Voyaging

Mariners working in the oil and gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico rarely undertake voyages. We have trips, and make runs, but – even though the Coast Guard and our companies may require voyage planning – we typically don’t think of them as voyages.

Or I don’t, anyway.

Maybe that’s because we usually start and end at the same dock in the same port: Point A to Point B and, sooner or later, back to Point A. Within the context of those roundtrips, we sometimes stay at sea for days or even weeks at a time, but that’s just “standing by.”

Sand Island Light, at the entrance to Mobile Bay.

A recent job took us from Port Fourchon, La., to the Theodore Industrial Port near Mobile, Ala., (two entire states east!), and then to Amelia, near Morgan City, La. Point A to Point B to Point C before returning to Point A.

It was something like 620 nautical miles round-trip. Days of the week changed while we were en route. It felt like a voyage. A short one, by most standards, but a voyage nonetheless.

There is history everywhere, but it’s more obvious in some places than in others. Coast Pilot Vol. 5 warns vessels to proceed at slow speed through the entrance channel to Mobile Bay so as not to disturb the wreck of the USS Tecumseh, a Union ironclad sunk when it struck a mine beneath the guns of Fort Morgan during the Civil War.

This impressive cumulonimbus cloud over the eastern
shore of Mobile Bay made good on its promise of a rain and
lightning later that night.

The Tecumseh is presumed still to have live munitions aboard, and the wreck is marked with a yellow buoy. I figure the danger is long past, but the government’s warning is an exciting note in a pretty staid publication.

When the ship blew up, the other ships in Admiral David Farragut’s flotilla began to turn back. This occasioned his famous order, today remembered as: “Damn the torpedoes (mines), full speed ahead!”*

Theodore Industrial Port is a tidy (and quiet) little deepwater facility that probably deserves more business than it apparently has. It’s about 20 minutes from the home of the other captain on the boat, and I had the benefit of his local knowledge and stories as we sailed up the Mobile Ship Channel.

Our deck cargo on this job came from
the Big & Tall section of the store.

We picked-up about 200 tons of reel-lay equipment and set out for Amelia. There are three possible routes to Amelia, but the Intracoastal Waterway route didn’t make much sense for our vessel or our schedule so we shaped our course south, back around the Mississippi passes and across the northern Gulf to the Eugene Island Channel.

I spent the better part of a year navigating the 50+ miles from the Eugene Island 1&2 up the Atchafalaya River to Morgan City, most often in the dark and sometimes in lousy weather. It is no one’s favorite approach, and it is burned into my brain.

The more direct route to Amelia, and one that would allow us to bypass both Vessel Traffic Service and the Bayou Boeuf Locks, is to take the cutoff up the Bayou Chene** just above the Horseshoe (or just above Crewboat Cut, if you come that way) not far north of where the river enters Atchafalaya Bay.

Unlike the river channel proper, Bayou Chene is haphazardly and indifferently buoyed (though if you can stay in the center of the channel, there’s plenty of water). The other captain hadn’t been up the Chene in 17 years, and I transited it several times last summer, so I got up early to keep him company.

We made it to the dock without incident, got unloaded before noon, and headed back downstream for our return to Port Fourchon.

'Murica! A pair of bald eagles on Bayou Chene.

In an episode that hearkened back to my days guiding birding trips in South Texas, I told the other fellows on the boat that there was a good chance we would see some bald eagles on the daylight trip back down the bayou. About a minute after I said that, an eagle flew across our bow.

I counted six between the ICW and the cofferdam --  I’m guessing they were three, resident breeding pairs, and no doubt will be joined by many more birds as we move deeper into fall.

This trip – this voyage, if you will – also gave me an opportunity to reflect on the state of our industry in the Gulf of Mexico. The signs are mixed, and troubling.

These two Seadrill drillships were anchored and idle. Maybe
waiting on customs or something else, maybe just waiting
for a job.

We saw two drilling ships anchored and apparently idle just seaward of the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (or LOOP facility).***

This comes a year after I read that the big oil companies couldn’t get enough drilling units into the Gulf fast enough for all the work they had lined-up. 

Day rates for the most advanced units last year were up around $675,000. Today the same units are going for just a little more than half that.

On the way back to Fourchon, we noted that the number of ENSCO jack-up drilling rigs – used on the shelf -- now stacked west of Belle Pass has risen to five. Last time I went by and counted, there were just three.

