4 months to wait

 Finally, we're at the good lay berth at work. 

 It's been 4 months since we moored at the lay berth near Brooklyn Bridge Park here in NY, where my company rents one entire pier, suitable for tubs like mine to lie to. I can't imagine what the rent is on a berth like this, prime parking, really, with a million-dollar view of the Manhattan skyline. Great vista to enjoy while peeing over the side. And for anyone in Manhattan's high rises who happens to have a telescope: you're welcome. Add some mashed potatoes and you have a traditional Irish lunch. 

        So, with a pretty good current down Buttermilk channel, getting into a berth 90 degrees off axis of the current during max tide is a bit of a maneuver, and the HQ being what it is, bit of a naughty girl, the Village Bicycle, if you know what I mean, I guess our dispatchers probably don't like putting us here where we can be called out on short notice to load cargo. That's a shame, because this is by far the best lay berth we have in NY harbor. We have several, and the company HQ dock besides, but all of them either lack shore access or require shuffling to move hulls in and out, so even when you can get ashore, you often can't get ashore because someone else has to move at a certain time, and that means you have to move, too. 

 So, here I am, after 4 months, I can go ashore, shortly. I'm just waiting so I can get lunch before I go to the grocery store. One of the ONLY real benefits to working in NY is that there's amazing food from anywhere in the world close by to you, no matter where you are. Today I'm going to a Cajun place run by two displaced Coonasses who're probably grateful at the moment to not be in Louisiana. Cajun food doesn't really agree with me, so because I love my wife I don't cook or eat it at home, but here, I'll just make the cargo surveyors and other visitors work ever faster to get the hell ashore. They tend to linger more than I'd like, the cargo surveyors, I mean.

 I'm not kidding about Cajun food kicking my stomach's ass, though. One time on the tanker SS MONSEIGNEUR , after 2 days at Buck Kreighs shipyard across from New Orleans, I set off the carbon monoxide alarm, woke up the whole ship. Not bad, considering that the sensor was on the engineer's deck, one deck above mine.  One AB, I forget his name, called me 'The Punisher' for a few days after that.