Opportunity Lost (The American Phoenix job)

       It's been a busy time here. I'm working as second fiddle on a large barge that has been engaged in reverse lightering- running between a refinery and an anchored ship. Everything's fine- a little more stress as I deal with differences in scale, paperwork and vessel characteristics- figuring out how to accurately load the tanks and tweak the loading rates of individual tanks so that they finish in sequence, things like that. The sleep schedule is kicking my ass, as this barge works a schedule mirroring that of most tugboats- 6 hours on, 6 off, which equates to about 9-10 hours on, 2-3 hours off. No bueno. Add to that the fact that I jumped in at the start of busy back-to-back double loads and there wasn't much rest to be had for yours truly. At the end of the day, however, the job is what it is, and after running one load and one discharge, I am competent enough that I am no longer scared to death of an incident occurring while I have my face stuck in a tank trying to see the bottom.

         So, aside from the excitement and strangeness of the week spent on a new vessel, what was truly unique about these past two jobs has been the fact that we were working with the oil tanker "American Phoenix," the newest ship in the United States' merchant fleet. I have a personal connection, you see, with this ship. When built, she or one of her sisters was supposed to become my new home.

 I worked for AHL Shipping Co. (American Heavy Lift) for 8 years. I started on my first voyage in the engine room, or, more accurately, under the ancient steam engine in the engine room, chipping rust and painting in the double bottom between the underside of the floor of the bilge and the hull of the ship, 10 hours a day in the dark, for 120 days. AHL was a can-do operation, probably doomed from the start due to under-capitalization, but one that fielded 4 tankers for years and years and kept myself and hundreds of other mariners employed gainfully. The economy tanked during the construction of three new ships, and a hurricane wiped out a staging yard containing much of the material for said ships, which, with insane cost overruns by the shipyard, did for the company. I, luckily, saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship about 6 months before things started getting ugly, and landed here where I work (mostly) happily to date.

    At any rate, a venture capital firm that dabbles in shipping picked up the half-finished ship hull in passing after AHL went tits-up, and had the badly-managed shipyard (barely) finish her over the course of a couple of years, which is a couple of years longer than it should take to finish a ship, and pretty much explains why there is no AHL today. And the finished vessel entered service weeks ago, and we reverse-lightered her twice these past few days, loading her deep.
     She's a pretty enough ship, stubby and shiny, and looking not-quite finished in her primer-coated hull and topsides. The crew on board were friendly and the officers seemed very competent, but a small part of me hoped that one of my former shipmates might have been aboard. No such luck. The ship itself is mechanically interesting, taking the best features of the old AHL ships' deck layout and incorporating them into the design, while seemingly cutting out some of the worst parts- no stooping and crawling and hitting of heads to get at discharge valves, for instance, and no "up two flights and down one" to carry stores 400 feet from the deck crane to the stewards' storeroom. There are some classic AHL-style oddballs, of course- the ship has grain hatches for loading bulk solids, and there's a lot of thin-walled stainless steel piping, which will be interesting in 10 years after a few hurricanes (stainless steel doesn't like to flex like good ship-quality steel will, and is relatively brittle).

 Anyhow, look for yourself:

Cargo Surveyors measuring volume transferred

We had already taken in the cargo hoses when I snapped this picture. You can see them on my deck. We can transfer about 12,000 bbl/hr (500,000 gal) through one of them.

Traditional raised fo'c'sle vs our spoon-shaped bow

After a few months, the deck gang on that ship has to know the name of every pipeline, valve and piece of steel visible. I don't miss that learning curve.

All in all, I prefer my life today to that of a few years ago while I was with AHL. All the same, I feel a certain tug on the heartstrings to see this ship, and all the dreams that propelled it from a little company's strategy session, into a shipyard, then a bankruptcy court, breaking up, among other things, a great crew aboard my particular ship. This was a glimpse at the road not taken, for me. No regrets on my part, but some sobering thoughts about the pain it caused others through little fault of the people who envisioned her.

Marlinespike Seamanship

 As this trip approaches the halfway mark, I've missed Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife's birthday, and much time with my family, not to mention the fact that my mom's in the hospital nursing a broken leg and facing more surgery. I don't know how I used to manage 4-month voyages, but even these more modest 28-day trips are wearing me down.

