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We wrapped up the last cargo the other night. 2 nights ago? 3? Time has lost much of its meaning here for me, but I know I've been aboard for over 100 days and go home pretty soon.  

   On completion at the ship, having transferred the oil successfully, the charterer sent us back to the terminal where we loaded the standard black oil portion of the blend we concocted, and there they filled us up with good normal VLSFO, Very Low Sulfur Fuel Oil, which we then pumped off overnight, right back into the tank we just loaded from, to dilute any residual blended fuel trapped in our pipelines, pumps and the sumps, the low points in each tank.   We flushed them right out.

 Then we did it again. Loaded up again, pumped it all off again. 

            Yesterday I got us all fast at a lay berth in Elizabeth NJ close to Newark airport, fairly early, maybe 11am? I then spent the next few hours on the phone and up to my buttcheeks (is buttcheeks one word or two? I'm a grammar nazi) in paperwork.  Our cargo management software, which is half logbook, half tallybook and half ledger (equaling 150%, yes. Because why not?), didn't like the way the office set up the recordkeeping portion of it, and decided to make up its' own rules, like deleting some pages, or transferring load calculations to discharge records and overwriting the existing discharge records, things like that.  So I got to spend a couple of hours correcting things, chasing numbers, and occasionally having it happen again until I had enough data input for the People Who Wear Ties To Work to work with. 

 

I'm sure I'll get 30 phone calls on Monday, which, I just looked, is tomorrow. No wonder breakfast was so peaceful today.  I only got 1 phone call inturrupting my meal. That's pretty good and the dude on the phone is a bro, we got on and off the phone in under 45 seconds, and that includes pleasantries... and that's because he was a tankerman like me, though younger, and his heart gave out, literally, so he had to go ashore. No BS, dude's got a good heart now, but it's not an OEM. He had to get a reemie. 

       There is one deep truism here I have to share, and everyone who works on boats knows this.   You can't take a crap, eat, or cook without a phone call or an alarm going off.  I don't make the rules, I just live by them.   Every one of these moments, cook, eat, poop, has an intermission where business gets done. 

       Knowing this, if I am waiting on an important phone call, I'll go to the head whether or not I really need to, just to speed things up. 

           Strangely, this doesn't work at home, although it IS true that I can't take a dump without someone, usually my wife, needing something or wanting to talk.  I'm not one of those guys who sits on the can playing with his phone until his legs go numb, either. I grew up in a larger household with one bathroom. I'm programmed to be quick. 

 I'm not sure how that's related but I'm sure it is. 

        

      So we passed a quiet night last night and a tug made all fast to us earlier this morning after breakfast.  In a few minutes we'll cast off for the next cargo... a load of VLSFO  destined for a power plant I think... but a dock-to-dock cargo, not a bunker job. Kind of a treat, no ship to deal with.