Deep Water Writing

OP-ED: "For Whom the Bell Tolls" | Maritime News | Maritime Executive Magazine

2011-09-20T06:56:00.001-04:00

by Tony Munoz, editor-in-chief, The Maritime Executive Magazine and MarEx e-Newsletter.

The Administration’s ZERO Bucks Plan for Maritime

An exuberant President Obama last week unveiled a $447 billion infrastructure plan to quickly inject money into the economy and create jobs. The plan included $50 billion to jumpstart surface transportation projects, but the strategy once again emphasized rail, air and highways. That’s right: “ZERO” bucks for maritime again.

OP-ED: "For Whom the Bell Tolls" | Maritime News | Maritime Executive Magazine

Into the Ship Yard

2011-08-28T08:48:00.006-04:00

Remaining anchored for an extended period of time is tedious at best. Bridge watches must still be maintained as the ship swings in concert with a hundred others to face the current. As long as no one drops their hook too close or, on account of a light draft and stiff wind, swings the opposite direction of your own ship, there is little to do. And if something does come up it's a challenge raising another ship on the VHF radio, especially the little bunker barges that scurry about passing under stems and sterns with uncomfortable intimacy.

For three weeks we waited for an open berth in the shipyard. When the Captain finally sent me forward to weigh the anchor the only available space in the shipyard was outboard of an FPSO or "double banked." In order to arrive at our congested berth we had to pass south of the island on which Singapore sprawls. Looping around Raffles Light I was witness to hundreds of hulking ships spread throughout the anchorages. Container ships, crude oil tankers, liquefied natural gas carriers and every manner of support vessel for the offshore oil and gas industry abounded. As the ship turned the corner towards Keppel shipyard the Boatswain relieved me on the bow and I went to the bridge for docking.

At the last minute the yard informed us that we'd be docking port side to when all our lines, messengers and gangway had been readied for a starboard side docking. We had our trusty shipping agent to thank for yet another inconveniencing miscommunication. I took one of the AB's down to the weather deck where we quickly raised the now inboard gangway and lowered the outboard so that the harbor pilot could disembark. The docking pilot, three radios strung around his neck, ambled up the ladder and brought us along side with a single bell and lots of tugging. Passing lines to a Floating Production, Storage and Offloading unit was a drawn out event but because the yard was so full we were lucky to even have a spot.

In the three weeks that followed I realized that ending my hitch with a shipyard was not a good move. I had a plan though and getting an extra months pay was part of it. This was my first bona fide dry docking of a large commercial ship and it was a very impressive endeavor. The only part I played in it was to give the go ahead for removing the docking plugs and ranging the anchor chains but most of that work I left for the third mate anyway. I had my hands full just showing each shop where the broken things were so they could fix them.

I sincerely hope I can find the time to relate my time in the shipyard and all that has transpired between then and now. Suffice to say I'm back on terra firma with a new set of hurdles in front of me and a future more hazy than ever before. But that's something I'm learning to be comfortable with and will try to include in this blog.

Eastern Special Purpose

2011-06-19T06:30:00.006-04:00

It is a unique sensation to come half way around the world and feel as if you had just left the other day. My own familiarity with the Strait of Singapore, the shipping lanes in between Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, stems from four months spent on a cable repair vessel servicing breaks in fiber optic cables here. For weeks on end I stared at the same unmoving islands north of Horsburgh light when on a repair or the three towers of the Marina Bay Sands hotel in downtown Singapore when at anchor. These structures have now been completed since my time here in 2009 each erected independently and then bridged at the top by a soaring blimp like roof hosting trees, a pool, a nightclub and a photo shoot in the latest Sports Illustrated Swim Suit Edition.

The ship I work on is in the unenviable position of sitting empty and idle in the anchorage waiting for a spot in one of Singapore’s two shipyards. I say unenviable because from a financial perspective when any ship besides a cable repair vessel is in one spot for too long it means she isn’t making money for her owners. For the crew on the other hand it’s been a reprieve from the tedium of sea passages. With a daily launch to haul shore going crew anyone besides the 8 to 12 that needed a night off the ship has gotten their fill.

Like Orchard Towers at night the shipping lanes around Singapore are teeming with activity above, below and at street level. Just as taxis line up to escort hookers and their clientele to the closest hotel an endless train of ships arrive to pick up pilots at all hours. Anchored a thirty minute launch ride from the shore landing we're directly under the outbound flight path of Changi International. Every two minutes throughout the day and then again at night a jet takes off lifting above the tree lined shore ascending directly overhead. We’re also right in front of the high speed ferry terminal servicing Indonesia so a constant stream of high speed craft zip back and forth.

The day we arrived the Singaporean military was holding maneuvers near Raffles light house. A squadron of F-16s made circles around the anchorage while helicopters dropped off and retrieved frog men from the water. Naval patrols in the Strait are a daily occurrence and unlike the navies of another nation with which I’m familiar maintain a conspicuous radio silence.

The shipping traffic is just as I remembered; hundreds of ships pass daily, some swinging into Singapore’s myriad of terminals and others trucking right on past. Before we anchored in Singapore’s territorial waters we spent a week anchored off Indonesia in a no man’s land where every single ship save for us was a tanker waiting for a cargo. As far as the eyes could see Suez max tankers in ballast sat quietly, their crews spending what could be months trapped onboard. Every now and then an illegal sheen of oil would drift by but with so much current and so many ships finding the culprit would be impossible without aircraft. Something the Indonesians don’t seem too concerned about.

Just as when I was here before ships continued to sink right in the middle of the traffic lane a few miles away. When I explained the may-day relay on the Sat-C to one of the crew I attributed it to the law of probabilities. If there are a thousand ships in the Strait today there’s bound to be a serious collision or one junker hours from springing a leak and going down.

I’ve had the chance to get off the ship twice since arriving and neither time did Singapore disappoint. Before the sunset on my first jaunt ashore I had to return to the one and only Thai massage parlor I have ever been to. While massages in Asia are synonymous with happy endings this joint, shown to me by a sailor well versed in the ways of massage, includes nothing of the sort. Instead you are given a ridiculous looking set of loose fitting green pajamas to change into after locking your valuables away in the shower room. You ascend a staircase passing by a series of photographs featuring masseuses with awkward smiles contorting the bodies of supine victims in what appear to be painful poses. I could hardly contain my excitement.

At the top of the staircase women turn left and men turn right to meet your masseuse and enter a room filled wall to wall with thin mattresses. In the late afternoon after a stressful day in Singapore’s financial sector it isn’t unlikely that the place will be jammed packed with Asian men being pushed and pulled and kneaded like dough. My masseuse was small and when she began I was sure that her muscles weren’t fit for the job of relieving two months of accumulated stress.

The tempo, as I was to be reminded, picks up over the massage’s hour long duration and by the end, right around when she was using her elbows to push into the knot of muscle that is my hips did I remember how skilled the Thai are at this. When it was over I felt as if I had suffered a caning for spray painting graffiti on cars but soon realized that I was absolutely free of tension. Elated I joined the engineers I had gone ashore with and ordered the weirdest looking seafood we could find in celebration.

There is something about going ashore with sailors that is indescribable. The pent up restlessness of being at sea, the bittersweet shortness of our time ashore and the anticipation of the unknown in foreign lands lends to a traveling experience unlike any other. That common bond helps too, something which I believe transcends ethnicity, nationality, trade, department or company.

This I attribute to the character needed in each and every mariner to live the life we do. A character I notice even in people I've worked with on the shore end of shipping but who have spent a portion of their career at sea. There are those who've been to sea and those that haven't and for those that have the way they view, communicate and treat us sailors is vastly different than interacting with their colleagues. It is a level of character lost on some in this business, not all, but some who know ships only by fact, figure and name but will never know the sea.

Thus taking in the Asian air a million miles from home in a city where your two best friends are the guys you just spent the last two months sharing three meals a day can be quite exhilarating. Throw in a few hundred venues for entertainment, a few thousands taxis to get you here and there and a few million Singaporeans to converse with and for the night you've got it made.

The Tropics

2011-06-04T18:36:00.012-04:00

Weather is everything to a sailor. Fair winds and following seas have seen thousands of voyages through to safe conclusions while typhoons and winter gales have perilously prolonged or prematurely ended countless others. Weather at sea is the difference between the calm grace of slipping over the water towards the never ending horizon or clutching handrails at the wave's crest as the trough falls out from beneath the keel.

Save for when the wind howls the sea state is usually benign in the Middle East but the heat adds another hardship, one that I would happily trade for a few days of rolling in the North Sea. I lived on a ship where the only way to take a shower after a day’s work was to wash in the bucket you filled in your head that morning. The fresh water tanks adjacent to the hull would become so hot during the day that by evening the water was scalding. I stood bridge watches on the same ship with no AC in the wheelhouse and one little window unit to cool the 90 degree Red Sea air at midnight. Dripping sweat and charts don’t mix. The heat not only makes sleeping hard and work miserable but for a New Englander fond of changing seasons the persistence of Middle Eastern weather patterns is rather depressing.

This is why, after a month in these waters rounding the tip of India wasn’t just a physical relief but a mental lift. Still covered in a layer of brown dirt we left the Arabian Gulf and turned east for one last discharge port. From Pakistan we were ordered to the Far East which meant passing South of India and Sri Lanka and then direct to the Malacca Strait. One would think that getting closer to the equator (We’re now 90 miles north of it) would mean more heat but it’s been the opposite.

Meteorologically speaking the crossing from India to Indonesia was phenomenal. I had forgotten what the tropics were like when the weather is agreeable. The air is soft and light, the humidity comfortable and the ocean a mirror image of billowing clouds and indescribable sunsets. Just seeing clouds, endless vast arrays of them, was such a pleasant change from the daytime haze and evening murk of the Arabian Gulf.

But most delicious of all was the rain. Sweet water deluges that in two hours took care of the sand problem it would have taken the day men a week of constant pressure washing to rinse off. Every square inch of the ship was cleansed making for great painting conditions. I was thrilled not only to have saved the man hours but to see a cloudy day with no sun, cool winds and visibility inhibiting squalls. Changes in weather are so welcomed at sea where the monotony of a high pressure system, or worse, a rollicking low makes the body, eyes and mind grow weary.

The ship is in ballast which means there isn’t a single metric ton of cargo onboard and the salt water ballast tanks are full. This also means that the cargo holds, vast parking garage like chasms, are completely emptied which is the perfect state for one of my favorite pass times, organizing. Doing so in the cargo holds involves corralling the lashings, stowing them by type in metal bins and stacking those bins in strategic locations depending on what kind of cargo goes where.

Roro cargo is a beautifully efficient stowage system when it comes to anything that can be loaded onto a trailer, towed or driven onboard. Containers surely take the prize for speed of handling but there are certain things like out of gauge / over height vehicles and equipment, automobiles or very long pieces that do not fit well or weigh too much for the typically rigid limitations of a TEU; such as rail cars, yachts or heavy mining equipment.

When it comes to flexibility the roro is hard to beat but the variety of commodities mean different lashing equipment for each kind and it’s my responsibility to ensure it is inventoried, inspected and ready for use. While it’s not rocket science, nothing about sailing ever was, it is a feat in organization to have these lashings properly sorted and arranged.

There are thousands of lashing chains and binders or tensioning bars. These must be neatly stowed in lashing bins and cannot be mixed unless one wants to infuriate the longshoremen. There are web lashings, short and long, for vehicles and light cargoes including break bulk which we load quite a bit of. There are corner protectors or softeners to keep the web lashing from chaffing, web slings and chocks, both large for trailers and tractors and small ones for cars.

I have hundreds of twist locks for when we do load containers which are placed on trailers, pushed onboard by a tug, and then removed by specially designed low height forklifts to be placed on top of their designated lashing points. The twist locks secure each corner of the container to the deck or to one another as they are stacked. There are car lashings for automobiles which have their own decks higher in the ship. There's also piles and piles of rubber matting, wood dunnage, trailer jacks, trailer horses and traffic cones. Lashing bars need to be collected from the holds and stashed away for the next port, trash picked up, the holds swept and vacuumed.

My guys spent three days busting ass in the holds picking up lashings and sorting the bins. Tomorrow I'll let them know how much I appreciated their hard work by sending them back down to sweep and swab the areas our deck sweeping machine couldn't reach. And there are still light bulbs to change, bulkheads to sougee, hydraulic control stations to clean and trash to bag. It’s a ton of work but worth the effort when you have the rare chance to clean all the holds at once.

After crossing the Bay of Bengal we rounded the northern tip of Sumatra encountering the strong charted tidal rips. The Malacca Strait, a very narrow and shallow body of water, links the Indian Ocean with the South China Sea. Because of this it acts as a conduit for any tidal variations between these two large oceans and therefore strong currents surge back and forth mounding up in certain areas underwater sand waves that can reach 45 feet in height. Unlike the rips these are not charted.

Another anomoly, this one less interesting, was the amount of garbage my lookout and I saw as we entered the strait. Still out of sight of land in every direction we looked was floatsom and it's ugly relation, jetsom. Palm fronds, trunks and entire trees were plentiful but not nearly as plentiful as the plastic garbage. I truly believe plastics are the scourge of not just the ocean but the developing world. It appeared that all of this debris was yesterday's water bottle or lunch tray and no thought was given for the fact that once it was tossed into a culvert in Malaysia or off the porch in Indonesia it would spend the rest of it's days slowly deteriorating in the ocean's eco system.

There was oil too, testament that despite the international communities best efforts ship's continue to illegally pump bilges, slops and tank washings overboard. An easy thing to get away with in waters traveresed by thousands of ships each week with little to none in the way of coast guard patrols. As much as the industry has cleaned up it's act there will always be a pollution stream from shipping but I don't think it even holds a candle to what cities and run off are doing to the oceans.

The crew is excited for our next port where everyone is hoping for some much deserved time ashore, a rare occurence for our normal run. Asia is a wonderful place to be a sailor and we happen to be pulling into one of my favorite towns so there is that added sense of familiarity, something I don’t mind half way around the world with limited time to explore as I all ready know where the cheapest beer and best food can be had.

American Feeder Lines gets to business in Portland!

2011-05-31T04:24:00.005-04:00

"Early next month, American Feeder Lines plans to launch a container ship service linking Portland, Boston and Halifax, Nova Scotia, in a triangular route. Its feeder cargo ship — the AFL New England — is small by comparison to the behemoths that ply the global trade routes; it can only hold 700 20-foot containers, or their equivalent." - See the Bangor Daily News Article for more.

This article just popped up in my google alerts. While the M/V AFL New England is not herself a Jones Act compliant vessel this is the start of what may be a major shift in East Coast container traffic. If there's anyone in need of reduced shipping costs it's small businesses in Maine. Even the bigger ones such as Poland Springs (Nestle) would benefit. Who knew Poland Springs sends 400 tractor trailer trucks out of Maine each and every day! No wonder I hate driving as much as I do.

Visit American Feeder Lines here for more information on their business plan for the US East Coast including the port pictured below.

The Brown Blizzard

2011-05-29T04:16:00.006-04:00

It's not often at sea when I come across a sight that gives cause for a double take. Celestial, meteorological or biological phenomena are, if not always predictable, at least expected. A solar or lunar eclipse is a slow affair. A meteorite's fiery atmospheric entry is sudden but not surprising. A waterspout is a waterspout. Breaching whales or spinning dolphins are entertaining but not uncommon.

A school of 200 migrating sea rays was different. At first I thought they were flotsam, maybe plastic bags drifting aimlessly around the gulf perfectly arranged edge to edge just under the surface. Nope, look again. There were narrow tails, flapping wings, and small eyes moving towards shore in organic formation, definitely not trash. An absolutely incredible sight from the bow as we anchored; something I had never seen before. An encounter the kind of which should be taken as an omen.

One of the most frustrating aspects of working on a cargo ship in the Arabian Gulf is dealing with the pilots and port control. I do not pretend to be a sea pilot or a docking master but after participating in hundreds of dockings on the bow, the stern and the bridge a mariner fosters a certain feel for a vessel's natural progression under the direction of a pilot.

Pilotage is the carefully planned series of events needed to maneuver a vessel down a river or channel, stop and turn in where there’s sufficient room and then gently lay her along side the dock. This is an all hands evolution requiring the deck department to be split between the bow and stern with the second mate forward and third mate aft while the Master, Chief Mate, a helmsman and the pilot are on the bridge. The process involves tugboats, bow and stern thrusters, helm and engine orders and line-handlers on the dock to receive the ship's hawsers and place them on bollards.

A seasoned crew familiar with their ship and under the direction of a competent pilot or docking master can easily accomplish a docking or undocking safely and efficiently at any hour of the day. Each step is discussed by the bridge team and executed with the calm confidence that comes with any well practiced routine at sea. A cautious breed, pilots usually have years of experience either at sea or in one particular harbor or both. They tend to think ten steps ahead of time but do not hesitate to take quick and substantial action when the situation warrants.

The repetition of piloting ships into and out of a single port garners a level of specialized expertise that masters depend upon. The pilot in turn relies on the master to furnish all the necessary information about that particular ship and her capabilities. For the world around this is an industrial norm and lends to a sense of pride and professionalism for everyone involved. Unfortunately when in the Arabian Gulf it all comes to a stop.

It's hard for me to understand the lackadaisical approach the pilots in most Gulf States have. If there is one aspect of my job that I really enjoy it is being involved with handling the ship.

My role involves keeping the bell book and operating the thrusters but recently the Captain has been taking a step back and allowing me the conn when working with the pilots. Every single time he lets me do this I learn something new about the process. If I swing too wide making a turn into the channel or cant the stern too close to the dock when coming alongside I make a mental note and do everything I can to never repeat my mistake.

Being given responsibility and allowed to make mistakes under supervision is the best way to learn any job but the pilots here in the Arabian Gulf never seem to learn from their own. They perform the same ridiculous maneuvers over and over again oblivious that they're "Stop engines, hard right" command is counterproductive and a shoddy show of seamanship.

It's a miracle ships don't go bump more often with the bottom, the dock or one another here. I have seen pilots completely oblivious to current and wind botch simple turns in buoyed channels and get indignant when the Master, concerned about bank suction, asks if he's getting back to the channel center. I have seen pilots get on and off the ship inside the breakwater feeling that their duty ends once the ship is off the dock and headed in the general direction of the open ocean.

I have to give the Captain his credit here. When pilots do things completely counterintuitive to ship handling he calmly stands by balancing the absurd with the hazardous. It's a fine line to walk in-between instigating a cultural clash by taking the conn from the pilot and kicking him off the bridge or allowing him to put the ship in near jeopardy to get the ship docked without a fracas. Fortunately for us the ship always makes it along side despite the teeth clenching over reliance on start air draining engine commands, tugboat assistance and constantly asking "What's the course now" as the pilot stands over a gyro repeater.

Port control is no help either. Entrusted to direct ships like air traffic control the port towers are oblivious to the navigational hazards we contend with when drifting a half-mile off the port waiting for a pilot that's a half hour late. Pilot on arrival is an unheard of concept in many ports, unless they're waiting for you and then there will be all hell to pay. It makes the crew feel as if our purpose is to appease the port and the pilots taking every chance to make their lives as easy as possible.

In one recent port call after the pilot had taken us off the dock, when he should have been lining the ship up to pass between two reef markers, he allowed the wind to take over and push the bow to leeward. When the captain questioned if he was intending to steady the ship on a course the pilot said "It's ok Captain, you can take it now" to which the Captain replied "All right, why don't you just get on your pilot boat now". Doing so the pilot explained wasn't allowed. Watching from the tower we were just passing Port Control could levy a fine against him. He had to wait until after the first reef was astern before he could disembark.

What was even crazier was that this guy had two apprentice pilots in tow. They spent the transit dabbing form their faces what must have been the first sweat of their lives with handkerchiefs. All three grimaced when I told them sorry, but there were no white gloves for their delicate hands when climbing down our dusty pilot ladder. What kind of pilots will these guys turn out to be if this is whom they're learning from?

The afternoon I spotted the school of rays we were anchoring 6 miles off another port awaiting a berth. When the ship sailed from our slip we weighed the anchor and began steaming in as directed by port control. After the wind picked up to a blustery 12 knots the port informed us they would not be taking us in due to adverse weather; very typical.

I let go the anchor as the sun set and then went to my room for some sleep, weather delays can last days here. Ten minutes after laying down the bridge called ordering me back to the bow to begin heaving up the 7000 kg anchor under a flood of orange sodium deck lights. Port control had changed their mind as the wind had calmed a little. Unbeknownst to them an anvil cloud was rising to the west pouring bolts of lighting onto the refinery dotted shoreline.

Only once the anchor was aweigh did the port realize the calm airs they were experiencing were those ahead of a vicious cold front. With little concern for our troubles they called again to tell us that "All port operations are canceled” indefinitely. As the lighting increased stretching across the sky I laid the anchor chain back on the bottom. A cold draft of upper level air swept down from the encroaching front and rushed over the bow. After a month of 90-degree weather that cool breeze felt as foreign as if a snowball had hit me in the back of the head.

Sensing that all hell was about to break loose the Boatswain and I briskly secured the anchor and walked aft to the safety of the house just as a brown wall unseen moments before obliterated the lights on shore and raced towards the ship. By the time I made it up to the bridge to watch the show the entire ship was immersed in a swirling haze of sand.

It was an all out sandstorm that only the sea rays knew was coming. The shore authorities had no forecast for the event nor had we received anything from the GMDSS. The sand filled air was so thick with sand that there was nothing to see but a pool of brown light radiating from our deck lights. With 40 knots gusts the situation, had we not been at anchor could have been precarious. Had we been underway it's doubtful the engine would have ran for very long with sand filled air filters. Had the port called any sooner we would have been underway and turning around close in to shore with a handicapped engine, an unenviable situation.

At least we were able to wait at anchor for the next 24 hours until the sand subsided and visibility improved. When the pilot did finally board the following day he was dressed in a fine white uniform wearing a high pressure naval cover and aviator glasses. If only his ship handling were to turn out as smart as his appearance.

An Arabian Gulf

2011-05-18T04:43:00.004-04:00

When referring to the shallow, hazy, hot body of water surrounded by desert sand, monarchies and dictatorships be careful when choosing your words. If, for example, you're in Saudi Arabia using the term "Persian Gulf" is sure to piss off any Arabian Port State Control Inspector. This is not too surprising given the prevalence of surface to air missile batteries lining the entrance to ports here which happen to be aimed in the direction of Persians.

There is something unique about this body of water and unfortunately familiar. Six years ago after a hectic first transit through the Strait of Hormuz I remember stepping onto the bridge wing at two in the morning. The silent water through which we glided was, save for the wake, without a ripple. A steam of saturated air shrouded the after mast light and obscured the stars. It must have been 98 degrees outside, at night. The windbreak was hot to the touch and the single AC unit shoved through a bridge window was hardly keeping the bridge electronics dry.

That steam bath stuck with me and while I've returned to the gulf many times since then, often during more pleasant seasons, the heat is something I will never get used to. Sitting in the Captain's office yesterday waiting for our pilot and tugs to leave the U.A.E. we called the bridge and engine room to compare temperatures. The dry bulb on the bridge read 98 in the shade, the engine room 104 by the boiler. It sucks the life out of every one on board turning a twelve hour day into what feels in your muscles and parched throat like a 24 hour day. Constant hydration, cargo hold ventilation and keeping every accommodation door shut and curtain drawn is the modus operandi. But the heat is just one unique aspect of this hot and dusty place.

Getting in and out of the Gulf as I said means a passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Usually falling on a single watch one of the mates will get stuck with the three course changes needed to pass from the Gulf of Oman, around the north east tip of the Arabian Peninsula, into the Gulf. This time I was on the bridge and the fishing boats were thick.

As long as you zoom in on the radar and focus on the vessels close by the pace isn't too crazy until the sun comes up. Having all ready passed several dozen small skiffs getting an early start on the day casting single nets into the middle of the traffic lanes I saw an armada of small craft screaming towards us on the starboard beam. The sun was just up and they were all teenagers coming from Iranian side of the strait in light aluminum skiffs with big outboards.

Whether fishing or smuggling the lookout and I didn't really care as we diverted our attention from the ship we were overtaking to the approaching swarm. After appearing as if all 20 or 30 skiffs would pass astern a half dozen fell under the bridge wing where I no longer could see them. A few moments later, much to my surprise, they reappeared running almost perpendicular to the hull intent on, as they say in Asia, "Cutting the dragons tail."

To the fishermen flying towards us at 30 or 40 knots I'm sure all 200 meters of the ship looked as if she was standing still but from the bridge with the helm in hand steering and my finger on the horn there is little consolation in relative motion. When a vessel crosses into the blind spot ahead of any ship taking action could result in the opposite intended effect.

