stowed, stored, and blowed the hell up

It's been a good week at work.

It hasn't been too busy, and the major projects aboard for 2009 are completed. The little things are progressing, and improvements are being improved upon. We even had an overnight sailing to reposition to an anchorage in Baltimore from our usual haunts on the Delaware river. We've got a modest load of bunker and diesel oil aboard for a job tonight, then off to Philly again tomorrow morning sometime, another 8-12 hours away, dependent upon the tides and currents.

Then one of our generators seized.

Still not sure how that happened, but we're now running on one generator set, which is itself overdue for service. Sooooooo... The generator was offline. She simply wouldn't start. We had to wait until today for a mechanic to catch a launch and come out to declare the patient deader'n' a dead dog.

Anyhow, looks like we're going to be down for maintenance for another day or two after we get back home.

In the meanwhile, it was a pretty rough time at home, so it's been wholly a good thing that work has been light so far this tour. The reality is that my home life is complicated, just now, enough so that even though my home is still an oasis for me, outside of my own family, my wife and son, it's chaos. A lot of the rest of my family is really struggling, and for someone like me, who lives with a certain amount of guilt over being a so distant from my family it's difficult to watch. So this job is a double blessing. My face has gone from a somewhat alarming purple color to my more usual reddish permanently-embarrassed-looking color in just 5 days, and that's a good thing.

on the scene.

Despite heavy rains the entire drive, I made it down from Boston to Philadelphia in short order last night, fueled not in a small part by my wife's cooking, which was excellent- I now know the secret to late-night travel down the Northeast Corridor: a 0130 start to bypass morning NY traffic, energy drinks, decent country music, and a hot meal before leaving the house.
As always, it was a bittersweet parting. The Boy had surgery this morning, and was apparently severely nonplussed at my absence when he came out of anaesthesia. He and I said our goodbyes last night, and he's usually pretty flexible with me- there's never been any real trouble or complaining before, but, then again, he woke up, disoriented and drugged, and my wife was there, so he was calmed down relatively quickly, but try explaining that to a really high 6-year old.
It was definitely time for me to get out of the house. My wife was absolutely tired of me being underfoot. Normally, I bounce off the walls of my home (AKA The Ant Farm) if I sit still for more than five minutes; this time, I came home with bronchitis, which I then passed to my wife, then The Boy got strep throat, which he passed to me, and then I got a cold from somewhere else, too.

I am not a sickly person- in fact, I think that my immune system is pretty damn awesome, under normal circumstances. So it goes.

Anyhow, what with the illness, and the anxious child, and supplemental insanity coming from my family and hers, by the time I was ready to go back to work, Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife looked like this:



















napkin holder being thrown at husband in 3...2...1...



All the same, there is nothing quite so miserable as silencing the alarm clock at 1am and having to leave a perfectly warm and sleepy wife full of the knowledge that it'll be a long while before I'll be back in the big bed.

So, I arrived at my barge at 9am, and immediately set to work. By 6pm, I was talking to myself, and managed to sleep a bit. Such will be the way of things for the next 28 days.

out of the darkness

I am back at work. Expect greatness very soon.

The things we say

So, tonight, whilst I am...ah, under a slight influence of $280 worth of sushi and Scorpion bowls, one of those funny leetle truisms fell outa my mouth.

I was talking tonight with my sea-daddy Orlando, the guy who taught me how to do my job and how not to kil myself on the deck of my old ship. Orlando is working on my old ship whilst she is undergoing an unscheduled shipyard period to effect some necessary repairs. Tonight we talked whilst he was at a 4-star restaurant with much of the skeleton crew o' my ship. Sadly, my good friend and former shipmate Eldon J. passed on this week. That's Eldon on the left of the picture, and he was as fine a shipmate as any man could ask for- a good man to lead a discussion on religion, on married life, and on how to conduct oneself with honor on shore... and he made a ceviche out of Black-Tip reef shark that was to die for.

The remarkable thing about Eldon is the dpeth that the man had. I spent six years with him, and it's obvious that I was only touching upon the tip of the iceberg. Every now and again, at meals or during work. Eldon would pass on a bit of homespun wisdom or a bible verse appropriate to the situation when one of us would get antsy, or angry, or outraged, for that matter.

For my part, when we were tying up the ship or letting go the mooring lines, Eldon shushed or calmed me down on a few occasions when things didn't work as they normally did. Whether he spoke a few words in his singsong patois version of Honduran English, or spoke more directly in a formal tone, Eldon knew how to get the most out of an inexperienced officer, or conversely, how to calm an outraged or off-put sailor when the situation called for. Regarless, when Eldon was late or occupied during mooring operations, he was badly missed. I can't imagine what it's going to be like tying a ship up without him.
I think that mostly, I will miss my friend, but beyond that. my old ship will be greatly impoverished for his absence. In the end, for those of us who agree to sail on this particular ship, we agree to sail for the company alone- the money involved is not part of the equation.
Anyhow, when I spoke to Orlando tonight, I surprised myself. I said that so-and-so and so-and-so, and so-and-so were more than friends... that they were family, and I knew that they would feel the loss greatly, as would I. Orlando agreed, and we quietly said our words that will carry us to the next time we speak.


I miss my friend very much. More, I miss my shipmates strongly tonight. I have been happy in my decision to leave my ship, but now... I dunno.

home

Again I am at home. Expect quietudinality for 2 weeks.

God bless teh interwebs

Apparently, Nigeria has a government! Who knew? I thought the nation was run out of an internet cafe.

Srsly?

Nigeria is officially concerned that the sci-fi movie "District 9" portrays Nigerians in a bad light.

If you haven't seen the movie, there is a gang of Nigerians in an alien camp that are the local organized crime outfit. Yay.

Nigeria is officially concerned that the sci-fi movie "District 9" portrays Nigerians in a bad light.


401, anybody?




"Well, you are listed as the next of kin, so if you wire me $1200 US to cover the service and transaction fee, I can begin the process of transferring the funds from your late uncle's Nigerian lottery winnings immediately! "







Hey, it takes a lot of work to pay for that fancy hat, and internet cafe time ain't free.



Forgetting for the moment that Nigeria is the principal source of global fraud schemes, and that political debate has classically been handled there via machete-to-neck, Thank God that someone is concerned that Nigerians have been negatively stereotyped in science fiction movies.

I hope that you will all join me in my efforts to promote peace, harmony and positive relations between Nigeria and the public. If we can ban internet access in Nigeria, one out of five people in the world will experience positive change in their life at some level! Whether it's freedom from scams, relief from the need to purchase costly personal firewall programs, or simply less spam in ones' email box, if we could just cut the phone lines for one week, everything would improve everywhere, at some level.


Or, barring that, maybe the dude in the hat could fucking prosecute criminals for fraud once in a while.

Oh, wait... without internet fraud, Nigeria would have no economy.

another reminder

Here is another example of a tanker broken in half due to excessive hogging. I have no idea what the proximal cause was of this disaster, but I do know that it is sitting in the anchorage of the Suez canal, which is a bad place to have a broken ship.
(Photo credit to Gcaptain.com)

This is happening a touch frequently for my taste.