The Real Chinese Fire Drill

 We're moored snug, rafted up at the company mooring ball, a permanent anchor set out of the way here in NY harbor.

 The harbor's getting the remnants of former hurricane Isias today. It's sloppy driving rain and wind, and cool. Nasty day to be outside.

 Happily, I don't need to be outside. After a pleasant bunch of Chinese crew on a cargo ship took the last of our bunkers aboard, we rafted up alongside another bunker barge at the mooring and are riding out the weather in the Donut Hole, an unfortunate dead zone in cellular coverage right in the middle of New York harbor. For the past 15+ years a 1x1 mile area here has only intermittant cell service. Sadly, the donut hole is dead nuts over our heads. 

       But yeah, to the title... 

The cargo ship we were transferring fuel to took two grades of fuel through two of my 100' cargo hoses. Normally, I lift the heavy flexible reinforced rubber hoses using one of our two 60' deck cranes- there's well over a ton of weight on the hose at the choker sling that I use to hoist the hose up.

  I do my best to get the end of the hose (a large steel pipe flange about 10 inch diameter, with a 1' thick steel blank bolted to it with eight 3/4" studs) close to the ship's manifold, guided by the crew. The crew will use a davit (a stubby crane) and also some 1-ton chainfalls to position the hose flange where they can unbolt the steel blank from the hose, then bolt the hose flange to their fueling manifold. Often we will use reducers (steel pipe adapters) to match sizes of the manifold, as the sizes can vary depending on the size of the ship and the size of the piping... figuring out what size the ship's manifold connection is is often a source of challenges because of language barrier and also the Imperial vs Metric system, lol.  Luckily, I am a fluent speaker of Bad English, between experience and also two decades of marriage to a South American.

   Generally there are 2-3 guys working on the ship to connect the hoses. It takes from 15 to 45 minutes for each hose generally.

 This Chinese ship, there were SIX guys working, and it looked like chaos... just Brownian Motion. But it really was the classic Chinese Fire Drill. Within 20 seconds order was being made out of disorder. There was no yelling or pointing, and nobody appeared to be in charge. Just six individuals who only LOOKED to be randomly moving about, because by appearances, each guy just chose a task based on what he thought needed doing, and they all just quickly built off whatever the last guy started doing. Within two minutes the hose was lashed to the ship's heavy rail, the davit was taking the load off my crane and my cargo sling disconnected, and while I was swinging my crane and lifting the 100lb hook/headache ball out of the way, another guy put a chainfall on the hose too, to help with fine positioning, and guys appeared with long wrenches to start loosening the nuts on the flange.

 Less than 10 minutes start to finish. No yelling, no idle hands, no directions given. Seriously impressive stuff.

 The whole job was like that. Sometimes after we finish transferring fuel it'll be 90 minutes of me waiting for the ship to start disconnecting the hose, while the engineer, hems, haws and scratches his balls doing his part before signing the documents and letting us be done. 

 This ship? After I finished transferring fuel oil, secured the pump and swung some valves, an engineer made a face, blowimg air out, to indicate that they wanted me to blast compressed air through the hose to clear the oil in the hose, like blowing a snot rocket- pinching one nostril shut and blowing out through the other one. An air blow only takes 60 seconds. As soon as I was done, guys were swinging wrenches to disconnect the hose. While the engineer was going over the papers and checking his tanks, the crew disconnected the hose. No bullshit, under 15 minutes from when I called out the time and 'Finished with bunkers' to 'Release time is...' over the radio. 

 'Release' in this case means we're all done, all oil is transferred and the ship has custody of it,  papers are all signed, samples are sealed, and the transaction is complete. Only thing left is for us to sail.

 I wish every job I did was that good and professional. Truth is, that was a once-every 3 or 4 year event. Things are usually much less smooth. 

      

    

Preemptive preempting

 I'm trying really hard to be positive, which is another reason I have not been writing much. In talking to Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife I sometimes refer to a need for 'stacking wins,' basically wanting to front-load things to be grateful for as a means to stave of feeling like ass for times when life treats me the way a baby treats a diaper.

    There's been a few more full diapers lately, that's all. 

 Well, I'm on the downhill slope now here at work. Home in another 12 days. 

   I haven't been stacking wins lately. 

 Some of that is just me having been at work too long, and work itself being kind of a downer. 

 I'll stack wins at home, God willing. And if not, I'll still be at home, which is in itself a win. . 

2 weeks

 Well, I've got 2 weeks to go here. 

    I haven't been in a writing mood. Uninspired I guess. The days here are mostly the same lately. 

1st nor'easter of the year

 Well, the first Nor'easter came and went. It was a good one. 