In such a situation of extremis when making twenty knots reversing the engine is impossible. Risk of collision hinges on whether the speed boat's motor will keep going. The urge for small boat operators to take chances befuddles me but for a ship in heavy traffic and operating within an IMO mandated traffic separation scheme the watch officer is limited because the fishermen are going so fast and making such abrupt course changes.

Why not call them on the radio as one might back in other regions? Even if they did have one, which none did, it is a special form of communication reserved for singing, chanting, howling, whistling and my favorite, Arabic scream talking. It's unlikely these young Iranians would neither speak English nor have it turned up loud enough to hear over their roaring outboard engines.

Communications, not so common in the traffic lanes, are essential in port once the ramp is landed and I'm trying to figure out exactly what the game plan is for getting our cargo off the ship. Most foremen speak English though I recently offended one in Jordan trying to communicate with English and hand gestures. "I don't speak English!" he shouted highly irritated that I might assume as much. At least he had four more words in his English vocabulary than I did in Arabic.

Arabic isn't the only language one would need to know to speak with the "local" labor. The longshoremen come from all over the East. Indians and Filipinos are the predominant stevedores. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal supply most of the grunt labor. They all come to the Middle East for two or three years at a time and then return home for 4 or 5 months before beginning another stint in Oman or Saudi Arabia or the Arab Emirates.

Being foreigners in a Muslim land they are easily replaced and this prevents their ability to problem solve and think independently. Any small problem such as moving a container out of the stow if the forklift cant scoop it up straight on or jacking up a car to fix a bad tire is met with consternation. The mates here are often summoned as the first option to provide the laborers with the tools or solution to their trivial problems. The longshoremen are reluctant to make waves with their seniors and will only enact an unconventional approach once implicit permission has been granted.

They also are incapable of giving a straight forward answer. This is more of a cultural trait than anything else I think and it's shared across several south Asian cultures. Whether a question, a suggestion or an order the response is almost always the no problem head shake. Nodding up and down or back and forth is physiologically impossible. Instead the head is quickly rocked side to side two or three times with a beguiling smile. Whatever might have been the issue or question is thus quickly irrelevant. "No problem my friend" is a commonly heard phrase.

But there are so many problems in this part of the world and it amazes me how interconnected my own country is with this distant parched land, a place that has so little in common with where I call home. Still we Americans are here. Navy bases in Bahrain and the U.A.E., Air Force bases in Oman and Saudi Arabia. Massive hubs of material support for the ongoing operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Civilian contractors, expatriates, business people and mariners from all over the U.S. find work here. There is a massive amount of commerce taking place but why anyone would want to build a half dozen emerald cities in such a hot and unsustainable place is beyond me. Yet the more I come here the more familiar it becomes and I'm not surprised to find so many people living and working near so much mineral wealth, the only product of the region worth exporting in large quantities.

Nor am I surprised when pilots let you take the ship down the channel and right up to the breakwater before boarding or port control towers needlessly put ships in compromising situations. There's just a different almost haphazard way of doing things yet piles of paperwork and photocopies and signatures and ship stamps to get it all done. Every time a car is driven ashore in Jeddah I have to sign an exception list stating that it was discharged in a "dusty condition" and it always makes me laugh. "Dust?" I like to ask the foremen. "But this is the desert!" It only became covered in fine brown powder after turning the hold ventilators on. But that's just how it is.

An aircraft carrier and her escort caught up to us as we passed through Hormuz. A fitting reminder of how much is at stake here for so many. Her flight deck was crammed with warplanes bristling in the morning sun, a show of force surely directed at the homeland of those Iranian fishermen. In front of the the fortress like ship a destroyer ran interference and above three helicopters were constantly employed dusting off unwary skiffs. Beneath the strait a submarine was surely lurking as I turned over my watch and wondered how long America will be here.

Marlboro Reds

2011-05-06T08:00:00.008-04:00

The presence of flies in the wheelhouse hearkened our arrival to Egyptian shores. Expecting the usual delegation of canal inspectors, security officers and agents to converge on us once anchored at the entrance to the Suez Canal the accommodation ladder was rigged and lowered to the water's edge. To every one's surprise the agent called the captain informing him that the authorities no longer made visits to the ships at anchor. Only he and a canal inspector would board us as we passed through Port Said greatly simplifying our transit.

Getting underway on the other hand was business as usual. Ships entering the Suez Canal are directed to cue according to a predetermined convoy arrangement. Naval vessels, LNG tankers and ships carrying hazardous cargoes transit first. Then tankers and lastly container and general cargo vessels. With orders to have our engines ready at 2330 the Captain called us out a little early. Standing by on the bow at 2300 with the Boatswain the line of ships stretching to the north told me it was going to be a long night. After an hour and a half we weighed the anchor, washed the mud off the chain, and approached the pilot station.

As is standard practice for the Mid East as soon as we were making way and pointed right at the beach Port Control told us to stand by. While airplanes can turn circles we on the other hand, with a jetty ahead and another ship astern, had to drift in one spot, a maneuver only possible in a beam sea with a 15 knots breeze thanks to a pair of two thousand horsepower tunnel thrusters. After nearly an hour of holding position the pilot boat was finally sighted coming out of the port.

By this point I was tired and ready to get the first pilot on, the ship cleared with the canal inspector, and then switch the pilots out. As is custom the pilot boat, keeping ten meters off the side began honking their little horn. "Hello my friend, call Captain and ask him for cigarettes! Cigarettes for pilot boat! Four cartons please!!" Invoking the Captains name in his first request, despite saying please, told me I was in trouble. I had never gotten back up to my office after weighing anchor to stock up on emphysema inducing presents and was therefore about to be denied a pilot. There was no way this guy was going to pull alongside and allow the canal pilot to board without his bribe.

"What the hells going on down there mate?" the equally exhausted captain testily asked. "They won't board the pilot until I give them cigarettes Cap" I replied as one of our security guards hustled up to the office to grab three cartons. As we waited and the Port drew closer on a half ahead bell, I attempted to reason with the launch crew by explaining that the cigarettes would be lowered to them shortly so could they please board the pilot before we entered the harbor.

Not surprisingly the crew took this as a ruse to get a pilot without handing over any cancer sticks and flat our refused to come along side. All the while our pilot just stood there, sheepishly holding onto a hand rail, fully aware that if we didn't hand over the cartons as requested he wouldn't be climbing the ladder until the second pilot was about to board.

The cigarettes arrived from my office in the nick of time and after lowering them by a heaving line to the now appreciative boat crew, the same ones who had just been yelling and screaming at me, the boat pulled along side. Our pilot, a younger than average canal pilot, waddled up the accommodation ladder and bid me good morning as if the conduct of the launch crew was just a funny game and demanding bribes for a pilot to be boarded is commonplace around the world.

The transit went smoothly for the duration of the 150 kilometer canal. All the container ships were jammed packed with boxes including the 170,974 gross ton Emma Maersk, the world title holder for largest container capacity at 15, 500 TEU. Soon though Maersk will even trump their own by constructing ten EEE class container ships between 2013 and 2015 which at a speed of 23 knots will carry up to 18,000 TEU between Asia and Europe exclusively. There is no current port in the United States that could unload the EEE class fast enough to justify the vessel calling in the United States. I wonder how many cartons of Marlboro Reds it will take to get one of these behemoths through Egypt?

Ship Envy

2011-04-29T12:00:00.002-04:00

Ever since my first experience at sea I have listened to mariners lament how the number of ships sailing under a U.S. flag has dwindled for decades. In a world where there are now over 100,000 merchant vessels the United States Merchant Marine accounts for only 1.4% of the total gross tonnage; a number that has only fallen year after year from a high of 36% in World War Two. Of course WWII was an exceptional time when our sealift capacity ensured the allied nations of Europe were fed, fueled and armed but for the wealthiest nation on earth to reside so low on the list is concerning for seafaring Americans such as myself.

What troubles me more than the low number of American owned, operated, crewed and sometimes constructed ships is the average fleet age of the few remaining deep sea vessels. While American shipyards are busy pumping out tugs and barges the number of new build activity for long haul ocean transport is anaemic. Not counting the "grey hulls" or ships funded specifically for defense purposes the U.S. merchant fleet is antiquated and will eventually become obsolete as fleet age is a major factor in choosing a shipping line to haul one's cargo around the world.

Like farming and banking nearly all american ships in foreign trade are in one way or another subsidized by the American tax payer. The only reason I have a job sailing overseas is because congress has authorized funding through 2015 for the Maritime Security Program, a subsidy which encourages the re-flagging of foreign built ships into US registry. By offsetting the higher operating costs for US flagged vessels it ensures sufficient sealift capacity in time of war or national crisis. Since these ships are foreign built they are ineligible for Jones Act or domestic trade and therefore are only engaged in foreign commerce, hence why my job.

These thoughts were running through my mind the other week when I leveraged my rating as Chief Mate to take a quick tour of a Norwegian flagged vessel moored astern of us. Since only in America are there "Chief Mates" I introduced myself to the Filipino security watch as the "Chief Officer" of the American ship loading cargo at the next berth and inquired if his Chief Officer wasn't too busy to allow me onboard.

"Yes, he's on the bridge and would be happy to show you around" the crewman replied in a thick Tagalog accent as another of the ABs on watch came down from the upper holds to escort me to the elevator. On the bridge? That's about as far from the cargo operation as he could be I thought as we rode the elevator to the upper most deck.

The size of the ship was impressive from the dock and standing on top of this sky scraper was no different. The AB led me to the bridge, which he would not enter in working clothes and boots where the Captain, First Assistant, Radio Operator and Chief Officer were standing around wearing pressed salt and pepper uniforms. They greeted me with some curiosity unaccustomed to having visitors from neighboring ships. I was immediately curious why three of the top four officers were all on the bridge. I've never even seen the First Assistant Engineer on the bridge of a ship much less wearing a pressed uniform. "Don't you belong down in the hole?" I wanted to ask as we made small talk and I explained the trade route and number of crew on board my ship.

"Only 20 crew?" the Chief Officer asked. "We have 27 plus two British deck cadets." Oh that must be nice I thought as it explained why the management officers were all bullshitting on the bridge in port during cargo operations. The Chief Officer then explained that the Radio Officer, another rating now absent from the crew lists of American ships (Ever since GMDSS was implemented), was running some sort of IT test on their internet system to check for cyber terrorism weaknesses (Every ship in their fleet has internet), but he had a few minutes and could show me around.

I thanked the Captain for his time and made my way down the ladder well to the accommodation deck. The door opened into an atrium with a wide stair case that descended to the accommodations. I was blown away by the grandeur of such a space on a ship that really served no utilitarian purpose besides impressing visitors. At the bottom of the stairs were a set of glass book cases crammed with literature. To the left of the atrium was a small lounge for port officials and other important persons visiting the captain. A model of a Viking longboat crafted out of wood served as a centerpiece in the cozy room.

We walked past the ship's offices, one of several places including the bridge where the Chief Officer could remotely operate the ventilation and ballasting systems, and into the officers mess. The entire crew could have eaten in the room but the unlicensed had their own mess abaft the galley and closer to their own living quarters. A well appointed gym was across the hall complete with a glass faced squash / basketball court. All that was missing were the saunas commonplace on Swedish flagged ships.

If an after duty game of squash wasn't enough to wear you out than retiring to one of two lounges was always an option. The crew lounge was fitted with an entertainment and Karaoke system as well as a full drum kit, guitar, bass and amplifiers. Music is as culturally necessary for Filipino seafarers as white rice and fish at breakfast. The officers lounge was further forward and massive. Art work, a dart board, photographs of numerous barbecues onboard and plush settees lined the walls while a full bar and stools filled one corner. The spotless carpet professed that it was an off duty clean clothes only establishment and beer coasters sporting Beck's, Fosters and Heineken abounded. It was evident that Norwegians could not only be trusted to operate a multi million dollar ship but they could also be trusted to have a pop or two afterwards.

Moving further aft down the recently waxed deck, besides the cleanliness and modern fixtures of the interior, I was most impressed by pyramid sky lights placed in the overhead at each intersection of the passageway allowing natural light to fill the ship. It hearkened back to deck prisms and the master's cabin sky light on sailing ships. I peeked into the Chief Officer's stateroom at what looked like a showroom at Ikea. "The carpenter put in a new carpet this trip. Last trip he tiled all the officer's heads." I don't think an American ship has employed a carpenter since the 1970s.

Leaving the ship I couldn't help but feel a pang of envy. Not for the posh accommodations or large crew but for the overall impression the vessel and her crew gave off. They were employed by a powerhouse in the shipping world and everyone onboard and in the port knew it. The vessel was built for cargo and a lot of it but making an impression on visitors and the crew as comfortable as possible was also calculated in; sentiments that today seem lost in the Walmart mentality of most shipping companies.

Of course it would be hard to use this vessel as a comparison for American ships. First of all she was definitely not built in Norway. Doing so would be as cost prohibitive as building one in say, the United States. She was of South Korean ancestry and therefore much more affordable and timely in her construction. An American vessel, unless subsidized by MSP must be built in the United States if she is to carry cargo from one domestic port to another or in other words be Jones Act compliant. As it stands now without being constructed in the U.S. a ship couldn't carry a single TEU from Newark to Portland Maine legally.

Also, her crew was only partially Norwegian. The unlicensed, and quite possibly junior officers were all selected by a Filipino crewing agency from thousands of qualified mariners educated in Filipino maritime academies. American vessels on the other hand are almost always crewed by American citizens. (Unless you're working in the South Pacific fisheries where only the "Paper" captain must be American, an egregious loophole for U.S. registered fishing boats with Asian crews).

American crews are traditionally viewed by shipping companies as expensive not just on account of the higher standard of living in the U.S. but our litigious nature. While it's true we earn a higher wage than the majority of seafarers from other nations the reason American mariners may be so sue happy could be that the maintenance and cure offered by the Jones Act when injured was pegged in the early 20th centure at seven dollars a day. That won't even get you an aspirin in hospitals today.

Furthermore an entire Norwegian vessel, though flying a red and white flag, can be entirely manned by non citizens benefiting the company with reduced crewing costs making the Norwegian flag comparable to any other "Flag of Convenience." In the U.S. this too is prohibited by the Jones Act, yet another reason almost all shipping companies based in the United States flag their fleets in Liberia, Monrovia, the Marshal Islands or Panama.

While the shipping industry remains to be big business in the United States the companies do not support American shipbuilders and seamen as it once did. The industry has been outsourced to foreign fleets for the very same reasons we no longer make television sets and automobiles like we once did. While large shipping companies reap the rewards of cheaper labor, looser regulations and lower construction and maintenance costs I fear that we may loose the capability to maintain a true ready reserve capability as a maritime nation.

I'm no war hawk but with the reduced size of not only our merchant fleet but also our navy we may look big in GDP but our presence on the high seas may be relegated to the lowest bidder. Loosing the work force to build, maintain and operate deep sea tonnage will prevent the United States from regaining the autonomy we once held as a global economic force. The original purpose of the continental navy was not to project military might but to protect the merchant vessels that supplied the expanding colonies with everything they could not grow or produce on their own.

I do not mention these thing for want of alcohol onboard ship or dinning ware emblazoned with the stack insignia or the white glove role some officers on foreign ships with multiethnic crews enjoy. I mention it because I believe that when you loose something as integral to our maritime economy and heritage as a self sustaining commercial merchant marine free of government backed construction loans, subsidized operations and cargo preference laws the chances of recovering such a fleet are slim to none.

And I don't think the answer lies in the good intentions of investors dedicated to the furtherance of an American Merchant Marine despite the economic forces weighing against such an effort. The solution lies in the halls of congress and reworking the antiquated legislation that today protects the few remaining jobs for american seamen but will ultimately squash the ability to find backing for new maritime ventures. If there was ever a time to change these laws allowing for business plans that will actually work to grow the American flag it is now.

For more information on the U.S. merchant and naval fleets through history visit Tim Colton's website http://www.shipbuildinghistory.com. His daily blog http://www.coltoncompany.com/ includes the latest in ship building and operational news.

Cargo is King

2011-04-22T12:00:00.000-04:00

"Cargo is King" was something I remember my dad saying when I was young. At the time I had no idea what it meant as he related tales from his latest trip as Chief Mate on a product or chemical tanker to his buddies. As I grew older and decided a maritime college was the best way to liberate myself from the drudgery of a nine to five (And the financial indebtedness a bachelors degree incurs) the thought of spending a career moving one commodity or another across the ocean was not at the top of my list o' reasons for joining the merchant marine.

Nor when I sat through my first introduction to dry cargo class did cargo mean any more to me than memorizing the aged professor's maxims such as "Bung up and bilge down" or "Cold to hot, ventilate not, hot to cold, ventilate bold!" The first cargo I actually ever dealt with was a small lift of medical equipment loaded into the lower deck of the maritime academy's training ship. A humanitarian cargo destined for Natal Brazil and gladly transported by the two hundred cadets on board eager to drink Arctic beer and cavort with the local inhabitants on the white sand beaches.

It was in the summer of 2002 that I had my first smell of a real shipborne cargo. Verified gas oil or VGO was about the nastiest sulphuric gunk the chemical tanker I had the luck to be assigned to would carry. Ketones and glycol smelled much sweeter but would send your head spinning after too much time spent needle gunning down wind. Even in my cabin at night I would get stomach aches when the crew washed naphthalene tanks, the one time of day I didn't participate in the evolution, and caustic soda left a huge, purple, hickey like burn on the side of my neck which the Captain personally told me would never go away or as he put it "Oh s%$t cadet, now you're f$%&ked, that's never coming off."

The caustic burn did peel off but my interest in liquid cargoes remained. After spending my first summer out of school on a schooner sailing to Newfoundland with a cargo of adolescents I did found work on my third mate's ticket aboard a tanker but it wasn't one of the big money jobs everyone who had sat through the advanced liquid cargo class had hoped for.

Just like my cadet shipping she was another rundown American chemical tanker. This one though was a "pharmacy" tanker with 52 segregated tanks, four separate headers, two single tiers forward and two double tiers aft and enough piping to require hundreds of low point drains. Each tank had an efficient stripping system for when the Framo deep well hydraulic pump lost suction so you could get every last droplet of product out. Those Framo pumps made a whining noise I will never forget. The center line tanks were stainless steel for food grade products and caustic soda. Paraxylene, the stock chemical for plastics and a very tricky cargo as it will freeze solid at a mere 56 degrees Fahrenheit, plus lubrication oils were our most common products but we could carry anything else including phenol which at best would induce a coma if ingested.

My cadet shipping experience had prepared me well to stand my own cargo watch. The autonomy we had during cargo, even stripping out and topping off tanks, was great for building my confidence. I learned to communicate exactly what I needed to the pump man at the mix master or AB at the manifold.

It was a hard working ship and had a solid and very young crew but after two trips I could see the toll the complexity of the cargo system and demands of the spot market were taking on the Chief Mates. I also noticed that the world of tankers was a little lonely. There you were in the middle of some hot August night floating in a swamp in Texas loading enough product to fill an olympic pool but there were only two or three guys around. Job satisfaction yes but not much of a team effort with people ashore.

I gave up on the company early and became intrigued by a job I had heard about on a fleet of RoRos. Clean cargo holds, European ports, art in the corridors and rooms. This sounded like a nice change, especially if I was going to see less more of the world and less of the Houston ship channel.

I applied and was hired but found myself on the oldest of the old with smoke stained passageways, dirty cargo holds and leaking hydraulics all around. It didn't matter though, I was sailing foreign and loved it. Charts for the Mediterranean, Middle East, Asia and Pacific Northwest were needed plus we had long sea passages for celestial navigation practice and then lots of traffic to challenge my recently acquired bridge team skills.

Unfortunately unlike the tanker there wasn't that much for me to do at first. The cargo was rolled up the side or stern ramp and then secured by gangs of lashing bar wielding longshoremen. All I knew how to do was check the lashings for tightness and proper amount and try to impart my desire for secure cargo to the longshoremen. I used to say things like "Hey guys, you're not the one that has to sail into a hurricane with these lashings loose so could you redo this one?" but now I know better and go directly to the foreman to lodge my complaint about lazy lashing gangs. Despite their gruffness they are more than happy to get the job done correctly once you remind them how it should be done every single time.

It took me two years to really gain a footing as to how cargo on a RoRo should be stowed. There are so many variables involved that when I look back on my first couple of trips I realize how very little I knew. Probably the major reason I felt as if the Chief Mate at the time didn't really trust the junior officers to do more than watch vehicles for damage and check lashings.

The most satisfying aspect of my job today, a job that is about as far from a nine to five as one can get, is taking part in the sometimes simple and sometimes massive operation of getting a RoRo filled with cargo. And what fascinates me now isn't just the operations that take place inside the cargo holds but the bigger picture of getting the cargo from the manufacturer to the consumer.

A beautiful brand new ship and example of cargo versatility using the RoRo method plus a weather deck with ships gear for ondeck stowage of containers and heavy lift cargoes. If only we could build em like this...

The RoRos I work on can take such a variety of cargo that they hearken back to the days of stick ships carrying break bulk, the main difference being instead of taking weeks to unload with booms and runners and winches and guys our cargo is simply rolled, towed, pushed or driven on and off. Right now we have containers, automobiles, heavy machinery, loose pipe, diesel generators, motor yachts, motor homes, break bulk and even a few massive pieces of power plant equipment all stowed under deck. Most of the cargo requires either web-lashing or chain and tension binders but some of the project cargo has been welded in place and secured with massive chains.

The entirety of the past twenty days have been focused on getting the ship alongside 8 separate docks for the load we are now carrying towards the Mediterranean. With lubes, slops, bunkers, a Coast Guard inspection and loading all the stores, spares and provisions we'll need for the next three months it's been a busy spring. The cargo though as my dad would say is definitely king.

Without cargo the ship wouldn't go to sea and I would go unemployed. Without cargo tug boat outfits and pilot associations would be without jobs. Without cargo entire coastal economies built around large marine industries would shrivel. Without cargo globalization would come to a halt and all that Ikea furniture at home would still be in Sweden.

Even beyond the satisfaction of packing our ten decks full of differing commodities I find it rewarding to just stand as a witness to trade on a scale only shipping allows. I see firsthand what is sitting on the docks in Baltimore or Jacksonville or Japan waiting to be exported all over the world. I see the cargoes that are being imported from abroad, unless it's a container and then you just see those by the thousands.

I remember right after 9-11 when I was a cadet and the mates on the ship were all commenting about how empty the decks of the container ships were coming in and out of Newark. It was the economy nose diving after that event when trade volumes plummeted. You could see the same thing two years ago. The world's RoRo fleet went from a complete under tonnage necessitating our steaming to Korea to load hundreds of excavators for Long Beach to talk of car ships being used for parking garages in a matter of months.

It is incredible to think about a life in which one assumes there will always be gasoline coming out of the pump and the TV you need will always be in stock. Simply explaining my profession to people, even those who live in the ports I visit, is more often than not met with blank stares. The concept of ocean shipping is so foreign to the average American I chalk it up as another sign of our collective ignorance, a sad predicament for a nation so dependent on imports.

Perhaps it's that very same ignorance that I so often lament which keeps the masses from finding out about ships and flooding the job market making seafaring a more competitive and less lucrative occupation. Or perhaps it's being off the land for months on end. Like all things in the marine profession such as spending a watch surrounded by whales or seeing the mid oceanic horizon swallow the sun in a green flash, taking part in the world's commerce first hand has been a part of the trade since boatswains were wearing short pants and cargo was king.

Open Water

2011-04-18T05:31:00.000-04:00

Looking out my office window today I could see the last pair of green and red buoys marking the channel to Fort Sumter range. For the next ten days these channel buoys will be the last vestiges of shallow water. The only other objects afloat such as ODAS buoys for weather forecasting or DART buoys for tsunami detection are found in deeper water on the edge of the continental shelf.

If you imagine what lies beneath the waves when going to sea then leaving the continental shelf gives the impression of taking off in flight. The bottom drastically recedes from the surface making room for abyssal plains and mid atlantic mountains. Miles of water fill the void between our tiny hull and the darkness of the unseen ocean floor.

With our speed reduced for the right whale seasonal management area off the Carolinas the buoys slowly fell astern lending to an overwhelming sense of relief. I've been onboard the ship for twenty days now and have had no more than 72 hours at sea in-between Texas and Florida, otherwise it's been in and out of ports on the east coast non stop. Three strait weeks of port calls makes time fly but it's tiring. Port means cargo and with the support of the third and second mates it is a lot of work facilitating the safe and efficient loading of our ship. Now with a sizable 12,000 metric tons of cargo onboard we are ready to begin the Atlantic crossing and head for the Strait of Gibraltar.

