No Beer Here

After reading a blog I routinely follow I was reminded of a conversation I had on Christmas Day with the Captain of a Military Sealift Command ammo/stores/fuel supply vessel berthed in Singapore.

The blog which you can read at Hawespiper explained how after bunkering a Russian freighter in recognition of a quick and clean fuel transfer the engineer on the receiving vessel sent down three beers and a couple of cokes to the tankerman/blogger. Being a professional American Merchant Seaman he was obliged to deep six the frigid and rare bottled Russian brews he received in gratitude.

This vignette struck me as a poignant example of just what the Captain and I discussed on Christmas Day after I was invited to the crew Christmas party on the navy base. As the crew tossed horse shoes the Captain and I got to talking about the welfare of seafarers in today's merchant marine. We both agreed that professionalism and safety were highly valued and certainly bolstered by the constant and increasingly severe regulations that govern how much we sleep, drink and now eat at work.

There was plenty to eat and drink for the crew at the party. In addition to a pallet of buckets full of marinating chicken and ribs the crew had pitched in money for two trashcans full of beer and all the fixings for eggnog. Looking at the frosty beverages the Captain told me about an initiative at MSC to combine random breath alcohol or saliva testing with random urinalysis. This would mean that a tester could board the ship at any time, like after a Christmas Party ashore, in any port, to administer tests for illegal drugs and alcohol to the entire crew. The alcohol component is something that is normally reserved for post incident investigations.

This would in turn create an atmosphere on his ship akin to the oil terminals in Valdez Alaska where you don't go down the dock without blowing through a tube. While his ship is in part an oil tanker there was no transfer of oil going on at the dock during the party. Yet if the new rules went into affect the entire crew would be subject to breathalyzing after their holiday horseshoe tournament. A very discouraging trend for a crew that normally spends upwards of 8 months a year on their ship.

I'm sure as he threw those three brews overboard he was wondering how much one or two pops at work would really hurt. I wonder the same thing too. We don't drink on tankers or oil barges or Ro/Ros but escort tugs in Alaska still go aground.

If you don't drink than I suppose it's not an issue. And if you follow the rules as a merchant mariner working aboard U.S. flagged vessels should than you are aware of the very low BAC allowed by the USCG whenever you are on board a ship. I'm not going to argue against that. The rules are the rules and I would have tossed those beers over board too but I think it's worth taking a moment as the Captain of the MSC oiler and I did, to remember more is being taken away from mariner's than just our ability to go out and get a drink in port.

We are not air plane pilots. We do not go home at night but live and work on our vessels constantly with no more than a gym to blow the steam off. We already go without so many things that landwellers take for granted; regular sleep, companionship, our families. To make us feel on our vessels, in our homes, so regulated to the point where alcohol at a Christmas party might be too much of a risk next year than it becomes more than a lot of people would want to deal with to do my job. While there is no excuse for being intoxicated while on duty people, at least the people I work with, need the freedom to enjoy themselves when they get that rare chance to go ashore.

I've worked aboard ships that once flew Swedish and Norwegian flags. These ships all had bars once upon a time and it is still standard in most nations, and navies, to allow some amount of alcohol on board. In a way I'm jealous of that Russian engineer who is allowed to keep beer at work and give a couple to the tankerman who just fueled up his ship. Those little freedoms are what make us feel like normal humans and chipping away at them might end up seeming like a good idea for insurance companies but a bad idea for our mental well being. It's a delicate balance.

The legacy of NIMBY

Ranting isn't the best form of constructive dialogue between two opposing view points but the wording used in an Op-Ed piece in the Cape Cod Times describing the disastrous results of going ahead with the Cape Wind project spurred me to write this retort. Visit Casco Bay Boaters to read the editorial or the Cap Cod Times and read on to hear my rant...

I can only assume Mr. Beaty would agree that the socially inhumane legacies of offshore wind farms already foisted on the poor children and grandchildren of Spain, the U.K., Belgium, Denmark, Finland, and Holland have forever ruined the maritime heritage of the English Channel, North and Baltic Seas.

