you'd go to swim, but nice to hang out.

home!

2011-07-19T13:19:00.001-07:00

I made it home from Brazil after a long 30-hour voyage of some 7,800 miles. After throwing myself into a rather empty bed in a disturbingly empty house, I woke up today to load up on groceries and change out my suitcase for a seabag. With a 24 hour layover in Massachusetts, I head out again for another sea voyage, starting with the punishing promise of a drive to New York in a little less than 2 hours from now.

ANyhow, what with all the things to do, I'll post more pix later. Here's a few, anyhow.

Liveblogging from Brazil!

2011-07-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

Brazil is awesome. Beautiful. Many, many contrasts- multi-billion dollar hotels located a half-mile from 20,000 people living in tin shacks with no running water. Beer served on the beach. Teeny bikinis. German tourists sweating on everything. A pair of Nike's will cost you $500 US, but you can stay at a palatial hotel for $150 a night. Which I did.

My hotel is beautiful. We have a suite, a corner room, with an incredible ocean view on two sides. Seriously, it's ridiculous. About 75 feet below us is the ocean, where 6-8 foot breakers have been roaring the past few nights, making sleep a pleasure. The trade winds blow through one of our windows, making AC unnecessary. It's about 85 in the day, 70 at night. The dead of Brazilian winter.

The artistry here is wonderful- I got a massive boner from hanging out at a stoneworkers' gallery (which included jewelry, so the Mrs was also content), where slab stone was made into these beautiful marble and other exotic stone tile floors that are everywhere, as well as tables, vases, etc. Getting a 2,000 lb jade dining room table home might be expensive, though.

The markets are also different- open air buildings, like the old Quincy Market in Boston, are here and there- inside you have to haggle for everything. I spent at least 30 minutes out of the 2 hours we were at the largest market in the city trying to get away from hagglers who were all out to outfit me as Malcolm X's pimp.
The women here are a trip. Empowered. When I got busted checking out one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen at the Salvador Mall, she stopped what she was doing to eyeball me back, making me blush terribly (and making everyone in my retinue laugh way too loudly). Apparently I give off a wicked American air, what with being blond with blue eyes, with an ample helping of American Patriotism hanging around my middle straining my belt. It felt strange to be the only fat man in a crowd of about 3,000. Regardless, apparently I smell like money, and the Piranas were circling me like a fat kid zeroing in on a donut. The girl gave me what I could conservatively describe as a good eye-rogering, which was nice. I grabbed my wife's hand like it was a lifeline, and she simply shrugged her shoulders and held her ground. It was disconcerting. I defused the situation by simply turning an alarming shade of red that made all the far-less pale folks around me very concerned for my health, at which point I was laughed at. Again.

So, other than being mugged...Oh, yeah, I was mugged. I forgot and wore a necklace out in a bad neighborhood we were transiting through, and an emaciated douchbag got a handful and broke it, getting exactly the clasp and receiver for the clasp for his trouble, and probably costing me like $7 to fix. Lucky break, literally.
Anyhow, So far so good. The locals have gone to the trouble to test and identify all the local fruits that go good with alcohol, and I have been making sure that commerce runs briskly. I may not be leaving my heart in Brazil, but after my first few days here, I can say that I might be leaving at least part of my liver here.

2011-07-09T08:13:00.000-07:00

So I wrote a nice 2 page note about my first few days in Brazil, and lost it in the aether. So be it. Brazil is awesome. The rumors are true.

BRB

2011-07-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

A change of scenery. Going to Brazil for a few weeks. I'll try to write, but don't wait up. We'll mug-up when I get back.

holy hell batman, I'm dumb.

2011-07-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a summary of the works of Father Pierre Teilhard Du Chardin, a Jesuit who wrote an extremely controversial series on evolution, celestial mechanics, the nature of consciousness and the evolution of God as an inescapable requirement of existence of matter.
My mind is completely and utterly blown.