During pilotages in two different east coast ports I saw pilots using an Ipad as an electronic chart. Running NOAA charts through the iNavX application in conjunction with a wireless signal fed by our own AIS the pilots were receiving accurate GPS position, speed and course data for our vessel and surrounding vessels fitted with AIS. I thought that was a pretty novel use of the latest device from Apple.

It looks like I've lucked out on the crewing end for this trip. The boatswain, who arrived not with one or two seabags but an entire Uhaul truck stuffed with all his belongings including furniture is enthusiastic despite his apparent homelessness. He's the first Boatswain I've had that kept a work log tracking each crew member's hours and jobs on overtime.

He also is a bit of a nut when it comes to tactical police gear which he revealed one coffee break when showing off a pair of SWAT team goggles. "I got these on store credit" he bragged to one of the day men. "Why do you have those?" someone asked. "Because the guy who owns the store didn't have enough change when I bought my taser...and they're awesome" he boasted holding them up for all to see. Okay, but you're a boatswain, not a hostage negotiator I thought. "I'll drop a thousand bucks on this stuff when I'm at home" he continued. Possibly a contributing factor to why he's homeless? I guess we all have our vices.

When it comes to seafarers I have learned not to judge people by their actions ashore. If you choose on your own time to spend your money on women and booze, pick fights in bars or use it to dress up like you're in the special forces it's your business as long as you pull your own weight at sea and as the saying goes, hand, reef and steer then that's good enough for me. Just don't run out on a hooker as I was assured by an AB from Fall River that this brings the heaviest of weather.

The rest of the crew appears hard working and interested in overtime. Several of the unlicensed are return crew and most of the officers have now been onboard for an entire year so it should be a huge improvement from my first trip when I was burdened with one complete sociopath and a schizophrenic.

In other news the large upper deck lounge and reception area has been transformed from a disused venue for schmoozing port officials with Becks beer and Aquavit, which are no longer allowed on board, to the senior officers entertainment center, guests by invitation only. The Captain and Chief wall mounted a 52 inch flat screen TV with surround sound and DVD player plus an Xbox. There is a seating arrangement diagram taped to the bulkhead and ample room for all the officers onboard to partake in movie time which begins promptly at 2000 every night. Lunch and coffee breaks are reserved for Halo.

My girlfriend for one reason or another did not greet this improvement with as much enthusiasm as I had hoped. Apparently when I'm at sea she pictures me reading Herman Melville as I swing from my hammock, knocking together ditty bags and rope buckets and learning sea shanties on the guitar. While I certainly do all those things I also enjoy having some of the comforts of life on the beach at work such as rotting my mind with video games from time to time. Something I've gotten much better at with the help of her child.

Everyone on the ship is bracing for a long trip. There is talk about a stop on the eastern coast of India and there will most likely be a shipyard somewhere in the far east. I'm focused on getting home for a camping trip in July so as long as that happens all else will fall into it's right place.

Underway

2011-04-04T20:09:00.002-04:00

It's hard to tell whether I'm busier when at home or at work. The notable difference being that when I'm at home my time is filled with things I mostly want to be doing whereas at sea my time is filled with things I have to do. Seafaring, if I've never mentioned it before, is a non stop affair. It is not infrequent that I feel a certain envy for the AB who works a worry free eight or twelve hour day and beyond that is free to do as he or she pleases whereas I am constantly trying to hedge my time so as to not fall behind in my duties.

The first week back is typically the most brutal in terms of adjustment to new sleep patterns, stress levels and physical exertion when compared to the leisurely pace of life I lead vacationing ashore. That said I couldn't be happier to have returned to the same job on the same ship with mostly the same crew; the systems and procedures we've all ready implemented in addition to the improvements we've made in the ship is paying off in a safer, simpler and more organized operation.

We've left the Gulf of Mexico and called on our first east coast port leaving four more to go. I'm also pleased that a nearly full load of automobiles, heavy machinery and containers awaits us on the docks of Savannah, Baltimore, Wilmington and Charleston. An underutilized cargo ship leaves more than just myself in a strange funk when steaming across an ocean.

Along with the engine and stewards departments the watch standing AB's still due to get off did an excellent job this past trip. I'm sorry to see them go especially since every time a new crew member signs on it's a roll of the dice. Save for watches will they stay in their room or come out for overtime? Are they the kind of people you'd like to spend a four hour bridge watch with or are they complete sociopaths? Are they "able bodied" seamen or are they a health hazard to themselves and potentially their shipmates? You never really can tell until the ship has sailed and any chance of replacement has faded over the transom.

There was a great sunset this evening. An expansive bank of cumulonimbus hid the sun until just before setting. The scene was beautiful but the inherent atmospheric instability of such a cloud formation is not. The marine forecast is for 20-25 knots out of the southwest by the early morning when I come back on watch. Picking up a pilot at four in the morning and making our way 25 miles up a winding river with more sail area than any clipper ship should make for a riveting start to a very busy day.

The Maritime Executive Magazine - Challenges for America's East Coast Shipping, Ports and Trade

2011-03-31T20:44:00.000-04:00

The Maritime Executive Magazine - Challenges for America's East Coast Shipping, Ports and Trade

A Full House

2011-03-24T12:40:00.008-04:00

No other vacation of mine has been comprised of so many consecutive days at home. Save for two quick ski trips, one to Maine and one to Vermont, the number of nights I have slept in hotels, hostels or on friends couches has been dramatically reduced. And though I still yearn to spend my time off from sea traveling I've been content this time staying closer to home.

My living situation certainly plays a role in this new found contentedness. I have a small family living at my place now including a cat, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi and my girlfriends eight year old son. The transition from a strict bachelor's pad to that of a home with homework and dog walking has been a challenge to my well established sense of independence but the satisfaction garnered from cooking and eating with the same wonderful people day after day is an unparalleled experience.

The presence of a dog, albeit a small one and not the long haired husky I always pictured, is a perpetual source of entertainment. At one year old he is the archetypal Corgi; athletic, smart, obedient and affectionate. Whenever I move from a seated position at home or when we're hanging out at our favorite bagel shop I have to take care not to step on him. Though never fed from the table his favorite spot when not on the move is directly under my chair.

With more people, animals and furniture in my modest home than ever before I have been reflecting on the situation in Japan where in an instant thousands of homes were obliterated by the power of nature.

I have an image from the Internet trapped in my mind of the devastating tsunami. The image is reinforced by the time I spent on Honshu, most of which was with my brother, at the time an apprentice seaman on my ship. The scene showed a sidewalk, meticulously hand swept, along a narrow road lined by miniature automobiles parked in an orderly manner as if they were cargo on the roro. Across the road is a low levee separating the order of Japanese civilization from a wide river fringed in the distance by green conifer covered hills. Pouring over the levee is a black wall of water three meters high as full of flotsam as it is wet heaving the compact automobiles up and sweeping them towards the front of what moments ago must have been occupied store fronts.

Longshoremen loading break bulk cargo in Tokyo

It is a terrifying scene from a place that I have very fond memories of. I have never enjoyed working with stevedores and longshoremen as much as I did in Japan. The efficiency and work ethic that was carried onto the ship each time the stern ramp went down is unparalleled in my experience. The pilots were memorable for their advanced age and naval like formality. Many of the pilots were teenagers during World War Two, their age a reflection of how much trouble the associations in Japan have recruiting younger people into the marine profession. But despite their rigidness and extreme politeness they usually had a sense of humor and enjoyed talking on the bridge during long passages through the inland sea.

Prayer cards at a shrine in Kobe

World events are weighing heavily on my mind as I begin packing my bags for this next hitch. Almost every nation in the Middle East is experiencing some level of historical instability. Somalia, always the deep sea mariner's first and foremost concern, has shown no change in the pace with which piracy is being committed despite increased pressure from the coalition Navy.

The deaths of four Americans on the Sailing Vessel Quest has only reinforced my opinion that the only proven defense for merchant vessels is to have better weaponry and more of it in the hands of personnel with superior marksmanship than the pirates. Until the incentives of big paydays and all the khat you can chew is met with an equal disincentive of having your skiff sunk from under you in the shark infested Indian Ocean or a life sentence in Guantanamo Bay piracy will continue unabated.

My sense of self worth, something linked closely to my job performance and reputation at work, has been somewhat bolstered by reaching one of the mile stones I set for myself a decade ago. I'm the proud owner of my first Merchant Mariner's Credential, the unimpressive and disappointing 21st century version of a USCG paper license. My own is a little more memorable as it has printed, if you can find it in size nine font under the Medical Waiver requiring that I carry a spare set of corrective lenses on board, the word "Master".

Besides my GED the State of Florida Department of Education mailed to me when I was seventeen and my college diploma this passport sized booklet is the most valuable piece of paper I have ever received. Not so much because it represents my legal ability to operate any motor or steam vessel floating on any of the world's oceans but because it is proof that I have spent no less than three years, eight months and 20 days of my life working on board vessels of one type or another.

Because I take such satisfaction from knowing the numbers I did a quick tally of my total sea time and was surprised to find that in the last seven years I have spent 1,359 total days on documented vessels. Of these sea days 192 were spent on sailing vessels up to 115 tons, the rest on unlimited tonnage ships. In addition to sea time I have also spent nearly four months of my unpaid vacation time attending mostly required training.

Thanks to my affiliation with one of the United States three unions for seafaring officers my training has been completely subsidized through employer contributions and my payment of quarterly dues. Otherwise the 72 days spent in IMO required "upgrade" training would have cost me not just precious time at home but also $29,376 including room and board. Add on the other 45 days of training attending courses like Medical PIC refresher, Vessel Security Officer, and Fast Rescue Boat Operator and the bill would total over fifty thousands dollars!

While most management level officers belong to a union, or better yet a company that will pay for this onerous training, there are some out there that have had to pay out of pocket to climb the license ladder. As for the unlimited HP engineers who haven't yet tested for their First Assistant/Chief Engineers license the days of living without the burden of upgrade courses are numbered. Rumor has it that beginning in 2012 the IMO in it's infinite wisdom will begin requiring competencies that can only be documented in the classroom and not where you'll actually use them, on your ship.

As I sit in my kitchen on one of my remaining days at home watching the snow continue to fall on this, the fifth day of spring, I chuckle at the mental anguish I know it inflicts on all the New Englanders fed up with the winter of 2011. Personally I don't mind all that much. It's going to be a hot spring where I'm headed to in a few days and not just on account of the scorching sun. Autocracies, revolutions, no-fly zones and hijackings abound so it stands to be an interesting trip. I'll do my best to keep you posted.

And the Waters Rage

2011-03-11T17:24:00.003-05:00

It feels like spring time here in northern New England. Somewhat of a relief where road ice and blocked rain gutters are concerned yet still, I weep for the waning snow and all the fun we had this year. A day of rain and a heavy snow pack is swelling all the rivers and threatening to flood the low lying areas but it's nothing compared to what Japan is going through right now.

Disasters that strike with no warning are usually the hardest to comprehend, especially when all you can do is watch youtube videos as fishing boats and mini vans are swept under bridges in torrents of rushing water. Just the other day I was almost witness to a disaster while waiting for the train at north station in Boston.

After my third and last trip to Ikea (Completely outfitting my home has taken the better part of four years) my girlfriend and I stopped in Boston to take her son to the Aquarium. After parking we all held hands and descended the stairwells to take the T into town. Her son never having been on the T before was probably a little excited and a little apprehensive to be among so many people at once.

Just as the speakers announced the approaching orange line train a commotion began a hundred feet further up the platform. As I peered over the edge and down the rail bed I could see a large man staring at the ground absolutely dazed. Turning my head in the other direction the headlights of the approaching train were all ready illuminating the rails as people began rushing towards the conductor frantically waving and screaming for her to stop the train. Without much thought involved I turned and began sprinting down the station pushing shocked and sedentary bystanders out of my way.

As I approached the group of people all ready trying to pull the guy back onto the platform I was sure the train was moments away from hitting him. With both my girl friend and I heaving on his coat the combined power of four or five complete strangers yanked three hundred pounds of dead weight up and over the yellow line as the train came to a stop 30 feet short of what could have been a grizzly scene.

Every heart was pounding as people slowly backed away from the man, now prostrate on the concrete bleeding heavily from his forehead. I was relieved to see the guy trying to stop the flow of blood with his own hand so I knew he was conscious and somewhat alert. Taking what was available from those around me I applied a wad of tissues to his laceration and told him to keep pressure on the wound.

By the time I had coaxed his first name out of him transit personnel had arrived on scene and were radioing for a paramedic. With nothing left to do but give a witness statement, of which there were plenty standing around, we boarded the train and thanked our stars that my girlfriend's son had not witnessed anything more than his mom save save a clumsy man's life.

It was such a rush to switch from bee bopping around the subway without a care in the world to screaming at the top of my lungs "For f$%#ks sake pull harder" to a group of people I had never met. The real credit goes to the conductor who managed to put the emergency break on in time to stop short of where the guy had fallen. Those trains pull in fast but they also stop just as quick.

Short seas container service to Portland?

2011-03-07T18:58:00.007-05:00

After two of my favorite contenders for introducing a bonafide short seas shipping operation here in the USA, Coastal Connect and SeaBridge Freight, shut down there is finally some good news for people who love the idea of moving containers off interstates and onto the Marine Highway system.

American Feeder Lines is poised to begin a Boston, Portland, Halifax service returning a regular container vessel to the Port of Portland's underutilized International Marine Terminal as reported in the Press Herald.

Port of Portland Maine. Note the VLCC along side the Portland Pipeline and the anchored product tanker. Now if only there were a few roros and container ships in the mix.

While the initial service would require the chartering of a foreign flagged vessel if financing can be secured for building 10 Jones Act compliant vessels than perhaps I'll have my dream job of driving one up and down the eastern seaboard someday. It was the lack of such all important financing that dissuaded Coastal Connect from becoming a reality and SeaBridge from using the 3 million dollar marine highways grant received from MARAD as reported below by the Cargo Letter.

***The Seabridge Collapses ... as one of the most promising ventures in the infant marine highways industry went out of business in Jan. for lack of financing. Seabridge Freight was a pioneer operator that established service between Port Manatee, Fla., and Brownsville, Texas, in Dec. 2008, but ceased operations last Nov. Officials announced in Jan. they had been unable to raise enough capital to carry out the company's strategy, and now it is closed with no plans to reopen. A company official explained that an investor who had a 75% stake in the company dropped his support when other unrelated ventures went bad.Seabridge Freight operated a tug and barge on a four-day schedule between ports Manatee & Brownsville. A principal source of business was containers too heavy for highway transit. The company was doing well enough to be the beneficiary of a US$3.34M marine highways grant that the Maritime Administration awarded to ports Manatee & Brownsville. The money, slated for disbursement in March, would have paid for two additional barges to increase service frequency.
www.seabridgefreight.com/contact.html

Container ship service to resume in Portland | The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram

Nubble Light

2011-03-06T17:19:00.003-05:00

Cape Neddick, Maine - February 25, 2011

Established: July 1, 1879
Light List: Aid No. 125/J0226
Position: N 43° 09' 54", W 70° 35' 28"
Nautical Chart
Cape Neddick, near the entrance to
York River; York, Maine
Characteristic: Iso R 6s (2) [6 seconds Red
alternating with 6 sec darkness]
Original Optics: Fourth-order Fresnel Lens -1879 (3)
Present optic: Fourth-order Fresnel Lens -1928
Elevation: 88-feet high Focal Plane
Range: 13 nautical miles visible reach at sea
Structure:
(Daymark) 41-feet high White Conical Cast iron lined
with brick Tower with Black Lantern
Fog signal: One Second blast every 10 seconds
First Keeper: Nathaniel Otterson
Automated: July 13, 1987
Current Use: Active aid to navigation,
U.S. Coast Guard Access to Optic;
Owned by the Town of York since
June 20, 1998

http://home.comcast.net/~debee2/maine/CapeNeddick.html

The Silence of Snow

2011-02-11T10:15:00.002-05:00

The White Mountains were silent yesterday. The fifth storm to hit New England since returning from sea had coated every tree with a foot and a half of new snow. Stopping amongst the evergreens and young softwoods branches mounded with beautiful dry snow muffled every scrape and thud a snowboard makes in the back country. A holler from a skier looking for his partner further down the stream bed was hardly audible in the noise dampening forest.

These were perfect conditions for being out of bounds; ample snow to cover every rock face and fallen tree trunk along the trail and provide sufficient control to carve through the trees. A few skiers had all ready been down the stream we were following so it wouldn't be so easy to get lost on the back side of the mountain. I had been down this glade a few weeks before with a brother so I had a good idea where speed was needed to avoid unstrapping and walking to the top of the next rise and I knew where to slow down and duck in the tighter areas to avoid wayward tree branches.

My helmet and goggles were all ready scratched and my board had received a few gouges when there was less snow so the paranoia associated with ruining perfectly good equipment had subsided. A friend also on vacation from sea was following close behind so if one of us broke something we'd probably be able to extricate ourselves and not have to pay for our own evacuation (Rescue is not gratis when you're out of bounds).

After 78 days at sea just standing in the woods on the side of a mountain after a proper blizzard was almost as much of a thrill as snowboarding in the best conditions of the year. The sensation of freedom dry land and free time provides a sailor kept me pumped throughout the day as we made run after run on my favorite mountain in New England.

It's days like this that provide my greatest justification for spending at least half of my life away from the world and they become an important source of energy and confidence when I'm exhausted and fed up with life at work. My last hitch was no exception.

All in all it was a great trip. We had one of the best crews I have ever worked with. The steward department put out some of the most edible food I've had at work or at home. The Boatswain managed the deck gang as all Boatswains should; handling beefs before the mast whenever he could and giving the guys breaks when they needed them while completing my ceaseless to do lists. The cargo was delivered in the condition in which it was loaded and there were no major accidents or injuries. Despite all of our small victories, for one reason or another, this last trip had a draining effect on my energy level and interest in remaining at sea indefinitely for the rest of my life.

Ask anyone who sailed in the U.S. Merchant Marine prior to the grounding of the Exxon Valdez and they will tell you sailing isn't anything like it used to be. No more port time, no more fun time, more liability, more paperwork, more headaches. After working in the industry myself for the last seven years even I can see that change isn't relegated to the 1990s. The industry continues to change and the changes are coming fast and none of it seems to be improving my working conditions, benefits or professional liability.

2010 was a very interesting year for the merchant marine. There are a hundred topics I'd just love to give my opinion on ranging from the Oil Spills in the Gulf of Mexico to Piracy to shifting environmental regulations but I'll just stick to what really gets me pacing back and forth on the bridge wings.

The "Global Recession" has made the business of shipping even more competitive than it all ready was and every where I look companies are reducing costs. After two years of scrapping old tonnage and laying up new ships cargo volumes are slowly picking up but there is still an oversupply of vessels. Cost cutting measures such as slow steaming, voyage routing guidance focused on fuel efficiency more so than weather avoidance and enhanced fuel / lube oil consumption monitoring are being introduced at my company. The senior officers in my fleet are seeing an increase in oversight from the office via satellite based technologies that once upon a time would have been unimaginable to the skipper of any freighter.

For managing the condominium association in which I reside, my finances and socializing I adore having the internet aboard ship but being out of sight of land no longer provides the cloak of anonymity a ship at sea once received. Imagine an 18th century whaling ship. A Captain was employed, usually as a partial owner in the venture and fitted out with crew, stores and provisions to last months at sea. The vessel much like a warship of the time was meant to be self sufficient for years save for fire wood and water. The ship would sail from Nantucket and disappear around Cape Horn and not reappear in New England for one or two years.

The success of the entire voyage was entrusted to the Captain. He would hunt down whales filling the holds with blubber oil and not return to Nantucket until the ship was full and down providing a large enough profit to the owners and himself to justify his livelihood. Save for the occasional stop at a whaling station or encounter with another ship when letters, news and, among the literate, books could be traded the ship was completely out of touch with the rest of the world. Even when disaster struck not a soul would know until survivors were rescued or hundreds of years later an anchor is discovered on the top of Frigate Shoals as it was this week.

To compare the experience of a merchant sailor two or one or even a half century ago to seafaring today provides such a contrast that it's hard to believe anyone can still be romantic about the life of a 21st century mariner including myself. On a personal level the escape once afforded to the sailor who wanted to leave a troubled history over the fantail is no more. Running from the law, the IRS, family problems, the ills of society or simply the drudgery of a nine to five just isn't possible.

Seafarers are subject to thorough background checks at a minimum every 5 years. Any conviction besides a "Minor offense" is grounds for even more scrutiny requiring written statements and waivers. Driving records, criminal records, and now even your health records can prohibit the issuance of a merchant mariner's credentials. We are subject to enhanced physical screenings where conditions such as asthma, kidney stones, recurrent back pain, arthritis or restless legs require medical review by the Coast Guard and a waiver to work. Once upon a time American mariners received free health care thanks to the founding fathers knowledge that the fledgling nation required able bodied and fit sailors to keep commerce flowing and cannons thundering but today the health care provided by the major unlicensed union is a joke (Just ask my brother). Just before Reagan closed the USPHS hospital system, the first uniformed service in the United States, I was born at no cost because my mother held an MMD.

Today a sailor who never sets foot on U.S. soil but simply sails on a U.S. ship must pay the same tax as a citizen ashore on a wage that has stagnated in most industry sectors over the last quarter century. Unlike many European nations which historically have only taxed a portion of their mariner's wages the United States treats sailors no different than any one else, despite the best intentions of Martin Kapp.

With access to news, email and calling cards crews are now as up to date on global events and family happenings as anyone else. While this is usually good for morale it is now easier for the crew to become focused on things occurring at home or in the world providing more distraction for the crew, something Captains not long ago never contended with.

On an operational level shipping as mentioned before is under more scrutiny than ever before. Messages from the home office once relegated to packets of mail or the morse code of a signal station moved further offshore with the advent of radio stations. While satellites brought us cheap phone cards and eventually the Internet they have also introduced telephones in the Captain's and Chief Engineers office. 24 hours a day the Captain is accessible through phone and email. Any vessel can be tracked by any person on line through AMVER weather reports or AIS when in range of a participating port. Long Range Identification Tracking through SAT-C ensuring port states know which vessels are headed their way is light years apart from the observatory on Munjoy Hill that once hoisted the house flag of ships standing off Cape Elizabeth for a pilot to prepare the agents and merchants on the dock for a cargo's imminent arrival.

Even when the Master of my ship determines his route across an ocean the waypoints are reviewed by a routing agency who more often than not disagree and recommend a route through rougher seas in search of more favorable winds. In their eyes a reduction in fuel oil consumption outweighs a better ride and safer cargoes because in the short term the company saves money justifying their service. Who cares if it's too rough out to swing from a boatswains chair chipping rust or change gear oil on the bow? Who cares if we increase our lashing checks to every day because we're rolling ten degrees for days on end if it means a quartering wind to push us?

The science of saving money is becoming so precise that vessels are now being fitted with monitoring equipment to track fuel and lube oil consumption. While no one dares run an oily water separator because they are prone to malfunction and extremely burdensome in their testing, inspection and maintenance requirements (The operation of the OWS is also satellite tracked), the company will pay millions for slop removal in port.

Port time is also under more scrutiny and it seems that the trend is to spend no more time in port than is required for cargo. That would be fine if it meant that cargo was all my crew needed to focus on but as it turns out the only time for receiving stores, provisions, spares, lube oil, fuel oil, contractors, inspectors, regulatory agencies, company representatives, audits and on-signing crew is when the vessel herself is in port means which means that our STCW "Minimum" manned vessel is taxed to the limit. Combine this with the impending increase in STCW required rest hours and you can see how unrealistic adhering to each and every regulation becomes. Can you see me pacing now?

Thoughts like these and many more are why the mountain silence punctuated only by the sound of my snowboard is something I cherish so much. I really feel that in our quest for a safer, more efficient and secure world we humans have given up much in the way of personal liberty. When you get back a little piece of your life whether on a mountain or at a concert or in your home with family it must be held on to. Otherwise we wouldn't have any reason to climb back up that gangway.

New Years Eve

2011-01-01T00:23:00.005-05:00

It was so close the crew could taste it. “Put on your dancing shoes” the Honduran Boatswain said as he passed by my office. It looked like a sure thing, New Years at the dock. As a coastal fog shrouded the Sabine River the chance of sailing was getting slimmer by the hour. Cargo had finished the night before and the stern ramp was all ready raised. All hands had broken foreign articles the day before and with the $10,000 the captain had distributed amongst the crew whom elected cash at pay off it could have been an evening of epic proportions.

Just as I was allowing myself to imagine what a beer or two would taste like and how different being in public around people I haven’t been working, eating and socializing with for the past ten weeks would be “Pilot aboard” came over the radio. More than a few crew’s shoulders slouched as everyone knew there was now not the slightest chance that anyone would be doing any amount of the Texas Two Step on New Years Eve.