I would disagree. I have safely navigated these waters and wondered time and time again why the U.S. is so slow to pick up on what European, Mediterranean and Asian nations have already figured out. We will pay a pretty penny for foreign oil and gas but thanks to the guardians of real estate value and preposterous ideals regarding nautical legacy we will be left with no wind sites of our own.

What nautical heritage will our grandchildren speak of when diesel is too costly to fish and merchant mariners such as myself are left without the boom of constructing and maintaining these massive wind sites? What will your view be worth when your utility bills keep on going up? We'll I guess then we will just have to be thankful that the Canadians put up a few offshore wind farms of their own to offset America's dependence on Iraqi crude oil.

I'll admit that I'm generalizing by saying that NIMBY is a great acronym for those who have waterfront properties and sailing yachts. But the last thing I want my grandchildren to remember is that my generation robbed them of the chance to transition into a post peak oil era of renewable energy in their own back yards. That is a nautical legacy I could live without.

Sea Snow

This morning when I walked up to the bridge for coffee I was almost convinced we were out at sea. Except for Horsburgh light to the east and a strip of shore to the west the horizon was nearly unbroken in all directions. Still we are only 5 miles from Malaysia at the mouth to Singapore Strait. In the last six months since returning from Bermuda on a schooner this is the furthest I have been out to sea.

We are repairing another shallow water fiber optic cable that has been down for the better part of three months. The water is only 30 meters deep but the currents here roar and the full New Year’s moon hasn’t been helping. Fast currents mean that our Remotely Operated Vehicle has limited windows for working on the bottom and that when it is down the visibility stands a good chance of being completely clouded.

Swift currents also mean that when maneuvering the ship to recover or lay cable the three azipods and one bow thruster will load up the generators and try to shake the ship apart. To avoid this the Dynamic Positioning Operator, normally the Captain, Chief Mate or First Officer, will line the ship parallel with the tidal stream to reduce engine load.

After spending the last six years on commercial seagoing vessels I am endlessly fascinated to watch this ship maintain position in 3 or 4 knots of current to within sub meter accuracy. Even when a swell is running down the strait and the ships bobbing from side to side the engines instantaneously respond to every external force in a complex, diesel fueled, mechanical balancing act.

This of course is accomplished through the use of Global Positioning Satellites 24 of which are constantly circumnavigating the earth. Using a minimum of four satellites at a time still isn’t sufficient for our positioning needs. In addition to the satellite signal we subscribe to a paid differential correction propagated from a number of geostationary satellites over the equator. This differential corrects the majority of error within the GPS constellation providing an accuracy good enough to drill for oil or pick up cable in water that is miles and miles deep.

While there are free differential corrections available to any enabled GPS, or DGPS, the paid service is much more reliable than shore based radio beacons or the WAAS/EGNOS/MAAS satellite systems. That reliability allows the DP operator to focus almost exclusively on retrieving the cable and relaying it exactly where it is supposed to go.

Something else that has been fascinating me lately is watching the camera feed from the ROV as it surveys the cable before and after repairs as well as cutting and gripping the cable for retrieval if need be. I have always been intrigued by what lives and grows and drifts about under the surface of water and there is no place in the world I love more than under the ocean. Seeing a live view of what’s beneath our hull as we work up cables, which happen to encourage marine growth, is mesmerizing.

There hasn’t been anything too impressive lately, corals and fish, a ray or two and the always swirling sea snow, but I still know it’s better than television. Add to that the suspense generated when the ROV operator is working two manipulator arms to cut and grip a section of cable and I’m right entertained.

Tonight before the moon rises there will be a clear view of the stars. To the west where Singapore, Johor and hundreds of anchored ships are the clouds reflect an orange glow but at this range it’s not enough to smear the heavens. The wind has been steady day and night and the water never stops flowing one way or the other past the hull. The crew is working twelve’s until cable operations are complete and now it is time to sift through another chapter of Patrick Obrien’s Post Captain without imaging Russell Crowe in the lead role.