A Seadrill executive noted just last week that market conditions are bad are projected to get worse next year before stabilizing in 2016.

And one can’t help noticing all of the idle steel in Fourchon itself.

This is a busy port – in terms of vessel movements, it must be the busiest in the Gulf of Mexico and perhaps one of the busiest in the world. At any given time there are well over 300 targets showing on my AIS and it’s hard to get a word in edgewise on Channel 13, the VHF frequency used for bridge-to-bridge communications within the port.

Chouest and Gulfmark boats tied-up in Slip A in Port Fourchon.

Of those 300-plus AIS targets, a whole bunch of them represent boats waiting on work. On the west bank of Bayou Lafourche right now there are upwards of 30 boats pushed up in the mud. On the opposite side of the bayou, a number of large liftboats remain idled. Some have been there at least six months.

In Flotation Canal, I was shocked at the number of large OSVs tied-up three abreast on the pilings and in Slip A and Slip B. These boats belong to companies I usually think of as always busy with long-term contracts.

Meanwhile, some of those same companies (and a lot of smaller ones, too) continue to build new, larger vessels at a prodigious rate.

On the other hand … the past two years have seen record lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, increased success in the deepwater and ultra-deepwater sector and a wholesale reshuffling of owners and operators in established fields on the shelf.

At the same time, the door has been opened to exploration in the nearshore Atlantic off the U.S. East Coast, and Mexico’s government has, at last, invited greater involvement of foreign companies in exploiting its rich fields in the Gulf.

So it’s a mixed picture, and one I don’t understand well enough to decipher.

Everyone else's boats pushed up in the mud north
of Flotation Canal, Port Fourchon.

Taken together, all of this looks like a major (but perhaps temporary?) slowdown in the Gulf of Mexico. 

That doesn’t necessarily mean my job is in danger – and nothing I've heard or seen at this company suggests that it is (we get mechanics and supplies and groceries promptly and without argument – there’s no sense that budgets are being squeezed)  – but if I understand the law of supply and demand,  more boats and less work means lower day rates, at the least.

And I’m guessing lower rates for the boats effectively caps or puts downward pressure on rates for the mariners who man them.

My impression – and it’s just an impression, not supported by any hard data – is that hiring has slowed and much of the company-hopping for ever-increasing day rates has pretty much come to a halt recently.

I’m happy where I am and not planning on changing jobs anytime soon. I also have the luxury – blessing, really – of a wife who has her own, very good career. So whichever way the industry is going the kids will still have shoes and we’ll still eat.

If I were just entering the field though, or a young man contemplating a first career, I’d be giving this some serious thought.

*What he actually said, according to the Wikipedia entry (which I read as I was at or near the spot where Farragut said the words almost exactly 140 years earlier – ain’t technology wonderful?) was: "Damn the torpedoes.Four bells, Captain Drayton, go ahead. Jouett, full speed."

**It’s amusing, how pedestrian – and repetitive – the names of waterways can be. If my slipshod translation is correct, Boeuf means “cow,” and Chene comes from the French for “dog” – So Cow Bayou and Dog Bayou, respectively. Near Theodore, three rivers or bayous enter Mobile Bay on its western shore: Fowl River, Deer River and Dog River. There probably are analogues where you live.

***Upon further investigation ... Seadrill's website says both of the ships we saw are under contract through 2020. So maybe they were just hanging out waiting to get started.

Three Plus Two Equals a Long Hitch (and other math)

Three weeks in shipyard, a few days floating around Fourchon, nearly two weeks on two different jobs.

I finally made crew change on the morning of Day 36 in Venice, the polyp on the rectum of the American Midwest.

It’s fun to poo-poo Venice (see what I did there?), but in truth it was sort of nice to be back.

When I got up for my first watch after we arrived, there on the boat sterning-up next to us at the back of Slip 2 was a fellow I had been in the DP Induction course with a few months back.

A boat I worked alongside last winter is still there, and I caught up over the radio with one of her captains. A boat working the same job we were on was captained by a mutual friend of several guys I’ve worked with in the past.

In Fourchon I got within waving (and photo) distance of NewEngland Waterman and enjoyed a quick visit with The Rocket Scientist. One night while running to a platform 70 miles offshore I crossed paths a good friend I’ve worked with at three different companies, starting back in the South Padre Island days.

