Halfway Day

 Busy this week, for sure.

         We got our deck crane repaired, and after 6 months with the crane head having had enough twist in the end to look like a confused dog hearing a new sound, it's a pleasure to be back to standard. 

 Since there was welding to be done, the law requires a marine chemist to test for explosive vapors beforehand, and with the guy already here and a Gas-Free Certificate issued, while my crane got fixed up, the port engineer for my company here in NY and I went for a walkaround through the bowels of the HQ and talked about this fall's upcoming maintenance projects after the weather cools off but before we start freezing up. I also took several pallets of supplies and parts and another of consumables. 

Fast forward to Friday:

     It's been nonstop since the crane got fixed. The heat was so brutal a few days ago, but I am still enjoying not being rained on every damn day, so I'm bearing it well enough. 

What's going on here

 It's been a bit since I caught up with what's happening here. It's been notably busy, which is fine, but mostly I've been uninspired to write. In two days I'll be at Halfway Day, and on the downhill side of this tour. 

     Presently we're at my employer's Brooklyn dock, getting some long-awaited repairs to one of my deck cranes. The cranes, original to the HQ and now approaching 20 years old, are very handy and robust, but about 6 months ago a mild warp was spotted at the head of the crane. This was from stress no doubt, as cranes aren't meant to take sideways stress and whether we like it or not, sometimes they experience lateral stress at the head of the crane, for example,  when a ship's manifold might be both very high off the water and 15 feet inboard of the rail of the ship. When it is time to retrieve the hose, it's of course better that the head of the crane be directly over the hose, so that the strain on the crane is vertical... but sometimes no matter how we try, if the ship's manifold is 50 feet or more above my deck, I run out of crane, and the hose, when retrieved, exerts sideways stress on the crane until I get it back over the edge of the ship's deck. And so it is that after nearly 20 years, the steel plate that the crane head is made out of, got a few degrees of bend to it. \

     So, long story longer, it took 6 MONTHS for the crane manufacturer to fab us a new head and ship it. 6 months! That's some dogshit customer service. Still, it arrived the other day and I've now got a bunch of specialized welders aboard putting a new head on the crane. It will be wonderful to have it 100% functional again.  So that's pretty cool. 

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 The tugboat operator community being small, this week we witnessed the return of The Destroyer, a tugboat mate who earned that reputation for navigating via braille around NY harbor. Also, I should mention that The Destroyer is one of the nicest people in the world, so he got to drive his 4,000hp wrecking ball for a while  before getting let go. Well, he is filling in as mate on one of the 3rd party tugboats that work for my company to help with the workload. We've only had him as our tugboat once so far, but he did just fine on our last job. He's fortunate to have one of the best deckhands I've ever worked with as his watch AB (Able-bodied seaman), which I'm sure helps. Still, it was nice to be so pleasantly surprised. Ironically enough, I had his former captain running our assigned tugboat all weekend, a man who had hair prior to having the Destroyer but went bald like Professor X after. 

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Having reread that last part, I should mention that harbor and coastwise tugboats usually have a captain and a mate as the only two guys handling the wheelhouse duties, and traditionally they work 6 hours on/6 hours off for the entirety of the 2 to 3 weeks they work in a tour so one of them is always on watch. They usually have at least 2 deckhands and an engineer as well, unless they don't do a lot of moves in the day or if the deckhand doesn't have a lot of labor in his duties, in which case some tugs run with a 'deckineer' a licensed engineer who also covers the deckhand's job when the deckhand is off watch. 

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That was a rough one.

 Did I have a mental health crisis yesterday?

 Damn, I was utterly miserable last night. Yes, 3 days of rain and the beginnings of diaper rash happened. It's been brutally hot and wet and busy with weird oil blends we're mixing in the cargo tanks, so I'm getting vapors blasted in my face while peering down into the tanks looking at a measuring tape. Yes I'm on a diet. And for some reason I had low energy, and everything just seemed miserable and unhappy.  A confluence of events, maybe, but it was the shittiest night I've had in years... and everything went fine, which is the weirdest part.

 Well, today seems better. The rain stopped, at least, and while it's still dark and gloomy, tonight we have dog watches, shortened, so that I will rotate onto working days and take over the show. 

 I dunno. Yesterday I was feeling like a dog in God's hot car. Today seems better, but it hasn't really started yet. 

 I guess I better put pants on, and see what the good Lord has for me today. 

Happy 250!

 Happy Independence Day, everyone. 

      We've been hanging out mostly over in Newark since I got back aboard the HQ.  The powers that be don't want undesirables like working mariners to infect their view of the tall ships and navy fleet, while admirals and generals have their crab salad, so we're ordered by NY harbor traffic control to stay away from The Quality. 

 Well, in the meanwhile commerce continues. While I'm only 5-6 miles from the parade and the airshow, it might as well be mars. 

 Eh, the stuff on TV was cool. I'm a little assmad that we were ordered to stay aboard our vessels and above all else, not be seen by our betters and get kicked off the waters they depend on us to work.

 Still, 250 years, I'm not so much a wet blanket as to not have enjoyed seeing the festivities. It's nice to see who actually loves our nation and who hates it but for some fuckin reason, refuses to leave. 

...and nothing got done

 Well, I'm headed to bed in a few minutes. Flying out to work on the first flight of the day tomorrow. 

 

   I had a very enjoyable time off this time.  Almost nothing important got done. In fact this may be the least productive time home I've had in the past 5 or so years, if not more. 

 It was great.  

Go to a rodeo

 So Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife and I went to a rodeo last night. It was AWESOME. Start to finish an absolute blast. You should go. 

        I absolutely had an 'oh wow' moment, too, along with lots of fun. At the intro, the MC came out, warmed the crowd up, then led a prayer, after, when all the riders and participants take the field, there was a troupe of female trick riders, all decked out, carrying huge American flags, while Lee Greenwood's 'Proud to be an American' blasted out. I looked over to see my wife fairly misty. She hadn't seen a lot of overt shows of patriotism and appreciation for our country, an as someone who isn't from here, she knows better than most why we should be so proud of our nation. 

 Anyways, it was a blast, from the bull riding, barrel racing, roping and the kids events too. Seeing a bunch of 5 year olds riding bucking sheep was cute AF, and the pre-teen girls competing in barrel racing was amazing- those kids were skilled as hell. Seeing such tiny people showing off crazy skill like that is impressive as hell. 

Pressure