Break-in period part 1

 Friday. 

    After today it's 4 days and a wake-up until I can go home. 

   First some pictures from the shipyard last week. 

 The shipyard sits in a small valley along a river. I knew upper state NY was nice in theory, but the pictures don't do justice to the area. It's a lovely region. 

 Just uphill from the dock where the HQ was launched, a section of a new barge was being built upside down. Here it is being turned right side up so the yardbirds can weld the deck on. This section when done will be welded to other sections until the desired size is acheived. 

Other barges of assorted sizes under repairs. 

    My employer's project manager, who works with the shipyard, lent me his personal truck, an F350 diesel Super Duty, to get groceries, fetch parts and supplies, etc. Great dude. 

 The night before we sailed, my employer sent a fill-in guy as my 2nd man. He was there to provide... well, I don't know, moral support? Nice dude, anyhow. He didn't have to actually do anything, and I hadn't asked for or needed him, but I'm not the owner either. 

I had to use a little fish-eye filter to get this shot, but the river the yard is built on is small enough that the HQ is tricky to navigate out to the Hudson River, a few miles away.  I sat midships to snap the photo. 

Walking further forward along the starboard side main deck. 

Our assist tug had also been in the yard, and sailed at the same time. Our assigned tug, not seen here, was pushing us. The company wisely sent a senior tug captain, one of our pool of stand-out great boathandlers. Our assist tug, also operated by an expert, is also the tug my son spent a year on as deckhand. Time pasdes quickly, though. My kid just finished his freshman year of college. 

 The lighthouse marks the junction of the local river with the much larger Hudson river.

 About 15 minutes after we got into the Hudson, it's a matter of just going downriver for 10 hours at speed to get to NY harbor, so I turned the watch over to the fill-in guy, showered and went to bed. 

     I've been sleeping great since I got back to the HQ. But I've also been working hard at doing physical things I don't normally do- crawling and climbing, heaving on shit, turning wrenches while on ladders, team lifting really heavy things with gangs of guys, whatever. After a week of this I was SORE. But good sore, the kind that doesn't feel good but you know is coming from hard work and not a pulled muscle or pinched nerve. 

      We arrived in Brooklyn during the overnight and I slept in (for me at work) until 0530. Didn't feel a thing, dead to the world until my middle-aged bladder said I had about a minute's grace to get to the head.

Anyhow, about a gallon later, I was treated to a lovely sunrise... over the garbage transfer station.  Sigh.  I was in NY city again. 

   The word wasn't done. Alone again after my fill-in guy went elsewhere, I had 5 days to get the HQ ready to get ready for the Coast Guard's 5 year inspection, so we'd be issued a Certificate Of Inspection, the big one all commercial vessels need to go back into service, so the pace couldn't be slacked off. 

Ass: Kicked. State: Happy

 I had a good week.

       I mean, it's still going but it's been a good week. We don't have days off here at HAWSEPIPER's Afloat Global HQ. 

        The HQ sailed from the shipyard on Thursday. We were working right up until sailing. When our assist tugs arrived to pull us out, we still had a half dozen shipyard workers aboard grinding and welding the last project, modifying the cradles for our deck cranes. 

  After I got done with the interior work on the house, I worked outside with the shipyard project manager and the yardbirds. What followed were some days of climbing and crawling, turning wrenches and making and checking off lists. I'm going to bed sore and tired every single day, but you know, I've been enjoying it. 

      Bunkering near enough to nonstop has been bad for me mentally. I'm not good at repetitive mindless work and I didn't choose to work on the water to do the same bullshit every day with no pleasure to be had in the process. I think the last 2 months have been very good for me in that regard. I'm doing different things and seeing different places. 

       ...So we're back in Brooklyn now, but the work's not done yet. Before we go back into service next week, the Coast Guard has to come inspect us and give us their blessing for what we've done. And I have to finish putting the HQ back into service, which is mostly a matter of stenciling objects, inspecting safety gear and overseeing a thousand little things.  