**********************************




When the gods of bunkering took away HAWSEPIPER's old Afloat Gobal HQ/floating bordello last month, we were annoyed but optimistic. The new one was fresh out of the shipyard and had been purpose-built for the work, and not a refit like our old digs. We discovered that our new home had been inhabited by some downright filthy and unhygienic motherfuckers, and, 6 weeks later, the mold and mildew and handprints and pee stains are gone and only the smell remains, while the animals who treated this place like a baby treats a diaper are, I'm sure, well on their way to making my old home look like a Pakastani hospice.

 Meanwhile, though, we're in the middle of a serious upswing in the New York bunkering business- there's been some ship traffic, as always, but maybe bunker prices are favorable here just now.

      It's no surprise, given that the former occupants were less than fastidious, that our new Afloat Global HQ/gas station needed some labor and consumables.  One of the first things we had to do was replace all the mooring lines aboard.
         First off, hawser-sized rope ain't cheap, not at the size (7") that we use. Second, it comes in only one length- 1 cable, or 600 feet. We ordered 4 cables of new rope, for starters. This would be broken up into smaller lengths. Multiple 200 foot sections and some 300 footers, too. By 'broken up' I mean cut. With a hacksaw. Afterwards, the 8 separate strands of rope making up each hawser have to have eyes spliced into both ends, which has to be done by hand. That's a lot of splicing. 

1). 1 cable of mooring hawser, as delivered

2). The line is faked out on deck and measured, then cut to length.

  

3). the line is partially unraveled, and folded on itself to form an eye (note lack of audience on tugboat in background). 

  

4). the separated strands are paired, then divided prior to splicing the eye

 

5). A fid is used to wedge open the braid of the rope, and the strands are woven into the braid 7 times...

 

6). Except for the first strand, which is only woven for 4 turns, as I have hands like a little girl, and this is an accommodation that makes it much easier to braid the line. 

     When it's all said and done, you have a pretty and strong braid that is just perfect for catching a bollard to stop a vessel, and more than heavy enough to brain a dockman (should he critique your throwing strength) with a carefully mis-aimed throw.

hard water

We're in the Doldrums here at HAWSEPIPER's afloat global HQ/freelance gynecology clinic.

The last week has been far too quiet. In an hour or so we'll be sailing to start another job, thank God, but there was some down time- too much down time, if such a thing can be said to exist. And, turns out, it can.

    April is a beautiful time to be on the water in the Northeast, but not at sea in the Northeast. At home, April is a time of hideously unstable weather and choppy, cold seas that seem to exert a disproportionate amount of force upon a boat hull- the warm days belie the cold water, and boats get knocked about in an unforgiving fashion by normally benign seas. Simply put, to a careful observer, the cold water hits harder, making a rougher ride in the same sea states that will feel comfortable in just a few more months.
      In the summer, thermoclines form- boundary layers in the water column, where the water temperature changes rapidly with depth- it's not unusual for water temperature to change 15 degrees as one moves, say, from 15 to 18 feet of depth while swimming. Water changes density with temperature, so the differing densities don't like to mix so much- rather, the bodies of water at differing temperatures slide across each other and resist mixing. This provides the lovely coolish water than makes ocean swimming so enjoyable in New England in the summertime- if you're like me, and like to swim in deeper water, it gets bloody cold awful fast when you drop down a few feet.
 At home, April is the time when the lobster boats start moving traps into the bays from their wintering spots further offshore, and, for many, it's also a time to move traps off the dock and back into the water. Running a boat with a 6-foot high pile of traps covering the deck is always an exiting time- deckhands disappear behind the stacks, so everyone's nervous as the traps are reset. Optimism reigns.
     For the earlybird pleasureboaters, people sometimes get a little surprise when the 2-foot chop they ignore in July rattles the fillings out of their heads in April. That cold, dense water packs a little punch. Even in a ship, the difference is visible- in my old union, there was a collier that regularly made winter runs around my home area, and the ship aged prematurely. Massachusetts Bay doesn't have the deep ocean swells common to waters south of Rhode Island, but it does have an almighty short chop that makes life miserable. In my head I often wonder if the late-season trips across the Great Lakes feel similar.

    I feel the usual April restlessness that used to make me quit my stable, career-oriented job and give it up for another season of Lobster Wishin' when I was younger. I just can't afford that lifestyle (or, don't want to, I guess), anymore, but the desire is still there, and on days like today, when I'm walking down the sterile length of my steel deck, looking at valves, holidays in the paint topcoat, coiled lengths of hawser and grease fittings EVERYWHERE, thinking thoughts like "hmm, I need at least 80 gallons of red paint to get started on recoating this deck," l feel the tidal pull for a teeny, unstable, wet slippery deck than can be paced in a half-dozen stuttering steps instead of a 5 minute walk.