The agent, a breed of people I am continually disappointed with, had obviously not been doing his job and provided no warning that the good pilots had decided they could get us down the river just as the fog lifted and before complete darkness settled in. My thoughts of walking on terra firma and allowing my mind to wander very far away from work evaporated as the engine was hurriedly turned over and the deck department rushed fore and aft. As the line handlers tossed our hawsers into the water a drizzle began and the emissions from a pair of nearby refineries blended more and more into the low gray sky.

Adding to the disappointment was the news that our load of 700 cars had been delayed and wouldn’t be reaching our next destination in Texas for two days. The inside story was that the pilots in Mexico, where the cars were manufactured, had a habit of getting into the tequila after dark and if sailing was scheduled any later than that they were routinely too borracho to take the ship off the dock. Because of their insobriety our schedule was now pushed back two days which for departing crew such as myself meant delaying vacation another 48 hours.

I wasn’t really surprised. There are very few breaks in this industry and New Years wasn’t going to be one of them. The last three days had been non stop work. Between discharging and loading cargo, facilitating the repair of hydraulics (Which could only take place after cargo operations ended at 2300) and the annual CO2 system testing, not to mention stores and garbage, it had been a full couple of days. Departing now rather than the following morning would mean another full night of work ballasting the ship and anchoring of the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel.

Sitting in front of the ballast control panel watching tank gauges slow fall reflect the massive amount of clean mid ocean seawater I’m pumping out of the ballast tanks and into the Gulf of Mexico I have a little time these last few hours of 2010 for reflection.

The first thing that comes to mind is I will never allow longshoremen to eat food in my cargo holds again. This could be considered my one and only New Years resolution and is all ready company policy but from time to time I have turned a blind eye allowing them to bring food onboard. It seemed fair for lashers and drivers working 5 hour shifts without a break to be able to eat while working but my sympathy, which as professor of mine oft remarked is found between shit and syphilis in the dictionary, has waned considerably.

This is due to the amount of trash myself and my mates found ourselves picking up over the last three days. Dozens of chip and peanut and cracker bags. Cans of soda and water. Candy bar and gum wrappers plus cigarette buts all over the stern ramp where they’re allowed to smoke. My department is 9 persons large and we are tasked with keeping a floating parking garage measuring in at over 40,000 square meters spread over ten decks clean. We try to pick up every bit of dunnage and even have a sweeping machine that brushes up dirt and oil absorbent. There is no way another longshoremen will ever watch me bend over to pick up their trash off my decks again after repeatedly telling them to use the trashcan. As one longshormen said when I was chastising his buddies for not picking up their garbage, "It's like talking to a dead dog man". Yes indeed, it's just like a dead dog.

Another reflection is that the more Texans I meet that don't litter, the more I like them. I have always found it comforting when a group of people bound by a geographic region display similar endearing traits and Texans are definitely included. They are a tall, humble and outgoing people, funny as hell, quick witted and polite. Of course I’m generalizing who is a Texan but I speak mainly of the river pilots and stevedores that I work with. They take their work seriously but not themselves and because of the industry that is pervasive in Coastal Texas have a better understanding for what makes the world go round and the lights stay on, more so than my compatriots to the North who feign locally importing gas, developing wind power or any other energy source that Canada will gladly sell to us.

Industry is always close at hand down here both on land and in the Gulf of Mexico. I had to carve out a little time over the last few days to read the entirety of the New York Times latest piece on the Deep Water Horizon and what I consider the most pivotal event in the maritime industry since 1989. While I dislike reading about disaster at sea while being at sea, at least recent disasters, this article was the best account of the event I have read in the media yet.

Much of the information is nothing new; the Captain chastising the junior DP watch stander for sending out a Mayday call when the rig was minutes from sinking, lifeboats being lowered without a complete muster of occupants, inaction playing a major role in what may have been a preventable sinking. What this article did better than the rest was to tie everything I had heard over the last 8 months into a succinct timeline explaining exactly what was and was not done in the short amount of time the crew had to react to the blow out of the Macondo well.

I highly encourage anyone involved in the maritime industry, especially the O&G sector, to read this article. It made me very curious to know what repercussions this has had in the safety culture at Transocean and other offshore oil drilling companies, especially because I now have so many classmates working in the same field. It is always startling when I put myself in the shoes of another mariner faced with a decision where no matter which course of action is chosen all have drastic consequences. I feel that the lessons of this event will unfold for years to come.

Work this past week has grown tiresome. Three days of cargo kicked my ass and my normal resilience is slightly depleted by the early onset of severe channel fever. I'm always anxious towards the end of the trip to get off the boat and on with my other life, a life filled with everything I've worked for and enjoy experiencing, but this time there is another feeling. It involves more longing and homesickness than I'm willing to admit to myself but it's there. It's something new and indescribable but completely welcomed and is giving me the feeling that 2011 will be a magical year.

With the ballast almost wrapped up I went to the bridge to hear the GPS chirp the new year in. Clearing the sea fog the anchorage at the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel was packed with delayed ships illuminating the overcast sky. Watchstanders, mostly Filipino with a few Texans mixed in, were wishing all stations a Happy New Year on the UHF. We too would soon join the throng waiting for our turn to enter Bolivar Road and our cargo in the dock yards.

Happy New Year!

Christmas at Sea - Robert Louis Stevenson

2010-12-24T20:20:00.003-05:00

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;

The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;

The wind was a nor'-wester, blowing squally off the sea;

And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard.
So's we saw the cliff and houses and the breakers running high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every longshore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessèd Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard's was the house where I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china plates that stand upon the shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessèd Christmas Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
"All hands to loose topgallant sails," I heard the captain call.
"By the Lord, she'll never stand it," our first mate, Jackson, cried.
. . . ."It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood;
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

Eclipse

2010-12-21T04:08:00.001-05:00

Void of all matter besides the liquid ocean and gaseous heavens the sea is an amazing place to call home. I adore living in the immensity of this natural world and have been to no other place on earth where so much of it can be seen at once. Granted it’s all blue, or in the middle of the night a purple grey, but the sheer scale of the ocean continues to awe and inspire me. On nights such as this when visibility is limited only by the horizon, the moon is full, the water rippled by a light wind and undulated by the swell from a forgotten storm, the majesty of seafaring is tangible.

Because of the moons effect on the sky the horizon appears as a sharp line delineating where a pale metallic blue meets the inky purple sea. Everything is circular. The horizon circumscribes a body of water in every direction beginning at eye level 14 miles distant giving the impression that you’re slightly depressed as if standing in the middle of a shallow bowl. Above the sky appears like a dome fitted perfectly onto this watery disc and with the moon shinning only the brightest stars are visible causing the winter constellations to stand out that much more.

The weather for the past three days has been exceptional. The sky has been clear and the air absolutely dry. Warm water and warm days at this southerly latitude normally means humidity but because the prevailing easterly breeze is blowing off Saharan Africa the air is completely dry. All night long I can feel the warm breeze as it blows through open bridge wing doors over my bare arms and legs. It feels like a fleece blanket just from the dryer is being wrapped around me.

On top of all these sublime conditions today is the winter solstice and to kick this celestial phenomena off a full lunar eclipse took place all morning long two points on the starboard bow. Through the entire watch the lookout and I viewed the full moon turn rusty red and the faintest stars become emboldened by the increasing dark. It’s enough sensory stimulation to give reason to doubt if this is really my job as if something besides the need to work calls me to live half the year in this place.

Our track has been laid well to the south of the major low pressure system that will be developing on the East Coast later this week. Because of this we will be entering the Caribbean south of Cuba through the Caicos passage and not the usual route through Hole in the Wall in the Bahamas just off Florida’s southern tip. Being closer to the Cape Verde Islands than the Canaries is why we’re having such a stellar run of weather.

It is drastic a contrast to the solstice I spent at work two years ago in the North Sea. We were on our way to Germany and the sun refused to rise until ten in the morning. The air was bitter cold and damp. This morning as the earth’s shadow recedes from the moon the sun is simultaneously warming the eastern horizon and it’s only five in the morning. Ideal weather at sea makes life much easier and I’ve noticed how it has also buoyed spirits. This is good because the holidays can be stressing for mariners stuck at sea.

Besides having awesome watches filled with stars and lunar eclipses I’m also elated because I’ve had a string of days with the crew doing nothing but chipping rust and painting without fear of rain and flash rust. It’s greatly increased both my own and the Boatswain’s sense of productivity though he continues complaining about how slow the guys paint. I agree that they are slow but as long as it gets done without drips, spills or holidays I’ll be satisfied.

I had an epiphany the other day while I was working overtime. A hydraulic cylinder had decided to start leaking and I was hurriedly trying to free a corroded block valve that would stem the leak if closed. Looking at my watch I grew frustrated that I was running out of time to get the job done before having to clean up for watch.

As I sat there wrenching and hammering away I couldn’t believe that there had been a day many years ago when all I could do at work was count down the hours until I would be released from my servitude. Back then I was mucking Alpaca stalls or stacking hay bales on the back of a trailer and spent as much time sneaking cigarette breaks as I did wheeling wheelbarrows of shit out of the paddocks.

It was such a different experience as a teenager needing money but really preferring to not work. Now all I want is more time in the work day to get things accomplished and always come up short. There is just too much to do on these big ships and neither enough people or time to get it all done. That’s the challenge though and probably the reason sailors make more now than the what the minimum wage paid in the nineties.

Heavy weather and the impending coffee crisis

2010-12-15T02:06:00.010-05:00

You know it’s going to be a rough morning when the water in your toilet bowel has almost been emptied by the overnight rolling. That was my first thought a few mornings ago as the ship passed from the lee of Crete and into an area of the Mediterranean where the gale force winds had enough fetch to build up a 20 foot swell. Staggering from an almost sleepless night to the bridge for my morning watch I met a fatigued captain who had been up all night trying to reduce the wracking stresses our ship was experiencing.

Heavy weather sailing is an experiment in course and engine adjustments. Big seas exert immense forces on even the largest ships affecting the six degrees of freedom a vessel afloat experiences. Heave, sway, surge, roll, pitch and yaw each describe an axis of motion on witch a ship rotates when inclined by external forces (Not to be confused with list or trim which describe static conditions affected by the movement of internal weights such as fuel, ballast or cargo). When exacerbated by heavy weather these six ranges of motion can have detrimental effects. Not only are the vessels course and speed keeping abilities deteriorated but her stability, cargo and crew become endangered as well.

With the swell on the beam and plenty of sea room to leeward the Captain decided to put the seas slightly abaft the beam and reduce the RPMs to slow ahead. The reduction in speed eased the pounding action of the bow which was reverberating down the keel and into the house shaking the entire ship like an earthquake. The course change minimized the rolling to some extent except when a larger than average wave slammed into the transom.

Because of the rolling we soon found what was and was not adequately secured on shelves and desks and counter tops. A refrigerator decided to tear loose of the bulkhead nearly flinging all it’s contents across the galley deck. The coffee station on the bridge piled itself into the sink during one large roll to starboard, a lucky thing seeing how the coffee makers and nearly full pots could have easily gone the other way spilling onto the deck and down the ladder well.

As soon as the day working ABs and Boatswain were up I had them checking cargo lashings beginning at the uppermost deck. Vertical accelerations, the kind which loosen cargo lashings and send vehicles skidding are more severe the further from the center of gravity plus most of the cargo on the upper decks was secured by web lashings which will chafe and break more easily than chain. One parted lashing was discovered just as the piece was beginning down the destructive path of damaging the eight vehicles around it. We had it chocked and re-lashed before it caused any major issues.

On the lower decks the heavier cargo lashed by chain was literally jumping every time the transom would take a wave sending a vertical jolt to the stern of the ship. This was a little disturbing to watch. Timing the tightening of the chain is crucial when what may have been a sedentary 60 ton piece of machinery is now flexing it’s suspension with each roll. Fingers and faces have to be clear of the lashings when the deck heaves upwards and the chains come taught. When the ship falls into the trough of the next wave the binder bar is quickly reefed on as the cargo comes back down to the deck with maximum inertia. If you time it right the chain is tightened with less effort than usual.

Once the crew had the cargo holds under control I made a round to ensure our lifeboat and rescue boat, anchors, cranes and ramps were all secured. The jostling caused one small hydraulic leak on a ramp which we discovered the following day as well as loosening the foremast stays but all this was easily corrected once the weather abated. The storm dissipated after 36 hours but it lasted long enough to wear everyone out and make the muscles in my legs sore from the constant compensation standing on a moving ship.

A run to the middle east is a blessing in the winter. The weather we normally come across is nothing compared to weather typical of runs in the winter North Pacific or winter North Atlantic. It served as a reminder how quickly your seemingly stable home can turn into a roller coaster and reinforced why I always try to get the longshoremen to put more chain on the cargo. They’re not the ones who have to risk it when a piece breaks loose.

In other news my dependence on caffeine has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Consuming a pot of coffee before sunrise plus frequent caffeine infusions during the day with Earl Grey tea and diet coke has coincided with the rationing of our last real whole bean coffee. I have personally made matters worse by giving in to the stewards request to share some of our remaining whole beans with him since he ran out of his own stash a few days ago. Feeling sympathy for another connoisseur I relinquished an entire bag of Star Bucks Kenya Roast, spicy with hints of sweet currant, an action which was met with the full wrath of the third mate. Apparently one who loathes Folgers more than I he felt my actions were a direct assault on his situational awareness.

I didn’t really need to justify my actions though because for one the steward does a really good job of feeding us and therefore I would do anything I can for the guy and two, he’s not the mate. If a littler hypertension over the sharing of our sacred coffee is the most disgruntled the crew gets I can live with that. It would have pissed me off too which might seem irrational to people with a Dunkin Donuts or better yet, an Early Bird cafe right around the corner but for us out here we have no such luxuries. If it’s not provisioned, bought in port, locked in the slop chest or packed in your suitcase than you will go without. When the apples are eaten there are no more and when the milk goes sour you eat your cereal dry.

As a Chief Mate I worked for once told me as he was putting down a bowl of ice cream after a robust meal “Out here we can’t have any booze and no ones getting laid so besides eating there’s not much else for distraction.” Well, at least we have coffee, for now.

Snakes, oil and the sea

2010-12-06T22:21:00.033-05:00

When the hustle of arriving, departing and working cargo in port is left astern the monotony of seafaring can be quick to set in. Though the work list remains long and there is always more to be done than time allows the tantalizing thought of home waiting over the horizon lends to ever present feelings of expectation and impatience. I'm doing all I can this week to fight those sensations and remain focused on the task at hand but it's a challenge when the first snow is falling in New England and Christmas will, for the third year in a row, be another day spent at sea.

Departing the Arabian Gulf marked the half way hurdle of the trip, at least in a geographical sense. The coast was an easy one with lighter cargo volumes than hoped for and a sensible port schedule. Our last berth in Kuwait happened to be adjacent to a collier discharging her sooty cargo onto a conveyor belt. The windward cloud of coal dust did a fine job of coating the ship from bow to stern requiring that the first three days at sea be solely committed to washing the entire vessel down. I had the day men and watch standers on overtime use fire hoses to remove the soot and then power washers to rinse the corrosive salt water off.

While the deck department took care of washing the car the engineers pumped our gas. The only stop after passing through the Strait of Hormuz on the way to the Suez Canal was at what has to be one of the world's largest gas stations. On the Indian Ocean side of the U.A.E. the ports of Fujairah and Khwar Fakkan supply bunkers to thousands of ships every month. While there is a port the majority of vessels wait at anchor for the bunker barges, small tankers commonly seen in the waters of Europe and Asia, to tie up alongside and deliver the fuel. It's a popular spot for stemming your fleet as bunker prices are a better deal here so close to the source.

The anchorage here is packed.

Anchoring off the lofty, rugged, and brown coastline of the Arabian Peninsula in water 90 meters deep requires a substantial amount of anchor chain. A merchant ship typically carries 12 to 14 shots (A shot is 15 fathoms, a fathom 6 feet) of chain in each locker, port and starboard. Safely anchoring in 300 feet of water meant paying out ten shots of chain which still only provided an anchor chain to water depth ratio of 3:1 whereas a scope of 5:1 is preferable. Once the chain was laid out, the flukes set in the bottom and the ship tide rode headed into the current the bunker barge began her tedious approach.

This approach, which in flat calm seas and light airs should only take 15 to 25 minutes, takes twice that here due to the poor quality of the ship handlers working these barges. Routinely the Captain will hemm and haw his little vessel and controllable pitch propeller creeping up almost parallel to the hull from a hundred yards astern and then try to get just close enough for a heaving line to be thrown in the eastern fashion; by whirling the monkey fist in a massive circle over the side of the boat and then releasing it at our heads. On one occasion I watched the bunker barge take a full two hours to get close enough so that a messenger could be passed over. Once the yelling and screaming of the bunker barge's frantic captain subsides and they're finally made fast the engineers connect a fuel hose and the Second Assistant oversees the bunkering of several thousand metric tons of heavy fuel oil.

With our substantial thirst for hydrocarbons nearly satiated we began to make preparations for weighing the anchor early the next morning. While receiving the last of our fresh food and milk from a supply boat some of the crew were marveling at a dozen huge dolphin fish basking in the glow of our halogen floodlights. Among the fish circling about in search of food pale sea snakes, at least four feet long, slithered through the water. A few minutes later the eerie nocturnal scene was interrupted by a viscous brown cloud moving down the side of the ship. The presence of oil in the water to any mariner I've met is cause for grave concern and the sighting was diligently reported. Topping off was suspended and the Captain summoned.

A few minutes later my phone rang and a few more after that, hardly awake, I was peering into the darkness over the bow trying to see where the oil had originated. The Chief verified that the fuel tank levels were all around 80% and that no pressure fluctuations or burps through the tank vents had occurred. Feeling confident that the oil could not have come from us the captain on the bunker barge remarked that oil is routinely seen in the waters around Fujairah. The fuel surveyor attending the load said the shores were covered in oil and that it was probably just some ship pumping bilges or slop oil in the middle of the night at max current.

Just to be sure the captain ordered the rescue boat lowered for a hull survey. Appearing as if ready for a search and rescue mission adorned in safety harnesses, life vests and hardhats with headlamps the second mate and I un-griped the boat and had the boatswain lower us into the water. All around us the dolphin popped out of the water returning with a splash. The Chief Engineer was on the radio mischievously reminding us not to fall in and go swimming with the snakes. Though I knew he was just messing with us I was still careful not to put the sponsons down too far with a hard turn in case a coral snake did washed in.

With a strong flashlight we circled the ship and verified that there was definitely slop oil in the water but it wasn't coming from below our waterline. In the strong current it was all ready beginning to dissipate drifting down stream. This was not the first time I had seen oil pollution oil at sea, not even on this trip.

From the perspective of an American crew willfully pumping oil over the side just to save the cost of discharging it legally seems ridiculous. With so much liability in our home waters we wouldn't even contemplate such an act. Oil spills in the united states are not measured in barrels but gallons, a unit the media prefers because everyone knows what a gallon of milk looks like. Even a few table spoons of oil down the scupper from a leaking winch or a blown out hydraulic hose is a reportable quantity. Accidental discharges create a whirlwind of notifications, paperwork, questioning and statements. Intentional discharges, or even negligence brings out the handcuffs.

Yet in the middle of the night on the other side of the world with dozens of ships around who is to say you were the one that pumped the oil? And is anyone checking? Nope. I've never heard of one single port state inspection in the UAE to look over the oil record book pumping arrangement. No helicopters, no boats, no Coast Guard. Even if we had tried to report the spill there would have been no one to tell that would have done anything about it.

During out transit into Iraq we saw an even more blatant example of intentional marine pollution. With a pilot in the wheelhouse we passed by a small offshore supply vessel most likely headed for the Basra oil terminal. Just before our closest point of approach the derelict little boat began pumping it's bilge leaving a black slick of engine oil astern in broad daylight. The pilot didn't even bat and eye while the rest of us were amazed though I suppose if your former dictator lit off all the oil wells in the country causing the worst ecological disaster ever you wouldn't think much of it either.

Even in Kuwait with the coal ship spewing dust all over us there wasn't so much as a boom in the water to retain the dust that was turning the harbor completely black. I couldn't even begin to imagine what it must have been like for that crew to live on such a filthy ship.

Unfortunately for the oceans in this region of the world, and for the reputation of the industry, many ships still turn a blind eye on pollution. While as a whole the affect of shipping on the seas has improved drastically in the last quarter century due to massive international regulation and enforcement some unscrupulous operators will do anything to save a buck.

Relieved by the knowledge that we wouldn't be spending Christmas in a Middle Eastern shipyard having a hull fracture ground out and welded I turned the nimble outboard around at full throttle and stopped just under the bow to check the forward draft mark. As the wake subsided lapping against the bulbous bow the second mate, standing in the front of the fast rescue boat, read the marks.

When we both looked up and saw the starry night sky blocked out by the wineglass shaped aspect of a ship head on we were equally impressed. After years of living on these behemoths growing accustomed to their size the sight from the water line was still incredible. I wanted to take a picture but lacked a camera and the skills to capture such a low light photo. The piercing stars and loom from the hundreds of ships in the anchorage would have made it great.

Turning around the second mate smiled remarking, "So this is what we look like to little boats." Yup, I thought, little boats that get too close out of their own stupidity. By the time we returned beneath the davit and retrieved the hook for recovery the dolphin had stopped jumping and no more snakes were seen.

Sand Land

2010-11-25T21:17:00.026-05:00

It begins with the sand. Even before the Suez Canal the proximity of the desert can be seen in the hazy sky. Sunsets are clouded by a veil of ultra fine dust light enough to float through the air and settle on the water after a shamal blows through. It covers every surface of the ship, irritates your eyes, fills your lungs and coats your teeth. It is not pleasant and I'm convinced I have an allergic reaction to all that particulate matter in my chest. I grow tired, have a hard time taking a full breath and can barely breath through my nose. After a few days I become accustomed to my symptoms but they're always there each time I sail to the Middle East.

The Suez Canal is the first stop on our way to the Arabian Gulf and any ports in between. The canal pilots have earned a reputation here, at least on American ships where baksheesh is taken for granted. Everyone wants cigarettes; the pilot boat, the security inspectors, the agent and the pilots. If they don't get enough there is the honking of horns, waving of hands and incredulous shouts of, "Why!? Why do you do this!!?" The health and quarantine inspectors usually leave the galley with a garbage bag full of instant coffee, syrup, honey, sugar and anything else they might have a harder time getting in Egypt. And you can forget buying them off with Newports or Camels, this here is Marlborough country.

The pilots, whom range from competent to outright negligent are a cast of characters. Most claim to be the "Senior Canal" or "Best" pilot which automatically entitles them to another four cartons of cigarettes. 9 out of 10 pilots take their nicotine ravenously and some will gorge on any sweets or fruit put in front of them. Some of the more shameless pilots will scan every unfastened object on the bridge and politely ask if they may have one "For the kids" or "My wife". Sunglasses, jackets, hats, anything edible, and even soap are up for grabs. These generalizations may sound negative but it's simply the truth from the perspective of our bridge team and not something we look forward to.

Interspersed with small military installations, guard shacks and parade grounds there are several conspicuous war memorials commemorating the hostilities with Israel in years past along the banks of the canal. These sometime spur interesting discussions about the fight for the Sinai Peninsula and politics but one thing remains absolute; Israel is not a welcomed neighbor.

The first time I heard the adhan, or the Muslim call to prayer, chanted on the loudspeakers of a mosque in Port Said the pilot asked for a room in which he could pray. Other pilots will simply prostrate themselves on the deck at the back of the bridge facing Mecca. This past transit the pilot asked for one of our signal flags to use as a prayer rug.

Once clear of the Suez Canal the weather usually gets hot. The seawater temps in the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf have been logged up to 90 degrees. With seawater temps like that the engineers are hard pressed to keep the main engine cool enough. When the shamal brings with it the dry desert air the humidity is low and the wet bulb thermometer needs constant refilling. When the air is light and the seas calm the ocean seems to vaporize and at night it can create a fog humid and hot like a steam bath. This time of year though we are lucky to have cool weather which compared to the norm actually feels chilly.

The ports are easy to get into and out of if it was left up to us, few rivers or long channels, but working with the local pilots can be a challenge. Jordan, Bahrain and the Oman have good pilots, some being expatriates from India or Asia. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia however can be a real pain. There seems to be little liability for pilots in this part of the world and therefore little regard for the safety of our ship. Pilots routinely disembark when the vessel is still within the confines of the harbor and raise holy hell if their command is questioned. But at times it must be questioned because at the end of a bad day it's the old man who would be wearing the bracelets, not a pilot belonging to the royal bloodline.