Picture completely unrelated, but hilarious. When reading a scientifically justifiable treatise on the unity of science and religion, I respond with dick and fart jokes until I can digest what I'm reading, which should take about 30 years, if I hurry.

at the tail end

2011-07-01T14:12:00.000-07:00

Coming into the last few days of this voyage, and it looks as though we're starting the last cargo load of the trip, which is a pleasant thought. I'll be bailing this weekend and heading home to mothball the Ant Farm for the B family's impending voyage.
For however many hundred thousand sea miles I've sailed, I've never crossed the equator. In less than a week, I'll be around 15 degrees south, and sadly, my first crossing of the line won't include a line crossing ceremony as I won't be doing so by sea, but rather by air. I figure that, in the spirit of tradition, however, I'll punish my liver heavily to mark the date, using materials at hand.

Anyhow, the last weeks here at work have been notable for their lack of notoriety. With next week's vacation, I've been preparing for our travels by practicing the art of not ogling, especially in regards to Fio Dental, ('dental floss'), the Brazilian bikini. Therefore, I present to you some more glimpses of what's what where I'm going .

Recycled funny

2011-06-27T15:56:00.001-07:00

I wrote this a few years ago while working as an Able Seaman on an old oil tanker.

Head-Aches, a retrospective.

You might have noticed a certain lack of content on this blog for the past two weeks. The quality control people are out to lunch, here at HAWSEPIPER. You see, I’m in the Doldrums, the Horse Latitudes of my 120-day stay here on the S.S. Bucket O’ Blood. Progress is minimal, the days seemingly stretch out into forever. 74 days on board, 46 days to go. The days have run by in a blur, only to come into a screeching halt these past two weeks, and so it will go for two weeks more before I start the home stretch.

So, yeah, I am… uninspired. Things are going well at home, there’s plenty of peace and goodwill on board, nothing to bitch about… well, except for this one thing… naturally.

Consider, then, ye dogs, the impervious horror more pervasive than that of a lee shore. I’m talking about… the communal head, the shared toilet, the seat of ease for six well-fed men who don’t get enough fiber or exercise.

Yeah, I share a bathroom with six guys. Two working toilets, most of the time.

But lets go a little deeper into this: a 48-year old men’s room. Consider that. The ghosts of 48 Christmases, Thanksgiving Dinners, not to mention A Hundred Thousand Gallons of chile con carne.

Sailors are, for the most part, fairly fastidious. We clean the head regularly. There’s always at least one slob bachelor on board, of course, which makes the place… well, unsanitary, at times, and this is a misery that must be dealt with.

Feel free to comment or correct me here, but I believe that there are some unwritten rules to keeping the peace when it’s a 1:3 toilet: man-who-ain’t-family ratio. Number one, of course is, if there’s a pair of shoes with the toes pointing out, come back later. There might be a seat available, but leave a man in peace. It might be the only 3-minute block he has to himself all day. There is Nothing, NOTHING worse than having to sit in shared discomfort with only a ½ inch wall between you and another man attempting to launch the Brown October.

Rule Number two (heh), is don’t dribble. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve put my coveralls back on, and realized that the cuff or a spot on the shoulder is wet. That’s another man’s pee. That’s not right. Believe me, if I could identify the culprit, I’d knife ‘em. I gotta change, or worse, if I'm running late, walk back on deck with that shit on. No wonder I get rashes.

Anyhow, you get the idea.

While I’m here, however, I have a question. Why is it that old men can completely blow up the bathroom with apparent ease? Always, every time, the old guys beat the bathroom into submission. There is no misidentification of these phenomena. First off, The hallway outside the bathroom smells like a bible story from 50 feet away. Also, the head itself has an aura more than a stink, and covering up the horrors requires more than just Lysol. You’re going to need an old priest, a young priest and an exorcism. And it always happens when you’re making a gear-up landing, with no chance that you’ll be able to wait. You rush into the stall, which smells like a miscarriage, and worst of all, dear God, the seat is warm.

When the weather is rough, taking a leak, or worse, requires acrobatics, planning, and quite possibly a good pair or workboots. Thing about it: ship rolling, weight shifting… that’s all it takes to lift the whole can off of the wax seal in the floor, just a bit. No one wants to see that happen, so a sitting man has to set his feet in the clamdigger pose, 5 feet apart. Use one hand to brace against the downhill stall wall, and be ready to change hands and leaning walls, fast. Peeing is, of course, simpler. Lean against a wall at the shoulder, forming a triangle, with feet splayed against the other wall, and have at it.