 In the northeast US, a nor'easter turns into something close to a hurricane, but bigger and sometimes, more diffuse but longer lasting. The Eastern seaboard north of the Delaware River takes a beating in gales like these. 

   This one was not the strongest- storm force winds were sporty enough, but the wind piles the ocean up, making high tides higher, causing flooding.  The bitch of it was that the low pressure center built up and stalled offshore to our west a ways, so as the system built, we got a northeast wind for... 5 days now? Maybe 6. Not strong strong for much of it, but over the weekend it wandered further north and out to the east, but then horseshoed back as it grew stronger. 

 Well, it was unpleasant. The HQ, however, rode like a champ in our lay berth.  The peak of the storm coincided with us being between jobs, so we battened everything down and rode it out in a lovely protected spot. I've got a bit of cabin fever but beyond that no beefs at all. 

 

...and back on board

 I got back onto the HQ about 2 hours ago. 

   So, I had a good week away. I absolutely didn't expect that. 

           I was pretty annoyed at getting ganked (pulled off the HQ, sent to a different bunker barge), and a green-as-baby-shit tankerman put to keep my seat warm. 

  Truth is, normally they need just one senior tankerman aboard. B, Big E and I are all very senior, and there is always 2 of us here under normal circumstances. This lets the company give us fucked up weird cargo orders and sensitive jobs to do, as everyone needs to sleep sometime, and when oddball things pop up, the senior guy has to get his ass up and ride herd on the junior during complex operations and that's fine... unless it's a daily thing. A (presumably) older adult can only operate at 100% for so long on days of badly broken sleep. Thus, we get the odd jobs... but also by choice, as the upside of having so many jobs not be straightforward, we have a deep reserve of talent aboard, and our individual strengths vary, so the calming presence and exacting detail guy (B), the deep seamanship and operational knowledge guy (me), and the can-do guy who keeps the shoreside support people from hating us (Big E) together all combined makes for a very efficient workplace. The fact that all of us are close friends now also has a deep impact on our workplace and our ability to sustain good performance even as life intrudes, as it will and does. 

  So, yeah, I'm happy to be back on the HQ. 

       Having a trainee aboard is a massive pet peeve of mine. I absolutely DO. NOT. LIKE. having a trainee. It's been 7-8 years since the last time, when B and I made it clear we weren't willing to train for all the bribes in the world. Being alone a lot is a MASSIVE job perk here, and is in the top 5 reasons why I stay here rather than sail internationally, which I prefer. 

 I love the solitude I get. Deeply. Having a trainee aboard on the bunker barge I was working on is brutal, spacewise. The quarters are tiny, smaller than the HQ, as they have a single large bunkroom aboard and the galley is very narrow. Big head (bathroom), though. Pretty posh.  That meant that when I was off watch, the trainee would come in after I was asleep to go to bed himself in the shared bunkroom. 

   To my good fortune and his credit, the trainee  didn't snore, didn't talk in his sleep, didn't fart too much, and basically was a good roommate. I'd never sleep through him coming and going, as my bunk obviously was next to the door, where I could be up and out in seconds. 

...and... with all that,  it was a good week. The trainee was a sponge, asked great questions, was motivated to learn, and was good company, with that blessed but rare gift of discreet discernment, where he knew without me hinting that it was a good time for quiet here and there. We could sit in comfortable silence, which is an unusual social skill in my opinion, but deeply welcome. 

 Plus, the barge was 2 weeks out of the shipyard wherein it had had a major maintenance period. Mechanically it was perfect, the quarters were freshly painted in a tasteful way and the decks were overlaid with an epoxy floor that was well-applied and colored in speckles that had a pleasant black, blue, white and gray mix.  Very comfortable, if teeny. 

   So, here I am, back to where I want to be if I'm gonna be at work. 

Perspective

 I need to count my blessings that I have minor things to bitch about like getting ganked onto another assignment, and having no hot water on board

   Yesterday someone 3 miles away blew their oil barge up, one DRT, 2 injured.  

Ganked!

 I'm fine, everything's fine. The small, shitty part of me wants to make a list of everything I don't like right now. 

 Other than having to take a cold shower last night, I'm not gonna make that list. The guy who fucked me over so I had to get ganked off the HQ and run one of her sisters also didn't report that they had a dead water heater, and I was sweaty and dirty enough that I wasn't going to be satisfied taking a birdbath at the sink, so cold shower it was. 

 I haven't done that in a while.  It was unpleasant. My testicles tried to go back in time.

But, I went to bed with a washed ass, so... victory?

 Anyhow we're working on that today. I have a trainee on here so I have him straddling both watches, which gave me a couple of quiet hours this morning, which was lovely. Good kid. Motivated. Has a baby on the way. 

 I'm elbow deep in the day now, anyhow. Focusing on the positives. Trying to, anyhow.