This is one of the reasons keeping it calm, cool and collected is such a necessary skill for interfacing with the locals whether it's on the bridge docking the ship with the Captain or getting cargo on and off. The typical Arabian, in my experience, loves a good argument. The more animated and audible the better. Tantrums are not only for toddlers in this part of the world and if you rebut with like force it will only escalate.

The funniest aspect of this charade is that the typical westerner will take it all personally and start cussing and using derogatory statements but the Middle Easterner will get over it in five minutes. I have taken many a pilots down to meet their boat who were infuriated when he stormed off the bridge but completely over it by the time they were climbing down the ladder. This has led me to believe that this is just their way of communicating and conducting business and has nothing to do with showing dislike for us as American seamen. It's unfortunate that not all Americans working in their waters understand this. Too many assume that freedom of speech and religion is something you pack in your seabag which it most certainly is not.

The abrasive yell talking used by Arabs in authority can also be constantly heard on the VHF radio. Exasperation is easily expressed in Arabic and again if you don't keep it cool things can get testy quick. I try to remain as polite and docile as I can no matter how ridiculous port control or the pilot boat are being. Politeness though won't make the barn yard noises, horrible singing or keying of the mic next to a Mosque at prayer time go away. When there is no more sanctity for channel 16 and you hear these things all night long you know you've entered the Arabian Gulf.

Because I work on a Roll On / Roll Off where the cargo is wheeled rather quickly up and down our stern ramp time in port is limited. Bahrain, Dubai, Aqaba and Salalah would probably be the best liberty ports if we had time to go ashore. The first two being hotspots for Muslims who live in the more culturally restrictive countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and appreciate cold beer and real nightclubs.

The first time I went to Dubai and saw the indoor ski resort, gold suk and luxury island residences in the shape of palm trees being dredged out of the sandy bottom of the gulf the economy was booming. A group of Irish businessmen had just bought the island shaped like their homeland in the "World" residence project and were busy investing their easily gotten money into scale replications of the emerald isle's iconic features. Today the project has slowed and Dubai no longer is growing as fast as it once was but the money is still here. The regions' mineral wealth continues to bring sufficient revenue for all the opulence money can buy in the Gulf States, most of them at least.

That massive wealth, the kind which ensures imported labor to take care of constructing cities and running ports, creates a sharp contrast between the oil rich countries and all the other nations in the middle east. Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Iraq come to mind as places that provide the labor for building the mega malls and palaces of the Arabian Peninsula. They are also the source of some of the most interesting boats I have ever seen.

The common sight in port or in the shipping lanes of wooden cargo vessels big enough to carry a crew of ten but small enough to tuck into the marshes and rivers of Iran would be straight out of the bible had they sails instead of diesels. The hulls are shaped and most likely constructed as they have been for thousands of years. I drove by a fleet just waking up in the port of Salalah a few days ago and watched as the groggy crews brushed teeth and washed faces. On the quarter of one boat was a boxed in outcropping in which sat a sailor taking a dump right through the perforated seat and into the harbor. That is some medieval shit if you ask me.

These boats still call on ports all over the Arabian and Indian oceans carrying cargo from big ports to small. They also constitute the fishing fleet, though not so big but similarly shaped. The only fishing boats that don't look like traditional dhows are the fiberglass skiffs used by Somali fishermen but I hear fishing isn't the business of choice in Puntland these days.

Pilots, port state control inspectors and the shipping agents are the only local Muslims I meet and work with in the wealthier gulf states. Everyone else involved in the cargo operation is from another less wealthy country. Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan are prevalent. The differences between nationalities are obvious once you get to know the familiar faces in each port and they get to know you. Some things are common such as the need to meet and greet the higher ups every time the ramp goes down fostering a good relationship and air of cooperativeness. Hand holding is also important for Muslim stevedores with something important to say to you. I've held many a hands for minutes on end in front of large groups of men.

As with all wealth there is a massive contrast between places such as Kuwait City replete with modern skyscrapers and shoreside palaces and somewhere such as Umm Qasr only an hour away by car. Iraq's only deepwater port for dry cargoes, Umm Qasr is every part the opposite of the glitzy air conditioned cities to the south. 60 miles up the Shatt al Arab, a chocolate milk colored river full of silt and poorly buoyed, Umm Qasr is a dusty, trash strewn town with unsecured ports and lots of unemployed men milling about the dock yards.

See the New York Times Slideshow: At Iraqi Port, Chaos and Corruption reign supreme.

I have never been to a country torn by internal ethnic war. While the south of the country has been more or less stable for some time, the British withdrew from this Sunni majority region in 2007, it still is a risky spot for an American flagged vessel for obvious reasons. The 60 mile pilotage up the river was a sobering reminder that not all has been well in this country for many many years. In two spots of the river the sunken hulks of wartime casualties could be seen along the river banks. Much of the munitions, wrecks and mines that had filled the river have been removed by coalition forces but several of the ships were too large to bother. It was a ghostly sight to see the burnt out superstructures and buckled hulls, results of air to surface missiles no doubt and according to our river pilot, fired by the Kuwaitis.

Today the port is filled with stacks of haphazardly placed containers and hundreds of yellow dust covered taxis like a logisticians worst nightmare. Bagged grain was being hand loaded into nets and craned out of two vessel's holds into awaiting dump trucks. A small Iraqi flagged oil tanker was fueling the floating power station, the one and only source for electricity in town which shuts down at night. Despite the bustle it still didn't feel like a secure place and I was happy to have the stern ramp up at the end of the day.

Bagged grain cargoes require ships to remain in port for up to a week

Also unlike other middle eastern ports the labor here was 100% local. The longshoremen were better than expected and didn't steal or ask for anything besides water and a little diesel for the trailer tug. This was a comical event coming at the tail end of the cargo operation as their tug was pulling the last trailer of cargo up and out of the ship. It died from lack of fuel 20 meters from the down hill slope of the stern ramp. Inching it's way on fumes the driver managed to pull up to my fuel hose. I handed the nozzle over to the driver who took one look at the quality of red diesel going into his tank and squeezed the lever as hard as he could. The agent looked at me and in broken English said, "If you leave that with him he will fill the entire tank up. He knows this is good diesel."

I laughed and watched him gleefully top off his rig and jump back in knowing he had scored. He fired up and after a few sputters revved up the engine which promptly died. Scowling he looked down at me and asked "Bad diesel? No good!" He thought he had been tricked. Convinced that he now had a tank full of bad gas he stomped on the pedal and turned the ignition for almost a minute. The engine finally turned over and the pinging of his engine could heard as the old fuel cleared out and he roared off the ship, down the dock on what was the best fuel that tug would likely ever burn.

Iraqi Pilot Boat at the mouth of the Shatt al Arab

Unfortunately for the longshoremen and entire country the port is mired with corruption. A modern, well run port with professional stevedoring and good conditioned cargo handling equipment, such as Salalah or Bahrain, might charge up to $10,000 US dollars in port fees to dock a ship. Here in Iraq the fee was around $70,000 US dollars cash which had to be couriered over the border for payment. I guarantee that virtually none of this money was being reinvested in the Iraq's only two dry cargo terminals. Warehouses, gantry cranes, evacuators and the docks themselves had all seen better days, specifically the one after which they were built. It was told to me that everything in Iraq requires a bribe. Everyone is making something off everyone below them on the social ladder and at the bottom were the group of men with nothing better to do than sit around the bottom of the stern ramp looking up at the American ship.

Port of Umm Qasr

The Middle East is an extreme place. The sandstorms, 120 degree days, frigid desert nights, barren treeless landscapes, jagged towering mountains, wealth, poverty, corruption and religious conservatism. It is also where the cargo is booked for and therefore this ship will be calling here for the foreseeable future. Despite the differences between where my work takes me and where I choose to live my return visits bring with them a familiarity that surprises me.

The smell of curry stuck to the longshoremen's clothes, the sound of "Salaam Aleikum" repeated every time two Muslims meet, the feel of sand in the back of your throat or the parching sun on your neck are all familiar sensations. By choice I might have opted for somewhere with a little greenery or the availability of beer at the airport but for now its my job.

When we first docked our security team called me on the radio saying there was a mate from another ship asking to speak with the Chief Officer. I met the officer, a young man from Bangledesh not much older than myself, who was standing on the stern ramp with his watch partner, an AB from Ghana who I exchanged handshakes with for a solid three minutes while he gushed about the US vs. Ghana game. They were crew off one of the bulkers discharging bagged grain and had been docked for nearly a week. The ship was about to sail but had no antibiotics in their medicine chest. A crew member was very ill with a bacterial throat infection and he wanted to know if we could provided enough medicine to stave it off.

I asked the old man and he agreed to help them out. The second mate was appreciative and happy that he'd be signing off in a few days and seeing his family for the first time in 8 months. When I returned to the holds I felt happy to have lent a hand to another mariner, a sacred tradition exercised for millennia, and thankful to sail under an American flag where antibiotics were kept in sufficient quantity.

Iraqi Pilot Boat

More photographs at my tumblr page Deep Water Writer

(http://deepwaterwriter.tumblr.com/)

Thanksgiving in the Gulf

2010-11-24T11:24:00.014-05:00

Thanksgiving is the best of holidays. Less commercialized and more principled than the rest. There is no pressure besides eating what you've cooked and, save for orphans and sailors, spending the day with family.

The deck department has it good today. I told the Boatswain to have the guys write in four hours of overtime. They're all good workers and turn to nearly everyday so only standing their eight hours of watch and getting paid for twelve is the next best thing to a weekend. The engine department though doesn't have it so good on this November 25th.

Diesel engines are difficult to work on when a ship is underway. Time in port for engineers, which has been in short order this trip, is packed with preventive maintenance and repairs. We're sitting on the hook (At anchor) for two days awaiting cargo so what is an easy anchor watch for the mates and A.B.s is a hectic couple of work days for the engineers.

Swinging around the anchor five miles off Kuwait isn't the ideal way to spend Thanksgiving but the Stewards Department took the edge off the homesickness this afternoon with a holiday feast. The Stewards Assistant set the tables with white linen and candles. The appetizer spread consisted of crab dip, shrimp cocktails, deviled eggs and bacon wrapped scallops. Hams, seafood casserole, and three stuffed turkeys were baked. Candied yams, twice baked potatoes, wild rice and cornbread stuffing filled the edge of my plate. For desert a tiramisu and napoleons were made fresh plus cheese and chocolate cakes. As I made my way past the steward after supper rubbing my stomach he jabbed me with "I see you had the Stow Plan all worked out for that one mate."

Afterwards crew could be seen stumbling down the passageways to their rooms in hopes that sleep would alleviate swollen abdomens and light headedness. It was bar none the finest meal I have had at sea and all hands were extremely grateful for the massive efforts of our smallest department. The only things missing were my grandmother's creamed onions and rum in the eggnog.

Even in the Arabian Gulf, a place I have long held as having no redeeming aspects, there is much to be thankful for. The health of my friends and family, employment in a profession I enjoy day after day and support from home when I'm away. Having now spent three of the last six years sailing to this part of the world I am also very thankful that there are no sand storms where I live, only snow storms, and that the hills are covered in trees and the valleys fertile. It's a long way from home but once that cargo is loaded and lashed in the holds the second mate can plug in the waypoints for our return voyage and we'll be back on the coast before New Years.

The Strait is Clear

2010-11-15T04:14:00.016-05:00

Movement has always mesmerized me. I adore the moment on an aircraft when the wheels leave the earth and the plane lifts into the air rapidly climbing from the end of the runway. I love the feeling of a sailboat heeled over, lee rail dragging in the water, as the tiller pulls at your hands straining to balance the unequal force of water over it's sides.

Shipping, unless you're holding station on a dynamically positioned vessel, is all about movement. Cargoes are booked months in advance for ports half way around the world. The ship is crewed, fueled and provisioned and then loaded all in anticipation of moving a long distance over the sea. We calculate our Estimated Times of Arrival for destinations thousands of miles away and know down to the minute when we expect to make the sea buoy if our speed stays the same.

And for me, two of my favorite aspects of seafaring are born of the need to constantly be on the move. Travel, the first, is a direct result of moving a ship over oceans. Second is piloting, or the control of a ship's "Conduct". This is the means by which mariners achieve the first. The entirety of yesterday served as a personal reminder that both of these facets to my work continue fascinating me as much as they did the first time I went to sea.

Travel has been a mainstay in my life since I was thirteen and ventured to the Mayan Ruins on the Yucatan in Mexico. The first time I participated in the navigation of a boat to an unknown destination was during the fall semester of my freshman year of college. That trip only took a Friday afternoon and a moderate breeze on Penobscot bay but I was hooked.

Unfortunately for my wanderlust the vessel on which I now toil is on a liner service which means regularly scheduled ports and non of the tramp shipping on account of which sailors have romanticized their professions for centuries. It is safe to say that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the U.A.E. have lost their appeal, if they ever had any.

Luckily every now and then a port off the beaten path is thrown into the mix and we get to order a new chart and see a new dock. This time around we called on Aqaba Jordan, the kingdom's solitary seaport located in the Gulf of the same name. Nestled in between Israel's Eilat and Saudi Arabia's more scenic coastline Aqaba is at the far northern end of an almost fjord like gulf. Several commercial terminals consisting of container, bulk ore and petroleum docks lie south of the city. The berth to which we were assigned was just a short drive from the palm lined beaches of downtown.

Finding Aqaba by way of water is simple. Leave the Suez Canal astern, transit the Gulf of Suez passing through the Strait of Gubal, turn to port passing the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik and then make another turn to port lining up for the Strait of Tiran. Once past the reef fringed channel and large shipwreck head north-northeast up the narrow Gulf of Aqaba until the radar looks something like this:

Once you see the the absolutely massive flag pole flying the Jordanian flag you're there but don't anchor off the beaches in Israel, one of their fast boats might take offense. It would have been nice to have had a chance to get off the ship, rummage around the Bazaar for a box of perfumes and some incense, maybe hit up a curry vendor and smoke the tobacco Hookah but with only four hours of cargo no one made it past the stern ramp.

A wise java pushing sandwich selling woman recently reminded me on the satellite phone that it's not about the destination but getting there and nothing could be more true on a day like yesterday. Two and a half weeks at sea and our first port call lasts less than five hours. A new country steeped in history with shops surely filled with all the Lebanese Coffee and silk carpets one could haggle for and no one even gets to walk up town.

For a crew of modern mariners it didn't really bother anyone as this is pretty standard for today's merchant marine. Just knowing that we could go ashore had we the time without much hassle was at least refreshing. Besides, for me it really was the lure of the journey that made my day. Transiting down one side and up the other of the Sinai Peninsula, watching brown barren mountains pass down both sides of the ship, seeing down 10 meters in some of the clearest water in the world, dissecting a historic city set in an ancient valley with binoculars. I'll take what I can get.

The second part of the day that again reminded me what an exceptional vocation I chose was when we passed through the southern end of the Gulf. As mentioned before, the Strait of Tiran separates the Gulf of Aqaba from the Red Sea. It is a narrow strip of water in between Egypt and Saudi Arabia fringed with reefs. In the middle of the strait there is another large and very shallow reef complete with a recently shipwrecked cargo vessel high and dry listed over to port 35 degrees. On either side of this treacherous reef there is an essentially pointless vessel traffic separation scheme, the reef does a much better job than magenta lines on the chart, and a Vessel Traffic Service system which monitors the movement of ships through the area.

On the west or Egyptian side of the strait lies a rather large city north of the resort at Sharm el Sheik with a busy airport and impressive nightlife evidenced by a shoreside concert and bustling streets. The southbound route leaves Egypt to starboard and Gordon reef to port. The lane is very narrow and over 200 meters deep but no more than 0.3 nautical miles on either side of the ship lies reef shallow enough to stand on.

The passage is marked with only two lighted beacons, something the Chief Engineer was incredulous about. He was on the bridge offering his opinion and advice on the maneuver since the Captain's attendance for the transit interrupted their nightly movie time. Normally when ships proceed through tight channels they do so at a slower "Maneuvering Speed" which would be half of the full sea speed we were making. Since the channel was short, only about six miles, and deep plus not nearly as narrow as a buoyed ship channel in port our speed was maintained throughout.

There was also only one insignificant course change to line up for and the cut as the VTS informed us was clear of traffic in the area. With a parallel electronic bearing line or EBL on the radar ranged out to the distance I wanted to stay off the marker light, I could watch the transit with comfort that we were staying in the middle of the channel. The passage itself was simple but knowing that if anything was to go wrong, such as an engine or steering failure, than the beaches of Al Fawz would have a new tourist attraction in about twenty seconds kept me on my toes.

Lining up and then watching the city lights zip by at twenty knots was impressive for everyone, Chief and Captain included. It's rare we pass so close to shore going that fast. The Chief couldn't believe that the still water just off the starboard beam was reef and was only marked by one light. I explained to him that the reef was too shallow and the channel too deep for an effective buoy.

The thrill of conning 70,000 deadweight tons of ship through a treacherous piece of water is unlike anything I have ever experienced. The tools are simple; paper chart and radar, rudder and single propeller, but the consequences of failure are severe. Despite the responsibility planning and then executing successful pilotages for me is one of the most rewarding parts of working at sea.

For more pictures from the Gulf of Aqaba visit my tumbler page at DeepWaterWriter

USMM in WWII

2010-11-12T02:02:00.002-05:00

Among the parades and ceremonies marking veterans day there goes a group of veterans long unrecognized by the Department of Defense and forgotten for their sacrifices during World War II among all other armed conflicts in the History of the United States. Below is a reminder on this veterans day of the service merchant seamen provided then and now in national defense.

1 in 26 mariners serving aboard merchant ships in World WW II died in the line of duty, suffering a greater percentage of war-related deaths than all other U.S. services. Casualties were kept secret during the War to keep information about their success from the enemy and to attract and keep mariners at sea.

www.USMM.org

Checklist for the Suez Canal

2010-11-09T13:00:00.005-05:00

There are several unique preparations that must take place before transiting the Suez Canal. Rigging the Suez Canal light would be one of them. The light is a very large singular headlight like device designed to emit a split beam of light from the ships bow. It is a requirement for any vessel transiting the canal though I have not once seen it used nor has anyone I have worked with.

What if the ship were not to have one? Then the Canal Authority would gladly rent a light with a team of electricians to accompany, rig and operate it if for once in a century the pilot needed to see the bank of the canal at night.

Other preparations include readying lines in case we have to moor in the canal, rigging the gangways to accommodate the canal pilots, they refuse to use the standard pilot ladders, filling a cabinet full of candy and marlborough reds and collecting the crew's stash of porn.

While the cartons of cigarettes are very necessary to ensure a smooth, successful and happy transit when dealing with inspectors, pilots and agents, the porn collection is the captain's precaution in case any of the port states we'll be visiting in the Mid East decide to go Sharia on us and inspect the crew quarters.

Through the Strait

2010-11-08T06:26:00.006-05:00

The presence of land is easily belied by a stiff offshore breeze. This is normally the case when sailing through the Gulf of Cadiz, the outlying waters on the western approach to the Strait of Gibraltar. After twelve days of the odorless salt tang of mid ocean the scent of trees and pollen is remarkable. It almost leaves a taste on my tongue and has my imagination working out what Portugal looks like, a place I would love to visit.

We increased speed last last night from our "Economical" 89 main engine revolutions per minute to 91. An increase of only 3 RPM provides an additional 2 to 3 knots so instead of making 17 knots we're now up to 20. The Captain did this to avoid a low pressure system forecasted to move over the coast of Brittany walloping the Bay of Biscay. This is of concern to us because the northeastern quadrant of the low would be left offshore propelling a huge swell and wind wave down the coast of Portugal and into the waters we're passing through. Instead of chancing an encounter it seemed more prudent to speed up and tuck into the Mediterranean before the system moved any further to the south.

Unfortunately for our fuel consumption running a few RPM higher than economical means burning an additional 30 tons of fuel per day! Because this is such a large vessel with a massive engine the fuel consumption is dramatically higher than any ship I have worked on before. The increase in speed (RPM) vs. fuel consumption is an exponential curve not in global warming's favor. Still I'll stand my ground when anyone harangues me for working on a boat that burns over $50,000 dollars of fuel in one day at full sea speed because waterborne transportation is the most efficient means of transportation period. And for anyone who didn't know, the diesel engine is the most efficient internal combustion engine of all time.

Luckily for the Captain he won't have to justify the increased fuel consumption to the office because later in the morning he received an email ordering us to increase to full speed as a new port known for delays has been added onto the schedule and they want us there early. We were surprised that the office is now directing us to proceed at 91 RPM when the main theme of the last officers conference was how they would be slowing the fleet to study the decrease in fuel consumption to determine if it would be better to lengthen the schedule and save the fuel. So much for that, were now consuming 3.8 metric tons of heavy fuel oil an hour!

With the impending low pressure system the passage through Gibraltar Strait was shrouded in low clouds but a few glimpses of Morocco and Spain could be had. The ferry traffic was typical buzzing right by close astern. I have always enjoyed passing through this historic narrow, especially when homeward bound but that will have to wait a month.

Long ago seem the days when I would get off watch and turn my cell phone on to see if I had a signal. Many times I would find myself crouched in between the fan housings out of the wind trying to get enough reception to call home for the first time in three weeks. Those memories make me thankful for what I have today out here.

Once you've passed under the watchful eye of the Tarifa Vessel Traffic Service, through the narrows and beyond the rock of Gibraltar the Mediterranean slowly begins to open up on both sides. The traffic diverges, the current subsides and the wind usually continues to howl. As it was still cloudy when I got up to the bridge for my afternoon watch I was impressed to see snow capped mountains to our north in Spain.

It isn't the first snow I've seen this year (Mount Washington at home was socked in two and a half weeks ago the the last time I went hiking) but I was still excited to see something I wasn't expecting and knew there wouldn't be any more of that once we got through Egypt. The higher winds, overcast skies and intermittent rain have actually raised most everyone's spirits onboard, well, at least the New Englanders.

Even someone who appreciates blue bird days as much as I do where weeks pass by on an ocean as calm as a mill pond with fluffy white clouds littering the azure sky it does get old after awhile. A change in the monotony of work is welcomed as long as it isn't more than a beaufort force 9 or perhaps a 10 on here. As the Chief Engineer proclaimed at lunch "This is sailin' weather dammit!"

Returning to the Routine

2010-10-29T14:56:00.027-04:00

Those late to rise easy going mornings on vacation, sipping coffee while listening to NPR, walking to the local bagel shop for breakfast, conversing with the fair proprietor while picking the fleas off her Corgi have given way to the horrendous ring of a telephone mere meters from my head at three twenty in the morning. When I was traveling in Guatemala I learned a word for this time of day; madrugada or early morning and on the four to eight watch every second of la madrugada can drag.

Each day at sea begins by mentally more than physically pulling myself out of bed, halfheartedly dragging a toothbrush across my teeth and then relying on the power of caffeine to keep me alert until the sun finally comes up sometime between six o'clock and breakfast. It's a tiring day starting so early and continuing until nine at night if I want to read or call home. My reluctance to nap doesn't help. Doing so would mean no time to write this blog or work off stress in the gym.

Gym time is going to have to be more of a priority this hitch than ever before. That's because the food our multi-talented steward and overqualified cook put out is unlike anything seen throughout the history of the American merchant marine. I would venture that these two men make better food than most privately owned restaurants ashore.

It is absolutely unbelievable fare, especially given the budget constraints the steward operates within and on top of pan seared scallops with rice pudding and bacon wrapped sirloin with asparagus the steward can bake like a son of a sea biscuit. Furthermore the numerous instances when a familiar face has asked me "Have a good vacation mate? Looking kinda pudgy aren't ya?" is lending me to believe I let myself go a little this last time home. I suppose a thousand bottles of Shipyard Ale and half a dozen bagels a week could do that.

On a side note the Steward told me that crew, namely the last Boatswain and another unlicensed individual of formidable beam, complained about the quality of the food. They were genuinely upset that hot dogs, grilled cheeses and fried chicken were not making a weekly appearance on the menu. After the Steward tried to explain that he uses a more expensive canola oil in the fryer rather than a blend of hydrogenated oils and that fried chicken ruins the oil he just gave up. Word is that the cook will be pulling out all the stops now that the grumblers have left and a truly supportive clientele has returned.

In addition to the incredible meals and a well appointed (And secured) gym for burning them off I'm extremely grateful for two other refreshing differences onboard. One, it's not my first trip which means all the systems my relief and I have put in place are well . . . in place. No need to organize the paint locker or corral loose lashing gear and tools, it's all ready been done. Nor do I need to create endless three ringed binders of documents, certificates and inspection records, that's all been done. Instead my time can be used more productively repairing, maintaining and improving on the systems and most importantly the ship.