Well, now you’re informed, and when you take that next cruise and the weather turns foul, your wife and kids will thank you, and so will the maid.

operational disconnect

2011-06-27T15:16:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling somewhat uninspired this week. Between the usual punishing June cycle of sunburns atop my sunburns, regardless of the presence of sunblock, I'm feeling logy. Funny how it is that a sunburn can completely pork your energy level.

I've been rereading the first few blog entries that I posted here at HAWSEPIPER a few years ago. I had deleted my old blog after my employer literally printed out every single page, something along the lines of 1000 entries, and forensically digested it for innuendo, which was then presented back to me as fact. It's an odd feeling, having your own work paraphrased and turned back on you.

Sort of a shame, though, that I've had shore access all weekend, with my truck parked within walking distance, but I'm more or less confined on board so that I can properly establish my reputation as the Great White Wino in Brazil next week, which apparently dies after all require some new duds for yours truly.

I spent an entertaining few minutes last night telling my wife exactly what I would and wouldn't wear regardless of what she bought for me to wear in Brazil. I am not partial to t-shirts, which is a new thing, but something that snuck up on me. I actually prefer some buttons on my shirt. Regardless, I will not wear a polo shirt that contains brown, orange or baby shit green, which, apparently, the rest of the world finds tre chic. I will not wear a banana hammock regardless of what I'm wearing over it. My Friends prefer larger quarters. I will not wear giant labels from the manufacturer on anything I wear, unless they pay me. I'm not a fucking billboard.
Anyhow, a popular Brazilian complaint is that relatively well-to-do Americans dress like hobos. When I explain that I am not a peacock, my wife sort of poo-poohs the discussion. Yet, there's an odd dichotomy. My wife wants me to dress in all the colors of a fudgecicle box, yet says that we don't want to call attention to myself and attract pickpockets. I say that making me look mentally retarded and/or colorblind is not the way to blend in.
This would be a great point to talk about cultural differences in how we prioritize and attempt at being perceived in a positive manner... but, sadly, I'm out of gas here. Friggin' sunburn.

What a thought

2011-06-22T04:11:00.000-07:00

"Our Geologists determine how much freedom people need."

With the annual Prod Pride parade season bloodbath well under way in northern Ireland, and Senator Lurch Kerry and John McCain agitating for mo' money and mo' bombs... er, Weapons of Mass Liberation for Libya, an associate made an interesting point about who the real freedom brokers are. Petroleum geologists apparently determine who gets NATO assistance, and who gets to have molotov cocktails thrown at their children by peace loving English Protestant...er, peacekeepers.

ramping up

2011-06-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

With 2 weeks to go before the family B slips the surly bonds of Assachusetts and heads to Brazil for some R&R, we're weathering almost daily crises. Today's nightmare happened when Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife awoke to discover that she had no appropriate scarves for Brazil's winter, where temperatures can plunge to a bone-chilling 79 degrees at night.
Scarves. Scarves caused me a panicked phone call during my precious sleep time this morning. This reminded me of the great bra crisis of 2009, when, apparently we were on the brink of disaster last time she went to Brazil and almost forgot to replace her wardrobe of unmentionables. Luckily, by putting off the purchases of luxuries such as milk, bread and car payments, I was able to return things to normalcy before the revolution started and the necessary supplies were stored.
Not to say that even the scarves are a wasted purchase. The economic recovery from the great bra crisis was swift and steady, and in hindsight, extra hot great, pretty much. I don't foresee much in the way of value added hotness in scarves, but it is nice having my wife look stylish.