    As an example, I had to spend 2 hours yesterday dealing with scupper plugs. All oil tank vessels have deck containment- that is, the perimeter of the decks are ringed with a short steel wall, so that any spilled oil can't go over the side. On the HQ the deck containment is a 10-inch tall steel plate welded to the deck that runs the entire cargo deck.  Rainwater and oil pool if left to accumulate. In theory the  containment should hold thousands and thousands of gallons of oil, keeping it out of the water... but we're damn good at keeping oil in the tanks, so instead the deck containment mostly traps rainwater. We have big rubber plugs to block off about 20 scuppers, drain holes around the perimeter, and they stay in at all times when we're working, being removed to drain water only when needed and only under direct supervision. We're funny about that. 

 Well, yesterday I had to find them all, (they were removed for shipyard) inspect them, replace any with damage or dry rot, and hammer them back in. While doing that I had to make lists of supplies I need, answer phone calls, talk to anf work with our shoreside support, managers, the big boss, give tours to show off the work done, etc. 

      It being a holiday weekend, the staff all bailed out in the afternoon, and I had a couple of blissful quiet hours, stenciling pipelines, running down papers, and dodging the on and off rain. 

     Oh. And my partner B came aboard. His temporary assigned barge is still ongoing, but he was moored down the street and had time to inspect the work done and move some of his things back in. It was mostly just good to see my friend. For the past 15 years we've spent 6 months out of the year together at work 24/7, so not seeing him for 2 months, it took some time to catch up. 

   Today being Saturday on a holiday weekend I have work to do. More stenciling, more inspecting, more log-keeping and today, oil changes on a generator and at some point we'll take on fuel for my own needs too. Since we burn low-sulfur MGO (marine gasoil, a type of very clean diesel oil) same as our tugs, one of my company's tugs will come alongside and we'll take on a chunk of their fuel. Generally the tugs carry 50,000 to 70,000 gallons of fuel so they can spare me some of that. 

      I do plan to wrap up early today, not quite banker's hours but a 9 hour day, and get some hardtack, rum and salt beef (by which I,sadly, mean salad, diet pepsi and chicken breast) as well as some sundry office supplies for work. 

 Back to it. 

 

Man at work

 A couple of busy days later...

      Ok, wow, so there's been a lot going on here in the shipyard. I've been working with my employer's project engineer, the guy in charge of shipyard stuff, and he's one hard working dude. Good guy, too. He's mostly left me to do whst I want to do, which is to get the HQ ready to go back to work, and it being a zoo outside with workers everywhere, I've mostly been inside, painting, scrubbing and the like. 

      I had a good talk with the project manager about how influential living conditions and ergonomics aboard are on attitude and productivity. My company has newer vessels and barges- the HQ just had her 20th birthday and had a 30 year life expectancy when built I believe... the ergonomics of the living quarters are good- better than the newer tank barges, which have larger quarters but terrible ergonomics which make them far less pleasant. For some reason my employer builds tugoats with beautiful accomodations, fine finished wood, plenty of stainless steel, and durable surfaces... it certainly wows new hires and guys who have worked elsewhere... the tankermen, OTOH, get formica, linoleum, OSB plywood and ABS plastic. BUT, as a good sailor knows, a little putty and paint makes a finish what it ain't... and the shipyard manager even let me borrow his gorgeous F350 diesel pickup to hit the hsrdware store for putty and paint. 

  I'm working 7am to 6pm. Taking it easy, lol. Just 11 hours. It's been great to be mostly let to do what I want, since what I want is for my barge to be productive and pleasant to work on, and the shipyard is putting a lot of new pump parts and hydraulics in. Things are looking well. 

 

The Half-Assed Frabjous Day

 It was a good moment, walking onto the HQ for the first time in 2 months yesterday. I have been waiting for the day. 

   Every 5 years, my company (and pretty much everyone else too) pulls all their tugs and barges out of the water for major maintenance. Yesterday morning while I was on my way here, the HQ was launched back in the water and moved to a berth at the shipyard, where work on her internals continues. 

     Yesterday was messy. As I wrote in my last post, I effed the dog and left some stuff at the office by mistske, which I realized an hour after my taxi left New York. We had to turn around, and got into the city during peak rush hour. Fun stuff. My driver, whom I know well, normally looks like a short, chubby and jolly Osama Bin Laden... I'm definitely on his 'bomb him twice' list this week. 

    I got to the shipyard after 2pm.  The yardbirds had already connected shore power, and there were electricians and mechanics up the wazoo in the gen house. The old and underpowered generators are in pieces... but sadly weren't upgraded it seems. 