The second aspect of this trip that I'm absolutely thrilled about is the fact that I have a crew. My last voyage there and back to the Middle East was greatly lacking in competent manpower. One of the watch standing "Able Bodied Seamen" refused to work overtime on account of his disdain to work for idiots, also known as mates, since he himself was about to become one and was keenly aware that he was of a seafaring caliber far above and beyond any of us officers (He claimed he was about to sit for the licensing exam and yet couldn't distinguish a pilot boat from a fishing boat day or night).

Another watch stander was certifiably nuts and earned the nickname wind talker for prolonged conversations on the bridge wing with no one else present. When he would turn to for overtime he liked to use his needle gun as a chipping hammer breaking off needles to the boatswain's dismay and was an absolute hazard with a paintbrush.

One of the dayworkers, and my best A.B., was so exhausted by a shipyard and six months onboard that he stopped working his two hours in the evening while the other watch stander was 71 and ran on a permanent slow ahead bell. Plus half way through the east bound trip the other dayman twisted his ankle and was sent home from the middle east leaving me down yet another man for at least a week.

Unlike last voyage this time around it seems that I have guys that want all the OT they can get and appear capable of the skill set expected of any seaman before the mast. Even my aforementioned elderly watch partner who has now had his 72nd birthday onboard and is still here is an incredible cleaner professing just this very morning his love of all things janitorial. He hasn't missed more than a week of overtime the whole five months he's been onboard and keeps the gym and bridge spotless.

Despite the heartache returning to sea conjures in one's personal life it would be a lie to say I wasn't a little inspired to be back at work returning to the routine of a seafaring existence. Every sense is stimulated by something here at sea which is completely unknown to land dwellers and absent from the last three months at home.

When I go to work in the morning the sky is filled with unimpeded starlight. The bridge is filled with the aroma of Folgers coffee, something that smells a million times better brewing than drinking and would never be found in my cupboards.

Everything inside the windows is dark save for the glow of two radar and a gyro repeater on the helm stand. The caterwaul of nine pin Sat-C printers screeching out the latest hurricane advisory can be heard every twenty minutes and the distant calls of a lonely Filipino bridge watch looking for someone to talk with in Tagalog comes over the VHF radio throughout the morning.

On deck the mellifluous metallic symphony of needle guns working the rust off steel blends with the constant thump thump emanating from the main engine's exhaust stack. The paint locker smells of epoxy resins and thinner where as the nearest fuel vent intoxicates the nostrils with the sweet sulphuric smell of mother earth's gunkiest oil.

During the day the smell of the next impending meal, the harbinger of rest on ship, fills the stomach with expectation. Clouds are reflected on a pristine ocean surface which hides a water column 16,000 feet deep. The bulbous bow pushes an endless bulge of clear liquid as bright blue flying fish dart for their lives across an ocean I forgot could be so easily admired. In it's seductiveness on a blue bird day the sea can almost make you feel welcomed.

On the Bus

2010-10-25T06:11:00.001-04:00

It is inevitable, this bus ride down the sunless highways of New England. Southward to the airport where bags in hand the next three months of my life will begin. This is the dreaded commute filled with a numbness I’ve cultivated from a young age. A commute filled with acceptance of the unescapable reality that has shaped the lives of mariners for centuries. Filled with goodbye hugs and sad text messages. Filled by reluctance and anticipation.

At a young age I remember my dad disappearing into the sky over Maine. My mother would pull the van to the side of the road along the runway and there we would watch my dad’s plane lift off the ground. I remember the seabag he would pack, a massive black navy style seabag big enough to fit all four of the kids which he joked about doing so he could bring us to sea. There would be socks and underclothes, razors and shaving cream and a brown briefcase with his license. That was about all that filled the nearly empty bag that drifted down the conveyor and disappeared through the wall.

Those goodbyes were hard on my mom as were the next three or four or six months raising four boys in the woods. Knowledge of these goodbyes were the only reason for which I hesitated following in the same path to work at sea. Yet the education and then the job felt so right I forced myself to ignore how hard these mornings are and learned to deal with it numbing myself a little each time until I could at least get back on the boat and see the open ocean.

Change is inevitable. When it involves leaving all that is good in my life at least I have the time to prepare. I do this in two ways, one of which I realize is hard for some of my friends to understand. “Why aren’t you going surfing today?” A friend asked the other morning. I couldn’t blame him for not understanding why cleaning my apartment and wrapping up all the loose ends was more important than enjoying my last 72 hours of freedom on dry land or in the surf.

Yet this is how I deal with leaving an empty home. I clean it thoroughly, unplug all the appliances, lock the windows and secure the systems. I leave it like a mothballed ship ready for reactivation as soon as I return for the comfort of knowing my home is clean and waiting, my business completed and my life on hold, allows me to better keep moving forward and to tackle the impending voyage at sea.

The other way I deal with the change is to pack. Unlike my old man’s nearly empty sea bag I attempt to bring every comfort I might need with me to sea. With the luggage limitations, and the green impression a massively overpacked bag brings with it to a ship, I have gotten better about packing lighter and leaving as much gear on the ship as possible. Still, it would be a lie to say my duffel didn’t contain a bottle of Vermont maple syrup, a pound of Starbucks coffee and enough Tom’s of Maine toothpaste to last a year.

Packing in itself has become a chore I dislike as much as these predawn departures orchestrated by a penny pinching company reluctant to pay for direct daytime flights. Even after years of practice it is a stressful affair feeling as if I’ve missed something, some article without which I will not be as prepared as I should be. Even on the bus I feel like something must have been forgotten sitting on the kitchen table or the bureau. Perhaps it’s just the knowledge that once I’m hurling down the road towards the airport there’s no turning back and if I ever did forget something, like a passport or my eye glasses, I’d just be plain old screwed, blued and tattooed.

Cleaning, packing, commuting. They are a few of the challenges involved in seafaring but they hardly compare to saying goodbye. It’s leaving the people, the friends and the family, that make this commute so brutal. The mornings we watched my dad’s plane fly away, something which my mom would learn not to do with time, were heavy events. Nothing has changed from then to now except that I’m the one saying goodbye and there are no children involved (At least not my own).

No matter how many reassurances that cheap satellite phone calls and internet connectivity are a blessing to long distance relationships there is nothing to fill that physical void left when you leave someone (Very) unique and close to you behind. Just as this bus increases the distance between two people it also increases the time apart and this is a burden unlike any other I know in relationships. It has to be true that no other wife, husband or partner knows any greater sacrifice than that which is required to love a sailor. Not even soldiers will spend as much time away in isolated places doing dangerous work.

As the bus passes by the sleeping homes of Boston and I am furthered on my way to meet the ship there are two additional things which I carry with me that bring more comfort than all the maple syrup I could pack. One is having work to return to on a good vessel with excellent management and therefore a means to a living. The other is knowing that someone is waiting for my return. The two most important things I have.

Making the News

2010-09-27T09:28:00.005-04:00

This past summer has been host to a number of notable events in maritime news. Too many as a matter of fact to keep up with. It amazes me how the world of maritime news, opinion and information has changed since I started sailing as a mariner on deep draft commercial ships.

Five or six years ago the only periodical I regularly paid any attention to was Professional Mariner which I was surprised to learn, was published very close to home in Portland Maine. For any mariner who has a subscription to this print magazine than you know that your chances of inclusion in one of their puff pieces on how special your niche of the industry might be is far less likely than your inclusion in the "Un-professional mariner" section which is what we all flip to. Reserved for the unlucky S.O.B.s involved in our worst nightmares,The Maritime Casualty pages are a catalogue of groundings, sinkings, collisions, injured or overboard crew, fires, spills and any other serious marine incident still under investigation.

As I spent more coffee breaks in the engine control room I began to notice more periodicals like Maritime Reporter and Engineering News and MarineLog both of which have an online presence. These periodicals focus more on business, technology and engineering and Marine Log has great editorials.

While these magazines have a lower to mid level management feel the Maritime Executive caters to top level management by interviewing CEOs of the largest maritime companies in the world. Each month the magazine features the achievements of industry executives, trends in politics and regulation and Op-Eds that are pro Merchant Marine. Maritime education and training is also a regular focus. MarEx also has a weekly emailing that stands out as a consistent source for current news and opinion which anyone with an interest in marine affairs should be subscribed to.

Of course these are only a few of the news sources for maritime content out there and are generally more broad in scope. Many other magazines and journals focus on narrower aspects of the industry such as ports, logistics, certain commodities and trades.

Unfortunately until a few months ago I really had to wait until I returned home from sea to empty out my post office box and catch up on several months worth of magazines that had piled up. Now that the world wide web has finally made it onto my ship the magazines can pile up all they want and I can still read the latest maritime news online.

Completely web based sites like gCaptain have begun to fill a new market where actual mariners with Internet access from sea can read content tailored to us, the operators, rather than articles tailored to those who can check their mail 365 days a year. Some of the best content out there right now is featured on gCaptain's weekly posting, Maritime Monday, which I discovered two years ago while visiting Guatemala. I couldn't help but gush a little in the comments section about how nothing else on the internet could fill a maritime news junkie in as quickly and entertainingly as this gCaptain feature.

Last and best of all are the blogs authored by people who live, work and play, or just have a genuine interest in the ocean. Only recently have I begun to make personal connections to some of their creators and it has opened my eyes to a community as inspired by the sea as they are dedicated to it's protection, enjoyment and usefulness to mankind as I am.

Vacationland

2010-09-23T10:47:00.014-04:00

Undoubtedly seafaring is a life steeped in extremity. Take for example where the mariner toils day after day. There is no place save for the most remote desert or outer space as empty as the deep ocean. Years of our lives are spent there floating in an azure void interrupted only by occasional wild life or rare surface piercing mountaintops.

I remember conversations I would have with the crew on the cable ship where I spent this past winter. The Filipinos always wanted to know how many kids I had and were surprised to learn that my home not only lacked a wife but a progeny of a wee merchant mariners. As they smoked cigarettes in the early morning light waiting for the ROV to surface from another repair they would share how many children and extended family their meager paychecks supported under one roof.

"When was the last time you were home?" I would ask the Boson and the four or five ABs standing along the rail. The reply was a mix of not weeks but months numbering anywhere from four to twelve to eighteen.

"How long will you see them for when you go home?"

"Maybe three months, maybe two" Roberto the Boson would say as they all nodded in agreement. Two months out of twelve, no occupation requiring your absence from those you love could be more extreme than that.

I have written about the extremities of going to sea before; the long voyages, insane work hours, unstable personalities, the risk, liability and intense boredom; all symptoms of a career that keeps us longing for an easier livelihood closer to home. But for those of us who are fortunate enough in the world's merchant marine to get as much vacation time away from the ships as we do living on them there is a flip side which balances out the extremes of work.

At the moment I am in the midst of one of those memorable vacations enjoying all there is we go without at sea. It's been busier than anticipated but I suppose there is no other way to get as much hiking, kayaking, diving and surfing in as I can. I have a list of criteria I strive to fulfill during the first few weeks at home which begins with sleeping in my own bed as long as I wish.

Next on the list is immersing myself in the land and getting as far away from the sea as possible in New England for a few days. Like the last three years I accomplished this by driving five hours north of home and camping out beneath the granite wall of Mount Khatadin, Maine's highest hill. This hike is one of the best I've done. Compared to the high mountains of the world Kathadin is a mere 5,260 feet above sea level but the grandeur of such a monster rising from Maine's expansive woodlands really gets my heart thumping.

Also on the top of that list is ending a streak of sobriety by getting snockered around a camp fire or two, eating as much seafood as possible without paying the exorbitant tourists prices, and once my yearning for the ocean comes back spending as much time on, in or under the surface as I can wearing a wetsuit.

All of these activities though have worn me out and I'm beginning to understand why my dad avoided all contact with the outside world when he would come home from sea. His standing orders were simple. "Do exactly as I say at all times or I'll put my foot up your ass and if the phone rings, I'M NOT HOME!"

On many youthful occasions I would answer the phone telling the state revenue service or local constabulary that the old man was still out to sea and my mother had no idea when his ship would be pulling in. This was his way of ensuring that time not being paid a wage to deal with crew, cargo and maintenance would not be wasted by the burdens of society which were obviously meant to plague landlubbers not sailors. I can empathize with his disinterest in anything not involving family or the lake during his vacations. I'd probably have a lot more on this blog if I followed his footsteps.

Socializing with friends I haven't seen in months is another item on my vacation punch list and well worth leaving the serenity of home. Below is the fruit of one such social event where a friend and I baked up enough shell fish and vegetables to feed fifty people. Fueled by the meat of fifty lobsters, a keg of Sheepscot River Ale, and a bottle of 1800 tequila it was the perfect late summer day and one of the most memorable nights of my summer.

The process for a proper lobster bake was easier than I had remembered working on the windjammers in Penobscot Bay. Cut an oil tank in half, situate it on top of six concrete blocks and stoke a raging fire underneath. Lay down a thick blanket of wet seaweed, insert potatoes, lobsters, unshucked corn and clams (We used new bait bags to hold them). Place another thick layer of seaweed with an egg on top and cover with wet canvas or tinfoil. In one hour make sure the egg is cooked through and it's done. Can't think of a better way to prepare a meal than that.

As the full moon is past and summer now celestially over I'm hoping to buckle down and get ready for my next trip to sea. The leaves are turning along the Salmon Falls River and cooler weather is surely on the way.

Discharged

2010-08-28T08:44:00.006-04:00

There is a trait inherent to working in the Merchant Marine which one must anticipate and accept; every task or endeavor, no matter how simple, routine or pre-planned has the potential to become a massive pain in the ass. This trait is surely minimized by personal experience, preparation and a good inspection and maintenance schedule but still, some things will always go awry, especially when it's your last day at sea.

At the end of my last hitch the morning started just as usual, early. I was up before my normal wake up call of 0320 anticipating what would hopefully be my last day at work for several months with a muted excitement trying not to jinx myself. My bags were packed and staged for a rapid exodus and I had taken out as many variables as possible by electing to not have the management company arrange my travel but instead rely on family to pick me up at the dock.

Having a reliable relief all ready familiar with the vessel was an added advantage enhancing the chance that I would be spending the night in Charleston with a Sushi dinner and a pony keg of beer lashed firmly down in my belly. Slowly crawling out of a sleepy stupor with the help of good ground coffee I made my way to the bridge to watch the lights ashore grow larger in the early Florida dawn. The boson, who had also just gotten up, called the bridge and received his orders for rigging the pilot ladder. Not wanting to roust one of the day men who would surely have a full day ahead, I joined the boson at the pilot port to lower the rope ladder. What we had done a hundred times before became a wrestling match as the pneumatic winch wouldn't operate to slack down the ladder.

A routine operation soon became imperative as the pilot boat neared us and our vessel neared the channel. If the ladder didn't lower the captain would have to slow the ship loosing steerage as we attempted to board the pilot from the windward side instead of the preferred leeward side. Just as I was anticipating having to wrestle the other ladder to a meter above the water the winch started turning and I hurriedly got the ladder in position as the boson shackled a rung to the deck edge.

Once happily shaped up for the breakwater the mate on watch called out all hands. In half an hour the deck crew would be "Fore n Aft", split between the forward and after mooring stations. That morning I was happy to see not two, not three, but four American vessels including our own moored at the terminal. I was even happier to see the reliefs starting to arrive which signaled the start of the long awaited suitcase parade.

Of course having my bags packs didn't relieve me of a final day's work. The serenity of our self contained vessel, nearly forgotten about by the outside world during our two week crossing from the Suez Canal to the U.S., was shattered as soon as the stern ramp was landed on the dock. Customs and Immigration officials boarded first to compare faces to passport photos in the passport parade. Agriculture boarded to inspect garbage and food stores laid in over seas. The agent wanted to visit with the captain requiring all the times from our logs which he could probably look up for himself had he the wherewithal to do so. Stevedores and longshoremen lined the dock waiting for the go ahead to trudge up the ramp and begin unlashing five decks of cargo for discharge. At least the external audit had been moved to the second day in port, one less thing to contend with during this 127th day at work.

After a long winded ramp meeting with an overly self important foreman the longshoremen got to it and began emptying the ship of cargo. At the same time reliefs, stores, spares and the diesel oil truck arrived. With most of the unlicensed trying to get paid off it came down to the captain, boson, the mate on watch and myself to facilitate the entire operation outside of the engine room on a ship that hadn't been to the United States for two months.

Just as things seemed to be under control and I was beginning to wonder when the hell my relief would walk up the ramp the ABS auditor arrived. "Yes hello, fine to make your acquaintance. Not sure if you know this but we just arrived two hours ago and today might not be the best day to inspect every aspect of our Safety Management System unless you're comfortable doing so without a crew member to point out every single binder, certificate and computer file for you. That's not up to me though so you'd better go and see the captain yourself. Here's your wristband and an escort."

The Master, feeling much the same, asked that the auditor to return the following day when we had been told the audit had been scheduled for and things would be much calmer. Understanding our predicament he departed and I allowed a sigh of relief having dodged a massive bullet.

Beginning to feel a little woozy from too much coffee and skipping breakfast/lunch I wolfed down a cold pancake with the last of my hoarded real maple syrup and gathered the new on signing crew in the ballast control room to complete their ship familiarization paperwork. Running down the list of company required topics such as how not to injure oneself when entering and exiting the head and why not to smoke in bed my relief appeared in the doorway. Trying to hide my elation from the new crew, the poor bastards, I finished up the familiarization with a flurry of initials and signatures so I could get to my turnover. Two hours later I was changing out of my only pair of filthy company approved coveralls and waiting for my brother to call from the gate letting me know his TWIC, MMD and Florida's drivers license was enough to get him into the terminal less I should have to walk to the the highway myself.

With a hearty handshake I bade my fellow officers and only social network for the last four months a fond farewell and hefted my gear into the back of my brothers BMW coupe. As he proudly floored the gas pedal of his one and only material possession I marveled at how fast 90 miles an hour felt after spending four months doing 19 nautical miles an hour. Once we slowed to a legal 75 and I released my grip on the arm rest it hit me like a wave: It was all over.

The last four months of day in, day out work was finally finished. I had been relieved, paid off and discharged and should I choose so, never to return to another ship as long as I lived, or at least as long as my bank account held out. I mention these small trials and tribulations of my last day not to highlight my own endurance but to give an example of what every mariner in this watery world must put up with to return to his or her homeland and family.

There is no such thing as an easy trip especially in a merchant marine where under crewed ships wanting for larger budgets rule the day and over regulation and criminalization of seafarers is the norm. Thankfully for the global economy (And in the case of the United States, national defense) there are still people willing to put up with all of the above and so much more to keep the main engine online and the navigation lights lit and burning brightly. I for one have decided to give up going back to sea for the remainder of my vacation. In a few months though it might be time for another hitch because as anyone who has been to sea knows, living on land is another massive pain in the ass!

The Final Leg

2010-07-18T10:20:00.008-04:00

This is the kind of day sailors live for at sea. Partly cloudy, a force 5 on the starboard quarter, thirteen second roll period (No more than five degrees either side of upright), cool temps and cooler seawater. Stepping out onto the bridge wing with the boson this morning to have a look at the latest painting project was like jumping off a cliff into a lake after the first cold night in September. It felt so distinctly different compared to the heat, humidity and grittiness of the last month that I was awash in waves of physical relief.

A little relief is in high demand right now. The crew is toasted top to bottom with me leading the charge. Only one other guy has been on for longer than I but he has the luxury of taking a day off from working overtime. I on the other hand have a mountain of paperwork and external audit preparations to surmount plus the tail end of an expansive to do list. Evaluations, letters of recommendation, cargo orders, relief notes, overtime projections and work instructions for the preventative maintenance system await me in my office. On deck I have three painting projects, leaking hydraulics to inspect and fix, a crack in the bridge wing awning to weld, an anchor windlass to adjust and plenty of cleaning prior to arriving in port.

The signs of a long voyage at sea are beginning to show in the crew. The food has been hit or miss lately as the stewards department looses steam but you couldn't tell if you were sitting at our table.

Chief Engineer to the Second Assistant: "How's that there tuna casserole?"
Second Assistant in a thick Norwegian accent: "Awww, it's not so very good"
Chief Engineer: "Well, are you gonna eat it?"
Second Assistant: "Yah, I eat it anyway. Why not?"

Yes, we'll eat anything you put in front of us and we'll eat all of it too no matter how disagreeable it may be to our sensitive palates. Sugar on the other hand is something everyone likes the taste of and therefore it's consumed at a higher rate than the not so fresh remaining fruit and vegetables. At home the captain swears he doesn't eat cookies or ice cream but at work it is a daily affair. I've found a new respect for toffee and Norwegian kit-kat bars that were left over in the slop chest by our predecessors.

There was a short panic last week when the first assistant bought out the rest of the slop chest's diet-coke and everyone realized that soda was done for the rest of the trip. At least thanks to the frugality of the mates we've managed to horde our last three pounds of Starbucks on the bridge for the final leg of the trip conserving our caffeine buzzes like junkies.

Now if you're putting down you're latest Patrick O'Brien novel you might think were a bunch of softies hoarding snickers bars and whole bean Starbucks so I must remind you that sailors have always had their creature comforts at sea, some of which are still assured by law in the Focsle Card. While tobacco and rum have lost their prominence in the Merchant Marine (There is a Zero Tolerance alcohol policy on board and smoking is only allowed on weather decks), like grog with a wedge of lime, comfort foods are in high demand.

Lately I've been waking up exactly sixty seconds before my call at three twenty in the morning. The result of fours months of institutionalization I am now biologically attuned to the impending ring of my phone and rise without question for watch each day. I have a constant tension in the back of my neck which embarrassingly is more likely from the gym and poor posture but I'll blame work anyway. My attention span is also faltering, not a good trait when operating heavy machinery such as ships and the like, but this is an unavoidable result of intense routine and isolation.

Another sign of our time away from civilization has been dinnertime conversations digressing to playing Who's Hotter, as in "Who's hotter? Taylor Swift or Kimberly Perry?" This weighty conundrum was bantered about for a good five minutes before the Chief interjected with an even more perplexing query "What about Kellie Pickler? Is she hotter than Taylor Swift?"

Knowing the Chief to be a huge The Band Perry fan I had to Google all of the above country starlets and finally side with Kimberly. Really I could care less especially when it comes to modern pop-country. I'd be more interested in comparing Gretchen Bleiler to Jessica Gysin but at this point it's just something to talk about that doesn't involve work. Well, that and because the conversation revolves around the other half to life's grand equation; The source of love, companionship and physical affection, all of which are in shorter supply than diet coke these days.

Lastly even our homing pigeon knew time was getting short and alighted in the Suez Canal bound hopefully for Venice or Milan or perhaps even Dubrovnik. In his place the natural world installed a cricket that was cause for some head scratching yesterday at five in the morning. Inundated by the Mediterranean's endless stream of Digital Selective Calling alarms on the VHF radio we couldn't quite figure out if it was another alarm or the effect of cavitation on the wall panels but after a little searching we found the bugger squeaking away under the port side bridge door. I still can't figure out how a cricket got on thirty miles off the coast of Algeria. He must have come with the lettuce in Egypt.

Even as I make my way to watch this afternoon thoughts of traveling home will be close at hand. Each time I come up to the bridge and smell a fresh pot of coffee brewing I can't help but think of the back of the airplane. If it's the third mate's watch it smells like Jet Blue but if it's the old man's preferred brew it smells like US Air. At this point I'd drink any coffee with glee if it's on the flight home.

Slinging chain

2010-06-28T05:53:00.019-04:00

It has taken a while to come to this conclusion but I'm convinced manual labor is one of the reasons I love my job. Office days have their place, charts need correcting and stores need ordering but the days when you work up a sweat and fall asleep with exhausted muscles give a satisfaction unattainable from excel spreadsheets.

Growing up in a town where many of my friend's fathers were carpenters, farmers, tilers and fishermen manual labor was a normal means to a living. Though it took years of landscaping and stall mucking to build up my own tolerance to hard work going to sea has refined my endurance when working towards the brink of exhaustion.

Every vessel afloat has it's own set of physical challenges inherent to the operation. Sailing was hardest in the early morning hours after being roused from a perfectly warm and semi dry bunk to stand soggy on a pitching deck peering into a cold bank of fog drinking tepid coffee and eating wet Granola. A tanker was always challenging but even more so heaving butterworth machines 50 feet up from the tank top while washing tanks under the Gulf of Mexico sun.

Working on deck here is like any other ship; maintenance and repair, lubrication schedules, chipping rust and painting steel, and lots of cleaning. The cargo though differs from ship to ship; container, bulk, petroleum and Ro/Ros have their own unique forms of corporal punishment.

Over the last two weeks along the shores of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf the ship has discharged and loaded cargo in five different ports. Loading is a longer event as each piece is positioned to minimize broken stowage and lashed according to its weight and construction. Cars receive four small tension straps, the same with SUVs. Larger pieces will get a web lashing rated to 5 metric tonnes. Anything over 10 tonnes requires chain.