Not my finest hour

2011-06-16T14:04:00.000-07:00

Midway through high school, in the awkward years, I was boatless. I hadn't really made the jump yet to working on commercial lobster boats; I had filled in here and there, and worked a few weeks on one or another, but the bulk of my experience was in an artisan-style of fishing, I guess you'd say; the old timer who taught me to fish, dig clams and catch lobster was fishing a small number of bulky, heavy antique wooden lobster pots, rigged the way lobster pots were rigged in the WWII era; modern fishing had no place where I grew up.
In the end, the boat was sitting idle more and more as the old-timer pushed 80, and my fishing time dwindled.
When I switched high schools in 10th grade, I ended up fishing after school and on weekends with one of the English teachers at my school. He had a small boat that he pushed hard in the limited free time that school left him. A few hours during the week, and a good long Saturday was all the time he had.
The boat, though small, was rigged as a modern lobsterboat is rigged; for speed. Getting the traps cleared, rebaited and back in the water was always a numbers game, but going from fishing 80 traps a day to 500 was quite an adjustment, as was the gear- lighter weight traps, and, since the old timer was relatively wealthy from his own career earlier in life, the pressure to perform was new to me. As was working in truly shit weather.
One drizzly cold November day, with a greasy but smallish swell rolling, I discovered the ugly truth that seasickness can strike anyone, when it was my turn in the barrel.
I was spectacularly ill for the few hours we were out fishing after school.
The odd thing about seasickness is that it goes fast, once you're in calm water. By the time we were at the dock, I was my usual, awkward adolescent self.
Now, having only been at this school for a few weeks, I only knew a handful of people. So when the next day rolled around, and people were asking me how I was feeling, and if I was all better, I was a tad confused. My teacher told a few people about my bout of mal de mer, and so for a school with 1,000 people, my first introduction to most of them was as the guy who did a passable impression of the barf scene in The Exorcist.
Thankfully, not too long after, my English teacher bought the boat that I grew up on, once the old timer swallowed the anchor. With the exception of when I was hung over, I didn't get sick again while lobstering in high school.

appropros of something

2011-06-11T17:01:00.000-07:00

I'm neither thin-skinned nor particularly sensitive, but I've been getting offended by the VHF radio chatter lately in NY harbor. There's way too much cursing, complaining and general bitchery going on these past few months.

Given a long enough timeline, it's possible to identify Chatty Cathys on the squawk box. Generally speaking, the most foul mouthed crybabies have local accents, and this is interesting to me in that New Yorkers have a reputation for being tough, yet if one were to listen to the VHF in NY harbor, you'd hear a lot of cussing, complaining about people who aren't working at the moment, and crying and wailing about having to work. This last part offends the living shit out of me, as there's plenty of professionals out there who would give their left nut to be making a couple hundred bucks a day corralling scows, moving barges and assisting ships, and yet like a bunch of hysterical 13-year-old girls, the radio chatter consists of calling people who aren't there bad names, complaining about having to work, and lots of 'fucken' (The NY way of saying Fucking, I guess) as adjective, verb, and noun. This is where I miss the radio discipline of Boston Harbor, where if you talk non-business for more than 30 seconds, people will all start clicking the mikes and 'stepping' on you until you get the idea and quiet down, and then curse you once you do for being disruptive.
Anyhow, like I said, I'm not thin skinned. I have a foul mouth myself when my wife's not around. I also try to be professional at work, and calling my deckhand a 'fatherless faggot' on the VHF for refusing to jump a 6-foot gap between two barges at night is a little over the top. I simply wish that someone would release some AIDS and rabid bats (who also have AIDS) in the wheelhouse of the double handful of whiny bitches who can't shut the hell up for 2 minutes and do their goddamned job without getting on the VHF and telling the world their stupid, undereducated opinions about everything. I don't want to hear it, New York. STFU and do your job, and use the VHF as a tool, not a fucken' pacifier, you big babies, you.

fry an egg, or a knee.