Both he and another Texas captain stopped by to say howdy when we were in shipyard.

All of that got me to thinking about the “loose” connections some of us maintain out in the oil patch.

Those connections are useful in all kinds of ways; not least in alleviating the loneliness of those long stretches away from land and from home, but also in job leads and recommendations and in up-to-date local knowledge about passes or working channels.

Those loose connections also will get you a bag of sugar, a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper or a gallon of paint in a pinch.

It’s a commonplace that a sailor’s favorite ships are the last one and the next one. That said, I couldn’t be much happier with the boat and crew to which I was assigned.

Joining them in shipyard, well in advance of our various inspections, gave me the opportunity to spend some quality time with parts of the vessel I might not get around to messing with in weeks or months, normally.

It also gave me time to get to know my port captains, shipmates and safety guys, and to learn some of the paperwork routine before worrying about handling a more massive vessel with different propulsion than I’m used to.

I was nervous about that last thing: this is my first steel-hull vessel, and my first really big twin-screw vessel, and my first real DP boat. And before and after everything else, driving a boat (well) is what I get paid for.

Turns out that what friends who made that transition ahead of me said is true: workboats are easier than crewboats.

It’s different, for sure, but it’s mostly a process of subtraction: subtract two throttles, subtract about 3,000 horsepower, subtract a whole lot of maneuverability and responsiveness, subtract the expectation that you’ll get anywhere fast.

All of that math comes down to this: think ahead of the boat, not with it, and know that everything – including stopping – takes longer. Oh, and this: that bow thruster really isn’t optional in some situations.

The short week home has been all kids all the time, except for Wednesday, when The Old Lady and I attended Wednesday Night Church Services (aka, the Jon Dee Graham/James McMurtry double bill at the Continental Club in Austin).

I didn’t know how much I needed that until about the second verse of the first song.

I got to catch up a little with some folks I used to hang out with two or three nights a week. I was astonished to find out that the baby I knew one guy’s wife was expecting last we talked is now seven months old.

I was saddened to hear another friend’s mom died last week.

It was another reminder of the value of those loose connections, this time on land, where people I care about and with whom I have much in common but I too rarely see in person, also make me feel a little less lonely.

Some Days You're the Painter

And some days you're the paint. You just gotta roll with it either way.

I joined the new boat in shipyard: bottomside and classification society survey this week, followed by the topside (safety) inspection a couple more weeks down the road.

I was pretty thrilled that the shipyard guys sandblasted the hull and back deck and painted both for us.

I was less thrilled when they sandblasted the boat in dry dock right next to us immediately after pressure-washing our vessel mast-top to keel.

That's sort of the way it's been going: get the windows in the wheelhouse taped-up, then watch it rain for three hours. Start painting the wheelhouse, then quit and hope it sticks when a thunderstorm rolls in.

So it's good we have a little time. Apparently we'll need it.

Not least because there's ... well, there's a lot of paperwork with this company, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the two daily reports, three weekly drills, the monthly and quarterly and 90-day (not the same thing as quarterly) drills, weekly trainers, the three separate monthly vessel condition reports, etc., etc.

The new boat is still under 100 GRT, though it's 170-ft. long. We operate with a five-man crew, which is better than the last crewboat's four, but probably not quite enough to comfortably handle all of the ISM paperwork we're required to do.

Still, great training for the next boat, which will (hopefully) be over 100 GRT.

This company's got them, which is one of the reasons I wanted to work here.

First impressions: good crew with the best kind of friendly, helpful and salty old captains; we don't have to twist anyone's arm to get the supplies we need (heck, we've had five mechanics on board the last week to completely rebuild our mains, generators and bow thruster -- and they're not even broken).

I feel a little like country mouse in the city, arriving on a steel hull from a crewboat. We have an icemaker. We have a pressure washer that is plumbed to fittings throughout the vessel. Our compressed air also is plumbed to fittings throughout the boat.

We have WiFi and satellite TV, and the company pays for it.

We have an honest-to-God satellite phone, and we can use it to call home when we're offshore.

So far, so good. I'm happy to be back at work.

Feelin’ Classy

Well, I’ve been in class a lot lately, anyhow. Can we just call it good and let the title slide? Okay. Thanks.

Hawsepipin’ ain’t easy.

Kids, take it from me, if you think you want to be a sailor … get yourself to an academy. I’m not saying earning a degree and a Third Mate’s license in four years is easy, either, but it’s a damned sight more straightforward.