When loading the longshoremen will lash the vehicles under the direction of stevedores with one of the three ship's officers giving it the thumbs up. As long as the lashings are properly led to the deck fittings, of proper material and number, it's a hands off operation. Any questions about the arranging or securing of the cargo as it is loaded default to me as Chief Mate and unless I'm happy the longshoremen will have to do it again.

When discharging the longshoremen break the lashings and tow, push, or drive the cargo off. The lashings though are left strewn all over the holds. In some ports I can get the longshoremen to at least organize the lashings if not pick them up placing them in bins I've strategically located all over the ship. In other ports they won't think of touching them once removed from the cargo.

As it always works out my department of 9 will end up stowing the majority of the lashings and then clean the holds. On a busy coast this becomes paramount to all other work as a new cargo will fill the holds before the day is through. Often I'll have to call all hands and wake up ABs who spent the entire morning steering, docking and then standing his or her watch. Now instead of sleeping they're back in the holds picking chain up off the dusty decks. They have a hard time complaining within earshot of me though since nobody has had less sleep than I.

Chain is plentiful on a Ro/Ro and is stored in metal bins that can be stacked in racks or on top of one another. We use a three and a half meter length of 11 millimeter chain rated for 7 tonnes working load to secure the cargo. It takes four of these to lash down a twelve tonne tractor and sixteen to lash a 60 tonne bucket loader. The chain is tightened with a binder bar which is tensioned by one to six longshoremen depending on their mass (A rough formula for this is three Bangladeshis laying into a chain equals the tightening power of one South Korean).

Slinging chain is a loud and forceful affair. Done haphazardly it creates a mess in the bins so I constantly instruct the crew to organize the lashings first on deck and then lay them in neatly one by one into the bins. A forklift or two is needed to shuffle empty bins around the hold while other crew remove dunnage and rubber matting.
The heat this month has added to the intensity of the job and along with a few sandstorms made working in the holds very unpleasant. Until the ramp is secured after cargo and the ventilation shut down a fine coating of brown dust typical of Kuwait or Saudi Arabia coats every inch on the inside and outside of the ship. Only large air filters keep most of it from making it's way into the accommodations.

One of the enjoyable aspects of working a cargo that requires longshoremen is interfacing with the local stevedores. Unlike a tanker where the only people you meet from shore are the gaugers and dockmen Ro/Ros require a lot of labor. While the crew doesn't have any direct sway over the longshoremen we can talk to their supervisors, the stevedores, if they're not doing the job correctly, a fact I learned the hard way working with West Coast unions.

I do all I can to form good relationships with the stevedores and in the Mid-East this means a lot of hand holding. Holding hands with other men is customary in this part of the world as a gesture of friendship or when you have something important to say . I've seen a stevedore hold the hand of a thieving longshoremen while chastising him but more commonly hands are held in a positive gesture.

Seeing the job the longshoremen were doing in the holds while in Kuwait I would have held the foreman's hand all day. A group of fifteen Pakistani longshoremen were clearing a hold of chain in half an hour and they didn't mind doing it. Thanks to the head stevedore, an Egyptian longing for American made Jeans, he was getting me way ahead of the ball for the next load. All I had to do was promise to bring a pair of size 8 American made shoes back for him which he'd buy off me.

After cargo was finished I took the utility truck down to the dock to read the drafts and noticed another American ship in port. I stopped by the gangway and inquired about a friend who worked for the same company. She wasn't on board but a moment later a familiar face I hadn't seen in six years walked around the corner. The last time we had talked was in college but ten minutes later we were caught up on the last six years I had an open invite to go skiing in Colorado. Maintaining friendships over vast distances and spans of time is a necessary skill for a mariner.

Once we were headed back through the Strait of Hormuz a stowaway was discovered on board living off the bread crumbs left scattered on the deck by sympathetic crew. Two banded legs, one holding a microchip gave him away as a homing pigeon who was soon named Larry Bird. Being so domesticated I was able to pick him up checking for a serial number so we could see where he came from. The only markings, on the microchip and stamped under his wing, is a globe with "PanAsian" written on it. At this point were unsure whether he's in a competition or really carrying a message.

After a little research we learned that homing pigeons will often ride ships for long stretches of time if they're headed in the right direction. I just can't figure out how he knew we were headed west towards the Mediterranean and not south around the cape or East towards the Pacific. Smart pigeon that Larry Bird is.

Two Gulfs

2010-06-22T02:13:00.023-04:00

It was my third time on a ship in the Middle East that I remember thinking to myself "If there is one place in the world where I do not want to work I've found it." Between the heat, the sand, the barren landscape and the underlying hostility toward Americans there were very few if any redeeming qualities to make a 21-day sea passage feel worthwhile once the adventure had worn off.

Today I'm more willing to accept the Middle East as a necessary part of my occupation. If this is where the cargo needs to be shipped and my ship is bringing it then so be it. A job is not to be taken for granted and I’ve had a few good stints working in more exotic and romantic locales.

Still it isn't without some reservation that I sign on especially with the situation off Somalia. The following message, transmitted daily by the International Maritime Bureau in Kuala Lumpur is a good reminder of what mariners are up against in these dangerous waters:

21 0001 UTC JUN 2010

WARNING WARNING WARNING

SOMALI PIRATES ATTACKING SHIPS OFF THE ENTIRE COAST OF SOMALIA AND BEYOND INCLUDING NORTHERN SOMALI COAST, GULF OF ADEN, SOUTH RED SEA/BAB EL MANDEB, OFF YEMEN, ARABIAN SEA/OFF OMAN, OFF EASTERN AND SOUTHERN SOMALI COAST, OFF NEIGHBOURING KENYA, OFF TANZANIA, OFF SEYCHELLES, OFF MADAGASCAR, WEST AND CENTRAL INDIAN OCEAN AND WEST AND SOUTH INDIA AND WEST MALDIVES. 311 ATTACKS INCLUDING 72 HIJACKINGS HAVE BEEN REPORTED BY VESSELS SINCE JANUARY 2009.

During our recent transit through the Gulf of Aden as we passed by Yemen, the UAE and Oman before entering the Persian Gulf, multiple ships reported being approached by pirates in skiffs. One was attacked 24 hours ahead of us and another 12 hours astern. Both of the attacks involved small arms fire and aluminum boarding ladders and took place in the Strait of Bab el Mandeb. Both ships increased speed and evaded the Somalis.

Referred to as the BAM, the Strait of Bab el Mandeb is a choke point in between Eritrea, Djibouti and Yemen where the Red Sea empties into the Gulf of Aden. Since coalition naval forces have somewhat subdued pirate activity in the Gulf of Aden the pirates operating north of Somalia have been pushed into this narrow and very busy body of water.

The Haycock Islands viewd from the south.

Reservations aside, working for a company that has taken a proactive security posture operating in high threat regions means that I can sleep soundly at night. The personnel and systems employed in protecting us from Somali hijackings ensure that pirates would meet with failure if they made any attempt to board us.

As continued hijackings prove, this is not the case for most ships. Whether it's the corporate philosophy or more likely the lack of capital for security, the pirates probe hundreds of ships outside the IRTC each week without adequate security to deter them giving the pirates a choice of the most appealing vessels. (The IRTC or Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor is used by escorted convoys and is patrolled by the coalition navy)

Having an uneventful transit we encountered another foe approaching the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. The heat in the Middle East is a natural wonder better appreciated from the bridge of an air-conditioned ship than inside the cargo holds. Sometimes dry, sometimes humid, the force with which the Arabian Sun beats down on steel ships and weary sailors is without remorse. I keep telling my guys, most of who have decades on me, to drink less coffee and more water until were back in the Atlantic Ocean. The last thing we need is a heat related injury that can become life threatening before you can fill a bathtub with cold water.

The Persian Gulf is a place like no other. The water can be blue and clear or muddy and brown depending on when the last sandstorm rolled through. Visibility is normally limited which is unfortunate as the periphery of the gulf is lined by oil rigs and reefs. Sunsets are mired in a haze of humidity or a shroud of sand if kicked up from the desert by strong sudden bursts of wind.

There has to be some imaginary fence that keeps the crazies penned inside its shallow confined waters. The VHF radio serves as a cell phone, a soap box and a pulpit. As soon as you pass the Strait of Hormuz leaving Oman to port and Iran to starboard the radio becomes a nonstop audio assault on sanity. There’s constant Digital Selective Calling distress alerts, the omnipresent “Filipino Monkey” slurs, barnyard animal sounds, solo vocalists singing in Arabic, Brittany Spears fans holding the VHF next to a tape deck, and more devout Muslims at the dock who key their mic as the Imam ashore calls the people to prayer.

Nonstop action on the radio is mirrored by the amount of near shore traffic. In addition to the world’s navies and shipping traffic fishing boats, coastal traders, and smugglers rush back and forth over the hazy water showing dim lights and a reckless fearlessness of collision. The water is hot too, over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes life ever so miserable for engineers trying to keep their cooling water cold enough to wick unwanted heat away from the engine and generators.

Last night as I watched the Moon, Saturn, Mars and Venus form a diagonal line in the western sky I thought about how many friends, classmates and people I have met work in this part of the world. Some sail on liner services similar to the one my ship is on. Others work on shuttle tankers and containerships that never leave the Gulf. I’m sure we all feel the same passing through the BAM or entering the Persian Gulf. We’d rather be at home having barbecues at the beach or spending the day on a lake but this is where the jobs that we chose bring us, at least it is for now.

Cabotage and the GOM

2010-06-16T08:40:00.009-04:00

If there is one thing that merchant mariners will agree on it is that the Jones Act has helped preserve careers for tens of thousands of professional mariners on board ships flagged in the United States. This cabotage law has maintained generations of mariners while supporting the few remaining commercial ship yards in America.

A piece of legislation written into the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, it stipulates that any cargo carried between one U.S. port and another, including Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico, must be carried on board a vessel constructed and registered in the United States and crewed my American Merchant seaman. The companies, ships, tug boats, training institutions and skilled mariners needed to fulfill domestic commerce are often touted by proponents of the act as a valuable component for national security in time of conflict and crisis.

Often controversial, as any protectionist law with a union bias is, many of the legislation's loudest opponents are American shipping corporations who flag their fleets over seas. Other critics include smaller companies that might like to flag ships in the U.S. but could not afford to build them domestically and foreign shipping companies who would like a piece of the coastal tanker trade. And of course lets not forget the consumers of Hawaii and Puerto Rico who pay exorbitant prices at the grocery store for goods which could be carried for cheaper on a ship flagged in Monrovia with a crew of Indonesians than a Lykes or Matson Lines container ship.

Lately there has been a lot of talk about the Jone's Act affecting the pace of the clean up in the Gulf of Mexico. It has been asserted in some media outlets that the Jones Act may be to blame for the reluctance to employ foreign skimmers in the cleanup. While substantial resources have been offered from other maritime nations the use of these large oil spill response vessels has been much less than the situation seems to warrant frustrating many people including myself.

Today the National Incident Commander and former Commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Thad Allen issued the following statement: “While we have not seen any need to waive the Jones Act as part of this historic response, we continue to prepare for all possible scenarios,” said Admiral Allen. “Should any waivers be needed, we are prepared to process them as quickly as possible to allow vital spill response activities being undertaken by foreign-flagged vessels to continue without delay.”

When I first read about this new vilification of the Jones Act it seemed almost comical. To say that the Jones Act is preventing a quicker cleanup of a mess left by the offshore oil and gas industry, one of the biggest loop holes there is to the Jones Act, seemed ridiculous. All of the Transocean Drill Ships trying to stem the flow of oil ARE foreign flagged vessels so why would skimmers present a problem? (Formerly a company based in the US but now relocated to Switzerland, Transocean registers their vessels in the Marshal Islands, a nation in which I happen to be an STCW licensed officer)

Besides the entire oil and gas exploratory drill fleet the gulf is also home to several tankers that do nothing but lighter oil from bigger Ultra Large Crude Oil Tankers and take it to American refineries. This doesn't even require a loophole since the origin of the oil is from overseas. Still, it's a foreign flagged ship operating exclusively within the EEZ.

Additionally last September Customs and Border Protection declined to issue a revised ruling which could have positively affected hundreds of the now idle offshore support vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. The ruling, if it had been passed, would have prohibited foreign vessels operating in support roles in the gulf not involving the direct transport of goods from shore. American registered Seismic, repair and installation vessels would have seen an unprecedented demand for work. Not having enough boats available was one of the arguments against the revision.

With all of this going on it seems laughable that the Jones Act could substantially impede the clean up beyond the issuance of a waiver which Admiral Allen is ready to grant if deemed necessary. While utilizing whatever means necessary to deal with this disaster is fine with me it's the pace with which were using foreign assets that is troubling.

After hurricane Katrina I spent two months working as a third mate on a relief vessel operated by the Maritime Administration. During that time I saw dysfunction at every level of government. The entire system from the Parishes to the State to the Fed were failing to adequately address the severity of the situation.

Jones Act waivers were granted to several ships, the most conspicuous of which were two Carnival Cruise liners docked downtown and meant to house local emergency responders. Throughout the two months the word on the street was that neither ship was used at over 10 percent capacity and that as soon as the New Orleans Police found out that the swimming pools and 24 hour buffet weren't going to be open they boogied to better quarters, in mostly stolen cars.

That was a case where a Jones Act waiver was obviously unnecessary and unwise and maybe a little too good to be true for Carnival. As far as the Gulf of Mexico not having a fleet of Dutch skimmers enroute is a sign of dysfunction in this response. There may all ready be 15 foregin vessels involved but 150 might work a little better. Unfortunately for the poor folks down south last night's decisiveness is looking more and more like it's too little two months too late.

Hot Jelly Flies

2010-06-13T21:20:00.010-04:00

Hot dry heat, jelly fish and flies were the first three things I noticed arriving at the Suez Canal. The anchorages north of Port Suez were just beginning to fill up with ships waiting to enter one of two south bound convoys. The air was no longer reminiscent of milder days spent crossing the mid Atlantic and the ketchup bottle at dinner was now attracting a persistent Egyptian housefly, the likes of which had been absent for the last 18 days.

Jelly fish surrounded the ship numbering in the thousands. A large white or blue bowling ball sized species, they drifted beneath the waves aimlessly pulsating, most likely an invasive jelly living off the saltier and warmer effluent coming out of the canal from the Red Sea which slowly flows into the Mediterranean. They were so thick you couldn't jump in the water without hitting one.

While we waited for the convoy to begin very early the next morning a stores boat pulled along side so we could receive fresh fruit and vegetables which included some of the best strawberries I've ever had. Whether they were from Egypt or Israel or Jordan I couldn't be sure but they were tiny and sweeter than the G.M. one's we get in the states.

The pilots came on one by one throughout the morning and afternoon. The first pilot amazed the bridge team by eating more cookies in one transit than had ever been seen before. One by one the pilot would take a cookie from the coffee station, return to the gyro repeater to enjoy while conning the vessel, and then for another slowly decimating the entire box . The last pilot came aboard in a white linen suit complete with a vintage Suez Canal cover with scrambled eggs and all declaring that it was he whom held the oft contested title of senior pilot.

Before entering the Great Bitter Lake to anchor and await the passage of the single north bound convoy we passed close by the third largest super yacht in the world. As informed by the pilot, the vessel is owned by the Sultan of Oman and was headed back to the Emirate. While the Sultan and his family were not likely to have been aboard the yacht was still impressive measuring in at over 500 feet. We followed her all the way out and into the Gulf of Suez later in the afternoon.

Anchoring for a few hours gave the Captain and Chief Engineer just enough time for a quick nap, both had been up all night and the previous day. To keep the helmsman fresh I put them on a rotating schedule spending only an hour at a time on the wheel. Even though it's a straight shot most of the way one misinterpreted or incorrect rudder movement and the ship could suck herself across the bank blocking a line of ships extending for miles through the desert from their destinations.

While passing through one of the larger towns along the canal we boarded one oncoming crew member, a new third assistant from my Alma Mater who had graduated only four weeks ago and who's luggage hadn't made the connecting flight. I felt sincere pity for him knowing that when you pack for sea for the first time you really do try and fit your life into a bag and showing up to work for the next three months without that duffel is truly a bummer.

Also boarding in the starlit brilliance of the desert night was our contracted security team who will ride the vessel for the duration of our time in the middle east. Due to the extreme piratical activity in the India Ocean the company made a proactive decision to deter hijackings. By making each vessels as hard of targets as possible the pirates would be insane not to choose a softer or more vulnerable target. And while there are a great number of coalition war ships now patrolling the Indian Ocean the hijackings continue with ships being probed, attacked and boarded daily by Somalians. Piracy has always been an inherent risk to marine commerce and unfortunately today it is no different.

We all feel confident that the presence of several very well trained, professional and experienced security personnel on board the ship will deter any attempts at taking the ship for a ransom. While it is not a solution to the piracy issue it does make everyone sleep better at night and from my perspective, not providing ships in this region with properly equipped security teams is a huge threat to the well being of the crew. The ICC's Piracy Report shows that the threat persists and just yesterday a chemical tanker was attacked ten miles north of the Strait of Bab El Mandeb. More on the BAM later.

While encounters with Somali thugs in the Gulf of Aden can be deterred the heat is inescapable on deck. I reminded the crew this afternoon under a paint peeling sun that drinking lots of water, not coffee and soda, but water and taking breaks when needed is imperative. Heat stress becomes life threatening much faster than most tough, macho and hard working sailors think. That last thing I need is to go short a man on an all ready tiny crew.

The third mate looked up the forecast for our next port of call and it didn't even bother stating the temperature centigrade. "Extremely Hot" was all it said. Today is the hottest day of my nearly three months on board and it's only going to get worse. With a sea water temp of 86 degrees not even filling the pool will do any good on a day like this. And while I whine about the sea temp the engineers are really concerned. A hotter ocean means a hotter engine and when the diesel engine gets too hot it's a big problem. Another thing we could do without is going Dead In the Water to replace an exhaust valve while in the Gulf of Aden. Security would definitely have their hands full then.

Politics

2010-06-06T11:40:00.011-04:00

One of my first Captains would always tell passengers "I never get religious or political when I'm on the water" when asked about her opinion on something regarding either religion or politics.

Sometimes the passengers would begrudge my wise, mysterious and beautiful boss having hoped to stoke the fires of contention instigating a debate with a strong and fearless schooner captain. The less confrontational passengers understood that a schooner is just too small of a place for one to expound their political or philosophical dogma.

But sometimes it just can't be helped, especially when every morning my Captain comes up on the bridge and changes National Public Radio to Fox and Friends on the XM radio. It's not that I am unwilling to listen to Glen Beck or Bill O'Reilly, I just can't take the old man's incessant categorizing of Fascist Obama Liberals.

I feel compelled to pipe up and remind him that the political landscape of America, despite what television networks would like us to believe, is not black and white. It's not just a bunch of freeloading liberal communists waiting for food stamps and one world government while hard working, gun loving, freedom fighting patriots who are sick and tired of big government try to right the political spectrum by chanting Sarah Palin's name at Tea Parties.

He would disagree but at this point it's a non issue, the XM radio signal fizzled out five days before Gibraltar. Unfortunately due to these early morning encounters I have now been pegged the ship's liberal and am often subjected to verbal ridicule.

Anyway, my whole point here is every time I mention something really good that I read in the New York Times it just reaffirms that I'm another Harvard educated Yankee liberal espousing the redistribution of wealth and big Federal government. While I do believe in a flat income tax, if you call that redistribution, and in increased autonomy for our united STATES to limit the Federal government's interference in our lives, the New York Times has been doing a really good job of covering the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

As highlighted by another Ro/Ro enthusiast, Kennebec Captain, the New York Times posted an article on June 5th entitled "In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was In Charge of Rig." This article, to my knowledge, has so far been the best reporting on the real issues that led to the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States and will undoubtedly be the focus of the investigation for months to come.

Looking at it from a commercial perspective it seems unbelievable that the Deepwater Horizon's Vessel Response Plan for an oil leak explained how the pollution would be mitigated but didn't require the material necessary to stop a leak to be readily available. Nor did the response plan realistically estimate the impact a leak would have and the resources required to deal with it.

Procedures, equipment, safety tests and all sorts of other "regulated" aspects of deep water drilling were approved by regulatory bodies who were in the habit of granting exemptions to keep things manageable and the rig drilling in deeper and deeper water.

Furthermore, unlike a cargo ship, drilling platforms have multiple contractors on board in addition to the charterer, in this case BP. Each company is looking out for their best interests while the Captain is supposed to be looking out for the interests of the crew and vessel.

As explained in the article, "In testimony to government investigators, rig workers repeatedly described a “natural conflict” between BP, which can make more money by completing drilling jobs quickly, and Transocean, which receives a leasing fee from BP every day that it continues drilling."

It would be as if my ship carried a representative for each cargo on board. The cars would have a supercargo, the tractors, the project cargo, and each would surely weigh in on which port we should call first. Ultimately the primary concern would be the bottom line for their company, not the safety of the vessel and success of the voyage beyond their cargo's final destination.

As warning signs were ignored on board the Deepwater Horizon it illustrates that a breakdown in the management of a very sophisticated vessel had begun well before the actual explosion. The oil and gas industry is a very different animal from where I work in deep sea ocean transportation and I couldn't imagine the politics of dealing with multiple companies on board a production rig. Yet the Master's overall responsibility and command of a vessel does not change.

If there is any good that can come out of this disaster I hope it includes increased oversight on part of the master, who is ultimately responsible, in the critical decisions that affect the safety of the rig. A rig manager may have more expertise in aspects of drilling but that doesn't mean they should have the final say when it's pitting dollars against safety. This event could and should have long term ramifications in the O&G industry well beyond the 6 month moratorium on drilling.

Human Resources

2010-06-04T18:14:00.002-04:00

For the life of me I can't remember what it was I screwed up on my first noon slip. Observed distance? Speed made good? Engine slip? But I do remember the Chief Engineer calling the bridge at a quarter past noon, I had the 12 to 4, and asking me "What the fack is wrong with you? Didn't they teach you how to do a freakin noonslip at that academy?"

I was mortified. I had just gotten my ass chewed out by the old man for having two charts on the chart table at once and now a surly hick from Maine was yelling at me over the phone for being an idiot third mate. I didn't even bother defending myself against the daily heckling I received at coffee time and at meals. I might have been a green mate but I was ripe fruit for a seasoned crew's picking entertainment.

Crews come in all shapes and sizes and they are always changing. Since those first days at sea I have now worked with hundreds of different mariners. Some bosons, chief mates, chief engineers and captains I've spent years with, but the majority of co-workers, especially in the unlicensed department are never the same. When I left my first ship I crossed my fingers that my next old man and Chief Engineer would take it a little easier on me.

The cast of characters for this voyage is more colorful than ever. First there is my watch partner, A Yemeni my own age whose sweeping skills have improved. He is now my star cleaner mainly because putting a pneumatic chipping hammer in his hands is a dangerous affair. I'm pleased to have a Muslim on board for a voyage to the Middle East. Each day I ask him questions about Islam and receive spirited lectures in Muslim culture, values, faith and Arabic. In return I answer his unending questions which ever since lending him Knight's seamanship have become impressively relevant to standing a watch. He's figured out how the ARPAs provide range, bearing and closest point of approach for other ships on the screen and has a clear idea of what information can be gleaned off charts.

I had assumed that Mo's parents immigrated to Dearborn Michigan when he was a kid based on his thick accent and having children in the Gulf region but I was wrong. He's a third generation American with a lot of family who has served in the Armed Forces. It was unconventional to stray from the Navy or Air Force when he decided to join the Merchant Marine on Great Lake bulkers. This is Mo's first ocean crossing and his enthusiasm for learning about deep-sea sailing is an encouraging sign for tomorrow's mariners.

We do have one first generation immigrant on board, the Third Mate. Naturalized in his teens our medical officer is a young hawesepiper from Ireland making his first trip as a mate. He lucked out getting his license and then a job in short order and I lucked out getting a hawespiper on my rotation.

I am continually impressed by the younger mates I have worked with that began sailing as apprentice seaman and took the initiative to study and test for a third mate's license. Their education at sea brings a set of skills unattainable at maritime academies into the workplace. Any lacking knowledge in the theory of nautical sciences is amply made up for by a zeal to learn that theory while being able to run circles around academy grads on deck.

When I first joined the ship the Boson was in his early seventies. This made me wonder how many occupations in the world involving such brutal work as picking up chain lashings in a 90 degree cargo hold and anchoring ships in freezing gales retain employees into their golden years?