2011-06-09T10:21:00.001-07:00

Well, even though today's a down day aboard, we called it quits early. We took care of the needle gunning (and buffing out the scars in the steel made by the needle gun) before breakfast to avoid the heat of the day. From there, it was a matter of priming and painting until the heat made us miserable. When I took a knee on the deck and blistered up my kneecap after 2-seconds' exposure, I called it a day.

hiding in the house

2011-06-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

I made it back to New York at about midnight. An easy ride, more or less, with the usual horrors and ridiculous traffic in Connecticut that is their only claim to fame there. With only a week to spend at home, Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife and I were running all-out in doing the usual household business, making pit-stop length visits with family that really highlighted how badly my current schedule is burning the candle at both ends. Regardless, we managed to buy what needs buying and handle the legal and procedural hoop-jumping ancillary to our upcoming visit to Brazil next month.
In between our full-of necessary-but-rarely-fun laundry list of chores, we also managed to squeeze in some good times. The Boy and I spent a day at the New England Aquarium, and the Mrs. and I celebrated our third anniversary, which was fantastic, as I got to play tour guide in Newport, RI, a place where I hadn't been in 15 years. I, of course, stuck out like a bull in a china shop, but my wife was pretty content in knocking elbows wit h the hoi polloi. Anyways, as you can see in this first picture, I classed up the place everywhere I went.

home

2011-06-04T07:34:00.001-07:00

I'm home for only a week, so don't expect much here- too much family stuff to do, preparations for visiting Brazil, and Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife and I are celebrating out 3rd anniversary too.

Soon... (semi NSFW!!)

2011-05-28T17:51:00.000-07:00

Once again, you've all made your beds and brushed your teeth in between meals, so I suppose you've earned this month's photos from Brazil.

the harbor whore

2011-05-25T12:45:00.000-07:00

Today starts the sixth and final week of this voyage for me. I went ashore last night for a little R&R (Sushi, and some expensive cheese from Fairway market) and to load up again on groceries for another week's voyage. This week I've been taken down a peg, filling in as tankerman on someone else's barge, but it's all the same to me, cash for my impending trip to Brazil. I've been harbor whoring - making myself available on my off-time, since New Years', and it's starting to tell. I'm pretty beat. This is my last time "working over" for a few months. The bags under my eyes are getting bags under their eyes, I think.

This week has brought some monkey business to New York harbor. The weekend started off on the wrong foot when some dink dumped a bunch of containers off a ship and onto the bunker barge alongside it- no injuries, thank God, which is a miracle, considering. This wasn't one of my employer's pieces of gear, so I don't know anything first hand, but check it out:

Amazing, really, that no one was hurt.

In other news here, the Blue Marlin is here to carry a passel of tugboats to Nigeria for a second life. This type of heavy-lift ship ballasts down until her decks are deep under water, whereupon her cargo is floated over the deck, and then the ship pumps ballast and rises up under the cargo before securing it for sea. I snapped a couple of pics this morning. The thing is huge- well over 200-foot of beam. Check it:

This is a forward house design- the thing's so wide that it looks odd from this angle- at the port and starboard end of the stern are the stern castles- seen better from a stern view:

Bear in mind that you could place a whole NBA regulation basketball court between those two structures on the stern.

She's since been repainted, but if the name sounds familiar, it's because you've seen the Blue Marlin before, after the USS Cole tragedy.

Using the rhetoric "You can fit a boat on a ship, but you can't fit a ship on a boat" no longer applies.

NOAA follies

2011-05-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

I'm not a fan of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. Once I was a shameful fanboy, when they were in the business of regulating fisheries and conducting oceanographic and weather research. Now that they're a political machine bent on social engineering for 'green living' however, I'd be happy to see NOAA disbanded and their mandate passed to private organizations operating under contract.

Today was NOAA's annual hurricane prediction day, the day when they predict the end of the world just before it comes time to calculate budget requirements for the next fiscal year. As always, they've predicted a strong and busy hurricane season. I say this because they never predict a normal or below-normal season. To do so would be to call in question the need for the fastest-growing annual budget of any federal agency. So, today, as happens about this time every year, NOAA is predicting the end of the world. zzz...
You know, the most ironic part of all this is that when you predict anything will be higher than average, 50% of the time, it should be. The hilarious part, to me, is that NOAA has been predicting The Day After Tomorrow for the past three years, which have turned out to be among the quietest consecutive hurricane seasons in well over a century... and they're shooting for 0/4 this year.

