Halfway day

Well, we had Halfway Day off, anyhow. Yesterday marked the halfway point of this tour for me, and we spent it at our Brooklyn lay berth, the good one with shore access, which was a treat. It was good for Big E and B, as Big E went home and B came aboard on foot, rather than humping all their stuff onto a launch or a tug and getting ferried to wherever we are, which is normally how crew change happens. 

 As for me, I went ashore, got loaded up on groceries and such, and it having snowed, and the snow turned partially to slush and then refrozen, skated in my shitty sneakers up and down the dock, slipping and sliding like a goof because my feet were sore after a few days in my heavy winter boots, a pair of old Red Wings that weigh 5lbs each. Cue the Hanna-Barbera slip and trip noises, but my feets felt grand. 

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          It's been a theme here post-covid that my company has imposed on us a lot of bad new hires recruited from the court criminal diversion programs, halfway houses, and hoodbooger hangouts of the Mississippi river and Texas... I've been deeply unkind, and honest in my critiques, as the headaches and hoodboogs are irresposible, ignorant,  as useful as a soup fork aboard, and as a rule, unteachable in the artful portion of good seamanship. 

     There's some peanuts in this shit, though. We've gotten a couple of excellent new hires out of Mississippi and Texas, including a kid from TX who is gonna be a star here, but they're rare, and the best of the best out of Mississippi generally come from Jones County and are personally recruited by my former partner D, and often enough are cousins of his, as he has many, many cousins.

    Well, the company is staffed up now, fully, and I'm so happy that they've started showing up with a sharp knife and a clean conscience, to cut out the cancer among us. The hoodboogery is being trimmed by enforcing the rules of good seamanship and safety.  Us older, established sailors are gleefully sharing stories of bad actors getting ganked and sent home. Oh, some of it's the usual, idiots so headstrong and weak that they can't not smoke weed or enjoy some (lines of) coke in their off time and off they go, hopefully ne'er to return. 

    I wish I could share one good one, but there's been a half dozen of late and I wouldn't think it prudent to do laundry in public. 

      So, for safety's sake we don't allow cell phones on deck where there are likely to be explosive fuel vapors... like on any tank vessel, anywhere. No conversation is worth dying for, and killing others for. We take it seriously, even when we don't want to. As an example, when I need to break out the wrenches and socket sets for maintenance, the sockets themselves, and all the wrenches, are made of a non-sparking bronze alloy. Lighter, more aromatic fuels, your gasoline, naptha, etc, will absolutely blow the fuck up from a spark. 

       Us older guys take it personally when some young Gen Z'er or trailer trash retard motherfucker goes on deck with a cell phone or a cigarette... and it happens. Only once, usually, as there have been too damn many videos of mushroom clouds where tankermen used to be. 

Well, the new hires try to be slick, put an earpiece in and continue with their critical international negotiations, treaties, peace talks or whatever is so important that a broke ass 30 year old Section 8 barely semi-literate high school dropout can't say 'I'll call you back, I'm working.'  Experienced guys usually say 'look, I see that again, you're going ashore with your stuff right there, sorry,' and that's the end, and said shithead either listens or does not. 

 Some... do not. And stories of them getting shitcanned are gold. 

  'Tell us again about that asshole getting fired, please." 

      I hear one guy, dude with 3 kids, cried on the launch on the way to going ashore. Captain Dirk, the undisputed mayor of New York harbor, an old irascible Dutchman and owner of the launch, is a retired master from the golden age of the post WWII merchant marine, and also a retired senior NY harbor tug captain. Dirk yelled at him for being a shithead, a bad provider for his kids and a selfish, stupid and bad sailor, and the little sodomite cried like a bitch right in front of him. 

 Sorry, I wish I'd seen that. As none of these dingleberries had a father as a rule, Dirk was telling me he yelled at the guy, made him cry, and then had to be surrogate dad, and put the guy back on his feet, tell him to get his shit together, that this was a painful but needed lesson, needed to happen, and could be used as a learning experience and for growth, so that the guy took his job and his shipmate's safety seriously, and that he could do better at his next company, which he had better have applied to by the time he got on the plane in a few hours to go home. I guess Dirk had the guy in the right mindset by the time he threw his trash on the dock. 

The Mayor Himself

    All this to say, things seem to be getting better here. I'm more optimistic. I was pretty soggy and hard to light back in the beginning of the year but I'm feeling more round, and firm, and fully packed.