    The house?   It was bad. Guys had been working on the alarms and upgrading the tank monitoring system in the office, so it was a mess, but also they were uding the head, the toilet, as an outhouse.   Without power and running water, a marine toilet is just a fancy hole to piss and crap in. Which they were doing.  So the entire house smells like a side street in Mumbai. 

    I spent 5 hours cleaning, and they gave me a yard worker to help, which was nice. Jesus, who's a little Mexican bro, and myself, dug in and got the quarters livable. He went home at 4, and by 8pm I had my bunk made and made a BLT for myself.  Most of my cleaning supplies everything not bolted down is gone, stolen by the yardbirds, which is called Cappebar, a nasty but historically traditional practice, but I found a bottle of bleach, a bottle of dish soap and also some sort of cleaning fluid and a box of rags, as well. I tried mixing the bleach and cleaner, as it wasn't a very good cleaner, outside of course in case it turned into foofoo gas, a variant of phosgene, which is good for killing Englishmen in trench warfare but not great at cleaning counters. 

       Today is more of the same. I'm focusing on the house, and unfucking it for my own sake. I've got to hike to town today to hit up the local grocery for more cleaning supplies. Tomorrow and this weekend I will be outside putting stencils on things and getting us compliant with Uncle Sugar's rulebook.   We should be back in service in about 10 days. In the meanwhile, I'm enjoying working alone when the yardbirds aren't here.

    I will say that this area, the Hudson Valley about 100 miles north of NY, is really, really pretty. 

    

I am old and also an idiot

 

Well, today is going like a fart in a car. 

    I'm about an hour north of NY city in a taxi, which I have had to have turned around to bring us back to NY, because amidst the 3 caches of my stuff scattered around the office  that needed to go with me, I forgot about one of them... the one containing my laptop bag and medication, which, sadly I need to stay among the vertical people. 

 So now my 2 1/2 hr drive is going to about double. 

     Fuck. I am slightly more absent-minded than average, I admit, but this is a recent high. 

 Also I'm 51 today. How the hell did I get old? 

   Today started off with promise. I slept like crap, but today's the day I go to the shipyard to rejoin the HQ, which I've been looking forward to. I ruck-humped a bunch of stuff over to the office last night (cache 2) and stowed it in a discreet spot. I already had some supplies and seasonal clothes there (cache 1). This morning I brought the rest of it (cache 3) and plans changed a bit, so I sat around, talked to a few people, unfucked my plans and got in the taxi when he showed up, after packing cache 1 and 2. 

 Headed back to the city now. I'm a bit ashamed of myself but at least I'm not causing cascade effects and fucking things up more. 

Economics is a cruel bitch

 Is 'Ironic Disappointment' a thing?  If it wasn't, it is now. 

       So I have finished my latest side quest, (contract job) which was a short and interesting shallow dive into a form of chaos math that was both cool in that the figgarin' part could be done with a couple of keystrokes, while the part that required me was using the results to apply to a biological question.  

    You know the classic drawing of an atom? 

The orbital paths around the nucleus can be called Probability Fields, because superficially,  we have no idea where the protons and electrons are, precisely, at a given instant relative to each other... we just know where they're more likely to be and less likely to be.

 I know, I know, it's possible to know the subatomic particles' exact positioning, now. It wasn't always thus, and it still isn't unless you got the good gear. So bear with me, I'm being colloquial. 

  So you can use math to find probability fields, when you can't find something or don't know it, but can find out where it's more or less likely to be, which is useful information. 

       So, I got paid to take this math, and build  probability fields of the pathways a neural signal might take to go from A to B in a brain across a series of tracts, pathways and individual neurons.  I did this using a simple computer model made by a collegue, of a clump of nerve cells, as my testing arena.  

   Think of this: an individual neuron dies or one of the connections between it and neighboring neurons is damaged. How does the signal reroute?  What if one good path has been working hard and some neurons are starting to flag, metabolically, attenuating the signal? (This would change it).  Why is the path taken used vs another? 

        My little brainstorming session was one of a dozen or so being contributed... all using tgeir own models, for which I was paid the princely sum of $21/hr, pre-tax, which will translate realistically to about $10/hr.  The primary investigator, a non-tenured part time lecturer in physiology, makes about 50k/ year, working full time. 