NOAA isn't just about whoring themselves for fun. They're also now doing it for profit. When word got out that NOAA's fishery enforcement agents were performing warrantless searches and seizures, extortion, and fining fishermen exorbitant sums, and THEN selling off forfeited and seized assets to purchase a stunningly beautiful yacht, vacations for employees, and free cars for everyone (NOAA has 1.2 automobiles for every agent in their employ, higher than any other federal agency) NOAA severely punished everyone involved by transferring them to other jobs, and by promoting and giving raises to the leadership.

Dr. Jane Lubchenko, NOAA's head, appointed by President Obama, has been extremely proactive in her leadership of the premier scientific organization of the US. She's been busy, diverting research funding for fisheries and weather into NOAA's political arm, into NOAA's campaign to turn fisheries management into a commodities market, modeled after energy trading (which has worked out so well for the consumer). In the meanwhile, instead of actually performing research, NOAA has been able to save money by simply predicting the end of all things every year, about this time, and then sit in their offices and take vacations.

Think I'm exxagerating? The day after NOAA received a mild rebuke from a federal judge for extorting New England fishermen, the judge then went to Kuala Lumpur with the lawyers for NOAA who had been before his bench the day before.
Anyhow, I'm disgusted. I've always had a soft spot for fishermen, having grown up in the industry, but I'm ashamed that this sort of bullshit happens within the US government, and there isn't even a modest attempt to look legitimate. It's my hope that the next president will go through NOAA like a pyro in a library.

horseshoes and hand grenades

2011-05-18T10:35:00.001-07:00

...as the saying goes, are the only two instances where 'almost' counts for something.

Yesterday kicked off amateur hour, the summer boating season. There is nothing quite so ennervating and energizing as the 5 short blasts on the ships' whistle (meaning "Danger Will Robinson!" ) when you're trying to sleep and some assbag in a small boat wanders into your path at close range.

I went to Manhattan...

2011-05-17T05:21:00.000-07:00

...and all I got was this stupid diaper rash.

After three (!) days of rain, with no relief in sight, I've officially got a life-threatening case of diaper rash. I think it starts at the back of my neck, and runs to my feet, returning up all the way to my (no longer -un) mentionables.
With no end in sight to this rain, I'm wondering why I bother to put on clean and dry clothes at the start of my watch.

Oh well. Getting paid is nice, and I'm grateful that I'm working... I'm not as grateful as I was 3 days ago, but you try walking like a cowboy for a couple of days.
...and why does my foul weather gear still smell so bad? It's like someone put out a cigar in a urine sample, then poured oil over it. I've washed these things repeatedly, in the GD washing machine... unfortunately, I suspect the answer is that for some reason RMG-380, the residual fuel that ships use, has an affinity for the synthetic rubber made by Grundens- I think that the vapors bind nicely to the material, and the vapors are made of fear and horror with a carbon backbone and a sulphur chaser. If my rain jacket smells like the apocalypse, I can only wonder about my lungs.

2011-05-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

Getting ready for watch this morning, and, since it was raining fairly hard, I didn't throw my baseball cap on, which is my normal SOP after rolling out of my bunk. Instead I put on my foul weather gear, which has been sitting on a hook for 3 weeks after having been laundered. The horrific stink of bunker fuel was sticking to my rain jacket.
I'm starting to think my wife is being pragmatic in her tradition of handing me a tumbler of whiskey shortly after I get home. I wonder if it gets the smell of bunker oil out of my pores. Apparently Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife prefers me smelling like a still as compared to the septic tank stink of IFO-380.

Happy birth...

2011-05-14T21:06:00.001-07:00

oh, never mind.

I turned 37 on Saturday. I got a chance to go ashore, so I thought I'd celebrate by getting sushi for lunch somewhere new- I have never been to any store other than a grocer's and a Staples in New York, so I was feeling adventurous.
At the grocery store, however, my small purchases totaled $175, something like $75 more than I was expecting for the stuff I bought. That pretty much took care of my mad money for the duration of this tour.

My oldest nephew sailed with a carrier group out of Norfolk the other day. His first trip to sea. I am so proud. My timing is off, sadly, as it looks like I'll be heading to Norfolk for a week at the end of the month, there to hone my skills in a new port for a week. That will be week 6 of this voyage, and hopefully the last extra week I'll work for a few months.