The first Boson began his working career in a carnival troupe decorating staging and props as a boy on his native Island of Trinidad. At sixteen he shipped on a Norwegian freighter where he learned the values of a good Boson at an early age. All I had to do was ask him one time at six in the morning and by seven at night everything on my to do list, plus his own, was finished, cleaned, stowed and secured with no oversight and zero bitching. He remained on Norwegian ships for many years before moving to Queens and becoming a United States citizen 30 years ago.

With more time astern than I have at sea he was one of the wisest, wittiest old school seaman I have met. "Nothing is impossible for God or a seaman" he would often say in his thick island accent when confronted with a difficult task. A saying he had learned from Norwegian officers in the fifties was as obvious as ever when working with him.

My new boson is not much younger with 35 years at sea, fifteen of those supervising the deck gang. While almost as self sufficient as his predecessor I heard some scuttlebutt the other evening that he had been told the officers were displeased with his performance. Showing an uncommon egotistical fragility he apparently broke down in tears in the Boson locker.

I was surprised this story made it all the way from the foc'sle to my ears and it made me yearn for my old boson that never showed a sign of weakness or emotion when dealing with officers. To do so would have gone against every fiber of his steel nerves. On the other hand this was a rare display of insecurity brought on most likely by a disgruntled and manipulative AB as no officer has reported anything negative about "Bobo". Nonetheless the episode required, without letting on I had heard anything, that I show my sensitive side shoring up his bruised ego, however unfounded, with a couple of sincere compliments.

The first Captain on board was preceded by a confrontational hard ass reputation. I was relieved to learn that he had grown up on Munjoy Hill, a neighborhood I frequent often in one of my favorite towns. He was no more than another loud mouthed Portlander with a massive ego, bigger than life laugh and a penchant for good times. The hill provided a common topic of discussion as I could name all the new restaurants and bars on Congress Avenue as he reminisced about his days of delinquency. Ironically his cousins ran the local convenience store and had contributed to my own delinquency selling me PBR tallboys on cold winter nights for years.

Since we had both grown up in Maine, the Captain and I had something in common with the First and Chief Engineers as well. I don't believe I've sat around a more entertaining dinner table than here listening to three mariners lambaste one another with the acidic sarcasm perfected by a lifetime in Maine. That lobster-pound sense of humor, which to the uninitiated must seem awfully abrasive and childish, more than once had me howling with laughter as the Chief Engineer abused the English language unnecessarily contracting words or adding syllables where they don't belong. Mainers just don't hold back, at all. I myself have been called out on my lack of an inner monologue once or twice.

Ironically that same Chief Engineer is the one who verbally stove my ego in over a noon slip long ago. Now that I've rose up the ranks a touch we sit across the table chiding one another, him for owning a Shetland pony nicknamed Rockstar (For his daughters) and me for driving a Jetta with New Hampshire plates. The same Chief who once reminded me so much of abusive upper classmen my freshman year is now helping me brush up on my welding and cutting skills in the machine shop.

Not everyone's hue is a rosy one. I have one AB who turned out to be one of the most trying and displeasing shipmate's ever. His tactics are based on a stern belief that he is the best merchant mariner in the world and involve doing anything to get the officers wound up. Since he's just biding his time as a watch stander studying for a license of his own instead of working overtime we don't see too much of him beyond watch.

Still he has managed to irk the officers one time or another and so far he's gotten two good ones over on me. The first was when he began asking for a pair of cow hide gloves. I told him that there were plenty of gloves in the Boson's locker which I had set out for the guys but no, he wanted the nice one's, the officer grade, and he knew I had them. Trying not to make him feel any more special I denied him the nicer gloves so he went right to the top on a coffee break telling the captain that I was "Screwing" with him. The Captain, having little patience for such trivial matters, gave him a pair of his own cowhide gloves. The smile on his face for the next two days really did get my goat but I did my best to hide it.

The second time I told him to pick up a piece of trash he threw into my utility truck when coming back from shore. He grabbed it and chucked it into a trash can as I had ordered and then went straight back to the Captain demanding an hour of over time for the job because he was off duty and taking orders from the mate. The captain, after telling him no, told me about it and I was doubly pissed.

Since then he's been quite the sociopath towards the officers and crew (He elects to stand his watch on the bridge wing) but is slowly opening up to the Boson. Hopefully I can get him to come out of his shell and see that he doesn't know everything even if he did spend 20 years fishing on the Bearing Sea. Soon enough I'll have a couple days of mandatory overtime in those 90-degree cargo holds. That should provide a good vantage of his own limits.

Peepers

2010-05-23T21:14:00.011-04:00

Growing up it was easy to tell when summer was just around the corner. Once the rustle of last fall's leaves had been softened by new grass and the sun diffused through budding branches the sound of peepers at sunset would officially begin what I always felt as summer's rightful start. The peepers meant fireflies and fireflies meant camping. The wood stove would turn cold as rocks dredged up from the lake grew hot around camp fires.

Even when playing in the woods or sailing a 19 foot O'day Sailor up and down the lake gave way to hitchhiking into town to meet friends and hiding out in the woods from the authorities the peepers still called out the beginning and the ending of my summer days.

Last night, just about as far as a pilot can take a ship up the Cooper River I heard those peepers, not in the lakes of Maine but the marshes of South Carolina, for the first time in a long while. The natural and constant harmony had my sentiments running high with expectations that lazy summer days were just around the corner.

And then my radio crackled, "Mate, how high for the pilot ladder?"

"2.5 meters Bos" I replied snapping out of my reverie remembering that I only had twenty minutes until Stand By Engines to warm up my hydraulic pumps, close the last water tight doors and then raise the massive stern ramp. The tugs and a three hour outbound pilotage weren't far away whereas my summer vacation still was.

This has, bar none, been the busiest month of my professional life. And even though there have been half a dozen vignettes each day I really wanted to blog about none of them have made it onto my keyboard. I've foregone exercise, healthy eating, any semblance of abstinence from caffeine and returning emails from my own grandmother to keep above water at work.

Why so busy? For starters over the last thirty-five days on board only five have been spent at sea. After an initial discharge to empty the holds we spent two weeks in the shipyard getting some essential repairs and a new paint job taken care of. After climbing every ballast tank on board I had two days at sea to catch up on all the useless paperwork I had been ignoring. Calling on our first east coast port meant receiving 75 days worth of stores, spares and provisions not to mention a full load of automobiles for the Arabian Peninsula and a new crew.

Then there was the christening ceremony, a necessity for a ship which until three months ago flew the blue cross of Scandinavia on a field of red. The event meant dress uniforms for the senior officers, something I hadn't worn since the maritime academy. Awkwardly walking around the ship with a Chief and Captain both from Maine wearing corophrams and high pressure covers reminded me a little too much of junior cruise. All that was missing were hundreds of Brazilian school children waving little flags on the dock and Arctic.

At least the party, my first exposure to corporate events, was worth getting dressed up for. The day kicked off with the officers giving ship tours to the 300 attendees including the CEOs of our biggest customers, representatives of the Department of Transportation, the Maritime Administration and of course the union leadership of the officers and crew.

The night before a production company set about transforming my meticulously organized and swept cargo hold into a banquet hall complete with twenty foot curtains and staging. Amongst trays of coffee and croissants the dignitaries mingled and were then seated for the ceremony. After speeches a bottle of confetti was smashed by the new ship's godmother onto the stem of a replica ship model.

A luncheon was served after an hour of socializing with hor d'oeuvres and an open bar. The ship's officers were seated together, in a corner far enough away to crack jokes throughout, with multiple forks and a tantalizing glass of champagne. The five of us only had a small sip for the vessel's namesake toast by the acting Maritime Administrator and then retired back to the ship exhausted after hours of interfacing with the public, a feeling long forgotten since my last tall ships festival.

As soon as we felt like we had the ship to ourselves once again loading recommenced with one of the more interesting cargoes I've ever stowed. Over the course of two ports we received the entirety of a power plant destined for the Middle East. Every component necessary, mostly American made, was loaded onto the ship ranging in size from small boxes of break bulk to massive generators brought on board by a specialized trailer. Lashing arrangements varied from 5 ton ratchet straps to 11,000 pound transport chain and welding rods.

Other noteworthy events as of late have been once again keeping a work log and ridding the ship of a useless Boson. Ironically the shipment of two rather nutty seaman compelled me to once again keep a work journal which doubles as a place to document crew issues. The relief Boson, whom at first I thought would work out fine, turned out to be a conniving drunkard who resented working for a mate half his age and sewed hate and discontent amongst the crew.

Dramatic accusations for someone who lasted less than a week, yes, but three days into it I knew that taking this man to Kuwait and back as Boson would spell disaster. Thankfully I was tipped off by a like minded crew member that he was hitting a bottle of Sky Vodka in his cabin nightly, and therefore I had a back up plan in case my more humane method didn't succeed. Worse than all other offenses, and only two days on the job, he tried to get my star AB fired for overstaying his tour as a lowly "C" book. The port agent, quite aware of his shenanigans called him out for it and turned a blind eye but I wouldn't hear about it until after his departure.

Fortunately for this jerks career he took my offer on the "Easy way out" and packed his bags after frothing at the mouth for ten minutes in my office while accusing me of every manner of disrespect short of discriminating Italians such as he who thought they were made men. My gait grew lighter as soon as I saw him pouting his way down to the dock sea bag in tow until the thought of once again casting the dice into the union halls across the nation crossed my mind.

Fortunately for the crew we've gotten a 15 year veteran Boson. Unlike the last guy this seafarer has a healthy dose of pride and joins in tasks alongside of his men rather than slinking back into his cabin. Intent on doing his job correctly the first time he has assured me that once I learn to trust him he'll do me no wrong which is exactly what I need. We may have a few loose cannons on board but all the personnel in leadership positions have turned out to be seasoned and knowledgeable, all those besides myself.

While I long for peepers and the early days of summer the thought of camping in August will have to hold me over. There is so much to look forward to that next vacation home but before that a lot of work will need to get done.

Thankyou New York Times

2010-05-08T05:51:00.006-04:00

An article in today's New York Times had done a service to the merchant mariners of the Oil & Gas industry who survived the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico on April 2oth, 2010. I have several friends who work for the affected drilling company and know that this event, while not affecting any of them directly, has surely given cause for their families to contemplate the inherent risks of seafaring and the exploitation of natural resources. However unfortunate the ensuing spill is to the ecosystems and economies in the Gulf of Mexico the loss of eleven men who were doing their work in a world dependent on fossil fuel should not be eclipsed.

As more casual information comes to light, something that has been noticeably slow from BP and Transocean, we can only expect enhanced safeguards are developed to detect and prevent future catastrophic blowouts. Personally I hope that the risks rig workers, coal miners, mariners and their families live with day in and day out are remembered by those whose lives are far removed from the discovery, recovery and refinement of fossil fuels.

While it is easy to lay blame and shame on the oil companies and their employees it is our own use of these abundant and relatively affordable sources of energy that necessitate their existence and fund their profits. Until government and communities are willing to adapt to a world without oil, something we've been unable to do since the first whales lit the streets of Boston, we will continue to pay a heavy toll in lives and ecosystems altered.

Tanks

2010-05-02T21:51:00.007-04:00

What does fuel oil, lube oil, slops, ballast, gray, black and potable water all have in common? All are stored on board ship in tanks. Tankage is an inherent structural necessity for large ships and represents a significant portion of overall vessel volume.

Tankers are almost entirely comprised of tanks since the cargo; refined oils, crude oils, chemicals or compressed gasses, are transported in liquid form within large cargo tanks. A container ship or Roll On / Roll Off carries her cargo in holds. These holds, as I am proving this week, are surrounded on both sides and below the lowest hold by tanks. Fuel oil and ballast water require the most space whereas the other aforementioned liquids occupy much smaller tanks within the engine room.

Since my ship is not a tanker, and as the Cosco Busan proved in San Francisco Bay, carrying fuel oil on the skin of the ship, (Unsegregated by a void from the ocean besides the shell plating of the hull) is a necessity. All along the length of the bottom of the vessel fuel oil tanks are staggered in between ballast tanks.

Ballast serves two purposes. The first and most important is to ensure positive transverse stability through the addition of weight below the ship's center of gravity. The second purpose is to allow myself to control the vessel's trim, heel and drafts.

Since ballast falls into my area of responsibility, and since the annual ballast and void/cofferdam inspections are due this month, I have been using our time in the yard to pump out, open up, inspect, reseal and refill each and every ballast tank on board. Due to the size of this beast this has meant spending hours each day within the dark, damp and at times rank confines of 27 steel mazes, usually by myself.

Inspections are necessary because coatings, or the specialized and very expensive paint that covers the tank's innards, must be maintained or the tank will oxidize from the inside out. Observing the condition of the coating on a regular basis ensures that during the next dry docking trouble tanks can be addressed before structural damage occurs. Additionally I'm looking for any signs of stress such as steel fractures, broken coatings and deformation. You'd be surprised how easy it is for an assist tug to put a dent in the side of a steel ship.

Tank time was an experience I became familiar with early in my career. As a cadet I mucked out chemical tanks in between differing products and spent two weeks on the same tanker blasting mud and scooping rust scale from the bottom of ballast tanks. Working in remote corners of double bottoms holding a flashlight and fully charged fire hose struck me at the time as a unique way to spend my nineteenth summer.

Now it's my bread and butter and I can't say I love working in confined spaces requiring testing for sufficient oxygen and the presence of noxious gasses but then again, it is interesting as hell. The structure of a ship is exposed in tanks and the more you get to know each one the more efficiently you are able to work the ballast system.

Every time I crawl through a manhole wearing rubber boots with a head lamp strapped on, a radio and an O2 meter dangling from my neck I can't help but think about mining coal. Where else on earth could it be this dark besides the bottom of a mine as it is in the double bottom of a ship?

Fish Fry

2010-04-29T20:49:00.010-04:00

Traveling with no expectations is traveling at it's best. Spending two weeks of exhaustion in the shipyard has definitely limited my expectations. It's a rare occasion when I'm this busy at work to get off the ship and out of the yard so when I finally did make it to the beach last night every sight, smell, taste and Soca beat was better than I could have imagined.

The yard period began four days ago on a very windy morning in the Florida Straits. We maneuvered around the pilot station for six hours before the Bahamian pilots, obviously keeping strict island time, were ready to board us from a tossing tug. While we were waiting the a small container ship grounded on the beach as we watched and listened to the event unfold on the VHF radio.

The little ship had just left the shipyard the previous day with new paint and was at anchor in a perilous anchorage to windward of a lee shore near the harbor entrance. The heavy current must have caused the anchor to drag resulting in a beached ship and frantic sounding captain who was not the least bit reassured by port control's very laid back emergency response.

We docked in what could be confused for a vacant parking lot along the water and began making preparations for the following day's onslaught of yard superintendents and laborers. Shipyards are when ships get large repairs and maintenance accomplished plus undergo all pending regulatory inspections. It's where the ship gets all the things done to it that normally can not be done with cargo aboard and has therefore been extremely busy and exhausting.

Four day's into the yard I was in bad need of a few hours away from work, sleeping not included. I knew I would be even more tired the following day, and I am, but finding a place to vent stress can become a necessity and I have learned that when given the chance it should not be passed up.

After befriending several of the workers I started to get a sense of the Bahamian identity. There really is no rush on the islands. There is always another day tomorrow when something can be finished up, or if you never got around to it in the first place, it can be started. While this mindset was proving to be a little frustrating in the yard once comfortably zipping down the highway on the left side of the road I was immediately relaxed.

My cab driver, who went by the name of Uncle, Cow or Mikey, spent as much time telling me to be relaxed and that he could "Get you anything you need mon" as he did explaining his life on the island to me. While I wasn't interested in most of the things Uncle could provide me I was curious about the life of a Bahamian, a mere 90 miles from the similar climate but very different world of South Florida USA.

Uncle was the youngest of forty brothers and forty sisters, all of the same father. He therefore new each and every person on Grand Bahamas. "How many people on the island?" I asked. "Only sixty thousand mon", he replied in all seriousness.

Uncle took an immediate liking to me since my destination, the Wednesday night fish fry on Taino Beach, was his destination as well. Knowing that I had never set foot outside the shipyard gate he had to know how I had heard about the biggest local midweek scene on the Island. I explained how the first thing my friends at the shipyard had told me when I inquired about nightlife was the fish fry. So off we went, bombing down the road in a Toyota mini van, Uncle all the while trying to pick up as many sun burnt tourists on the way at three bucks a head.

We pulled up to the beach and not fifteen feet above the high tide line was a bar with thatched roof and rickety wood dance floor but not a door or window in sight. Next to the bar was a smoky kitchen also thatched in palm fronds occupied by the busiest Bahamians I had yet to see. Thirty people waited in a never easing line of hungry tourists and locals. The ladies frying chicken took my order and fried an entire red snapper right in front of me, piled the plate high with rice, black beans, potato bread and mac and cheese. With a Kalik beer I was a just another tourist until Uncle found me an began introducing me to everyone he knew.
We started with the police, a male and female officer in smart blue uniforms with red banded hats in the English style. Next we met numerous cousins who all had businesses or were some way involved in the island economy. He pointed to one well dressed Bahamian and said "He eats fish heads for breakfast."

"What the hell does that mean" I asked. "It's like if instead of eating grits and conch for breakfast you have boiled grouper instead. Like in the States you have eggs and pancakes mon but if you were very well to do than you could eat steak and salmon every morning."

By saying that this gentleman had something expensive and locally regarded as delicious for breakfast, fish heads, he was very well off. Boiled grouper was just about the most decadent thing one could have on the island for breakfast so I acted impressed by the guys status.

Once the sun retired and I had my swim off an abandoned dock down the beach the full moon rose. I went back to the bar and began mingling with the patrons. I was introduced to a coconut rum which when mixed with a little orange juice was far better than any Bahama Mama. The "Gollywash" though was my favorite drink; a simple blend of coconut water, my favorite liquid next to coffee and sleepy time tea, with cheap gin. This went down easily and being mindful of returning to work in a few hours I laid off the hard stuff and spent most of the night working up a sweat dancing to the DJs mix of local and American club tracks.

As the night went on the tourists and Conchi Joes, that is tourists who have become locals, began to wane as the islanders began to dominate the dance floor. The American tunes were fine, though I had gotten my fill of them in Asia this past winter, but when a local musician would come across the amplifiers the crowd would really get going. Uncle didn't dance too much given his prestigious fish head girth but he was always nearby to offer me advice on pick up lines and who to go dance with (Though a few nights later he would prove show up my sophomoric dance moves)

After a couple hours of dancing sore leg muscles loose I retired to the glassless windows and watched the full moon shimmer on a flat calm Bahamas channel. We had passed right by this beach four days earlier and I remembered several times before that when I had looked over at this thin strip of white and green that is the Bahamas and wondered what life was like on this often ignored and a little run down island. Now I was getting to see first hand amongst the locals and that circumferential feeling of getting to know someplace only after navigating around it floored me.

On the way back to the yard Uncle had to ask for ten bucks in addition to the cab fare I paid him for his services. His kids needed five bucks each for school lunches and as we pulled into their driveway it was obvious that he and his wife or girlfriend were no longer together. He slipped the colorful Bahamian bills into the mail slot and then got back in the van. Tired and hungry he drove me back to the gate. He offered to pick me up anytime and that we could go anywhere on the island. Aiming to stimulate the local economy while pleasing visitors was his main mission and he had not let me down.

False Alarm

2010-04-29T20:14:00.005-04:00

What could be more exciting than a general alarm? How about a general alarm in the middle of the night when you are in a sleep so deep that once the blaring siren four feet above your bed wakes you up you're left wondering how long it's been going off. Seconds? Minutes? Longer? Hard to tell as you're jumping into a pair of crumpled jeans and slipping on steel toed boots while simultaneously reaching for a flashlight.

With the siren still ringing the urgency of the situation becomes clear even if your vision has not. "Please let this be a false alarm" is all I'm thinking as the stairs come rushing up to my feet three at a time. The damage control locker, where 4 sets of turnout gear, 4 self contained breathing apparatus and other emergency equipment is stowed, is only half full of the normal faces.

Rather than the alertness seen at drills everyone is pale, red eyed and confused. I tell the boson to take a muster, which I don't think he ever did, and then carry on down ten decks to the lowest hold on the ship straining to hear the radio until the siren is silenced by the captain on the bridge.

I arrive in the lower hold where the other two mates are and hear on the UHF that the fire panel was misread and that the activated detector is actually in the lower engine room. Now at a sprint I'm really hoping this isn't the real thing. My heart is pounding having been fully reclined two minutes ago and I'm pondering the chance of having a heart attack from such sudden exertion.

Entering the engine room I find the second assistant confusedly bouncing from detector head to detector head amongst lime green generators and purifiers looking for a little red L.E.D. This is a good sign; no smoke, no fire, no panic besides the captain's urgent request that the suspect detector is located.

Does this mean I don't have to race back up the ladder praying that the fire team has fitted themselves out in three minutes flat which is very unlikely? A few moments later the detector is located with no flame in sight. It's a false alarm and I'm a little older and exhausted for it. Five minutes later I'm back in bed sound asleep. How often do you get to go to work for ten minutes at a time in what could potentially be a life or death situation?

Becoming the dust

2010-04-23T08:13:00.005-04:00

Allow me paint a picture for you. It's zero six hundred in the morning and the sun is slow to rise. I am dead tired from the last two days in port working my first cargo discharge on this ship. Despite six hours of STCW mandated rest the only brace I have against fatigue is the deliciously French pressed coffee I sip as the Gulf of Mexico slowly comes to life with supply vessels, fishing boats and birds.

As the sun rises and my weariness begins to give way to the caffeine I ask the new AB, a Yemeni from Dearborn Michigan, to take care of his sanitary duties on the bridge. With an emphatic "Yes Sir!" he takes up a push broom and in five minutes I'm almost doubled over from laughter in the corner where he can't see me. His sweeping methodology is akin to snow shoveling. His back heaves in the vertical plane in between horizontal thrusts after which he grinds the corn husk broom into the deck breaking straws and flinging dirt and dust bunnies haphazardly into the air.

I'm amazed that this Able Bodied Seaman, not much younger than myself, who has sailed on the Great Lakes since 2003, is completely incapable of effectively sweeping the bridge. I'm even more surprised because yesterday as a new crew member he stood out as a skilled quartermaster manning the helm for the narrowest and windiest parts of the Sabine River.

According to my new watch partner in his Great Lakes experience no one ever took the time to sweep the bridge well or much less paint the ship neatly, something else he confessed as not being able to do but was very interested in learning. "Deep Sea is so different" he told me as he explained that on the Great Lakes getting as much cargo on board and to the next port as quickly as possible, the longest run he ever had was 17 hours, were more important than all else, sanitary included.

Our conversation led into a half hour, one on one lesson about sweeping. I had never contemplated the possibility having to teach someone how to sweep. It had come naturally to me at a young age by a story my mother had told me about a skilled deck hand that would sweep her boat from stem to stern in the smallest successive sweeping motions imaginable. So I thought that if I could learn to sweep at the age of six than it would come naturally to most other seamen as well but here I was at sunrise, in the ocean, at work, instructing a seasoned Great Lakes mariner on how to do it.

We began on the port side behind the chart desk and and worked to the other end of the bridge brushing every square inch of shiny blue linoleum. In the gentle light I demonstrated half a dozen times how to make short small strokes without lifting the bristles too far and why using bulkheads is vital for corralling the dust. "You must think like the dust, you must become the dust" I waxed as we progressed finding each corner and nook in which the undo-er of electronics and clean freak mates resided.

Each time he would revert to his original method I would take the broom away and show him again. I explained how sweeping and painting were very similar and it was the paying of attention to detail that would make him great at both. His eagerness made me feel like I was doing an Outward Bound course all over again and for a moment I remembered that the thrill of seeing enlightenment in progress from your own instruction is one of the things that really sustains me in life.

The lesson also gave me cause to stop and ask myself, "Is this real? Am I actually teaching someone how to sweep the deck when steering a 70,000 dead weight tonne ship is part of their expected skill set. Yes, yes I am."

There will be a lot of learning with the 4 to 8 AB. Just yesterday I fielded two telling questions. The first was if we, as in mankind, could stop volcanoes from erupting. The second was asked after I had secured the mast head light early this morning to step out on the bridge wing and look at the night stars. I noticed basketball sized pulses of bio-luminescence in the wake and showed the AB. In amazement we then looked up at the night sky which was casting the palest of starlight on our faces unpolluted by land. I showed my new friend from Yemen the white cloud of stars that comprises the milky way and in all seriousness he asked me "Is that a rainbow?"

The sun was three hours from rising and as it turns out, Deep Sea sailing is a different place indeed. This week we'll be learning how to determine the direction from where the wind is blowing and how hard. It's Ocean Classroom all over again.