   Fuck. Good thing I work on boats.

  Anyhow, I'm back to having one job again. 

    

Happy Mother's Day!

 Well, I can't be there, but my kid took Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife to lunch for Mother's Day, to a nice waterfront cafe that we like. 

     This makes me doubly happy in that this is the first year my wife's dealt with the loss of her own mom on this day and my kid's keeping her occupied.  

I took this pic in Brazil a few months before my MIL passed away.  She was already ill but fighting hard, but on the day I took this pic we hosted over 300 cousins, aunts and uncles for a 3 day party and it was a perfect success of a long weekend. 

   

I'm old (part LV of III)

 Yesterday turned into a bit of a shit show. It was the watch that never ended. 

 So I'm not 100% familiar with this week's barge but I know it a bit now, having been here a week.  My 2nd man left yesterday, and a new one was en route.  I got up at 0430, started my watch at 0530. 

      Got off watch at midnight. Long damn day.  The Shell terminal we were at is in violation of US law, and requires American shipowners to pay a bribe in order for crew to pass through the terminal.

    They disguise it by saying it's a hiring fee for a security contractor to escort crew through the terminal... but there is a specific law that forbids this. 

 My company, rightly, will not pay a bribe, as doing so is, after all, also illegal. 

 And thst's how I had an 18 hour watch. And so, a few hours later, here I am. 

   This is why I carry a case of white Monster energy drinks in my grub bags. 

 Today I'm motivated AF to stsrt the day, as the weather will deteriorate this afternoon. Soonest started, soonest done. 

The week that was

 It's been mellow here.   

    Seriously, the weekend was quiet here aboard my temporarily-assigned berth. They don't work near as much as we do in the bunker fleet. It's been good for my mind and soul. 

 I was almost bored for a time, yesterday. It's been rainy for a few days, so not being able to go outside is a bit tough. I'm trying to start to lift weights regularly in a routine, and, well, yesterday was a rest day I guess, as I didn't want it enough to have a wet ass and the bench and weights are outside.

          Sadly I got word that the skin cancer fairy has visited again and I have to go have a funny spot on the back of my hand blowtorched when I go home in a month. Caught it early, at least, don't even need to be cut on. And that's ok. The biopsy they did last week makes it look like I got an asshole on my hand anyhow. Maybe it will heal less anus-y if she goes to town with a cautery instead of a razor next time. 

    I have another week to go here, for which I am grateful. As of right now, it looks as though I will be on a tugboat next week, as there's no demand for a cranky middle-aged tankerman in NY and the HQ is still in the shipyard for at least the next 3 weeks. 

       So... the house in Brazil is coming along. Construction on the main house is starting to ramp down. Windows and doors are in, tiling, even some paint... done right this time. This week the facade on the front of the property is getting tackled, as it looks straight out of downtown Gaza, present day.

     It's an urban house- that is, it's a walled mini- compound in the business district in the 'old city,' the original part of the city built after the conquistadores rolled in, subdued the indios (my wife's ancestors), introduced Christianity and set up a market at a trade roads crossroad.

 The house is about a 10-12 minute walk from the market, which still stands today, on a residential side street, and most importantly of all, also a 12-minute walk (I checked) from the only pub in Brazil where the owners know me by name. 

       The budget, well, it's out the window courtesy of the trashbag original builder, who, I'm told, will be under indictment later this month. The new construction manager has been proving to be a real gem. She's tight-fisted, has enormous attention to detail, and has been up every vendor and tradesman's ass, sideways, daily. 

     After this latest phase is done, in about 2 weeks, we're between projects, and can take a minute to rebuild the Brazil kitty, which is doing better than expected but which will still be nearly empty next month w/the bodies we've got on retainer. Construction won't restart until June/July I hope, which will be focused on finishing the interior- furnishings, cabinetry, fixtures, appliances, etc. Basically things I don't give a shit about... I want to get moving on the pool, outbuildings and landscaping.  I also want the money to do all that; but if wishes were fishes, etc etc.. Gonna be a bit, lol. 

 Every year I seem to say 'next year I'll slow down.' 

 Maybe next year I'll slow down.  Probably not.