To give you an idea, MITAGS-PMI designed a “workboat academy” that gets you from a dead start to Mate 1600 tons Near Coastal (Mate 500 tons Oceans) in a regimented 32 weeks of classroom instruction and 52 weeks of shipboard training.

They have lots of smart people guiding you along the way, making sure you punch the right tickets and get the correct STCW endorsements.

It’s two years and about $32,000, though you’ll make a little bit back with a cadet stipend (see update in comments below) while you’re at sea.

Do it on your own, and you get paid (better) along the way, but you’ll have to figure-out which courses and exams you need, which endorsements are required and which ones the company you hope to work for wants … and you’ll have to try to schedule classes between hitches.

You’ll drive overnight to save on a hotel room, brown bag it when you can, and scrimp on things at home. You’ll easily still spend between $10,000 and $15,000 on training, unless you’re fortunate enough to work for a company that pays your way.

I’m not complaining. Compared to what I spent at college, and its payoff in the “real world,” it’s a heck of a deal.

Over the past three months I haven’t exactly been burning up the road – classes got cancelled, I bailed on some others when the kids were sick or the money got tight – but after the past two weeks in Louisiana I’ve knocked-out almost everything on the Coast Guard’s checklist for Master 500, and I’m ready to go back to work.

I should have approval to test from the Coast Guard by August, and if I hit the books hard can sit the exam by November.

There are quite a few approved schools out there, on all three coasts. I completed my Radar Observer, Basic and Advanced Firefighting and PSC/Lifeboatman courses at Fletcher Technical Community College’s Houma campus. I give it high marks for good instructors and equipment and the best prices around.

San Jacinto Community College in Pasadena (Houston), Texas, provided Vessel Security Officer, Bridge Resource Management and Basic Safety Training. You’ll find their courses listed under Mid-Atlantic Maritime Academy on the Coast Guard’s website.

At the moment, San Jac merely gets the job done, but wait a year and you can take classes at their new, 56,000 square foot training facility on the Houston Ship Channel. They already have the best full bridge simulator set-up in the country.

Young Memorial Community College in Morgan City also offers cheap training, and one of only two approved online (you still have to test in person) AB courses in the country. That’s a real time saver when you’re working 28/14.

Dynamic positioning training is in high demand right now … in mid-April, the only place I could find an available seat before mid-July was at Houston Marine Training in Kenner (New Orleans). The curriculum and instruction are good, the DP simulator equipment not so much, but they’re supposed to get new systems this summer.

Houston (How-stan) Marine is now part of Falck-Alford, by the way, with all that implies.

Here’s a word to the wise … if you don’t yet hold an STCW certificate (i.e., 500-ton or better license), but you want to knock-out your DP induction course, take the time to send the Nautical Institute a request for approval to train. Because, at some schools anyway, you won’t get your certificate and logbook without that letter. (Shoot me an emal at crewboatchronicles (at) gmail if you’d like a copy of the form the NI requires).

Along the way so far, I’ve discovered that the very best part of all of these classes is meeting other mariners from a wide range of backgrounds and varying experience. I’ve been in class with maritime academy graduates, guys who work on tankers and guys who work on tugs.

I’ve met ABs and folks about to be ABs and mates in training and Chief Mates Unlimited and a whole lot of other guys like me.

It’s always cool to share sea stories, but even better is getting insight into the way different sectors of the industry do things and the scoop on how different companies treat their people.

The adventure continues.

Workboat Wear

Plenty of downtime here in the ATX lately, so I've been catching-up on some long-deferred projects.

Like learning to play the ukulele. And setting-up a t-shirt shop for all the nautical tees I keep looking for but can't find anywhere.

I have pages of designs (if you have an idea, I'd be happy to hear it! Leave a comment or shoot me an email.), so check back frequently to see what's new.

Before long there will be a little something for everyone, whether you work in the Gulf or the North Sea, on a tug or a crewboat or a PSV.

I'll even have some designs specifically for the folks we leave behind each time we go to work.

I'll be integrating the shop into it's own website (www.workboatwear.com - doesn't work now, but it will soon!) in the next few weeks.

The service, Spreadshirt, was recommended by a friend who uses it, and so far I'm really happy with it. The shirts are high-quality, and so is the printing. Your order will ship just a couple of days after you make your purchase.

Best of all, the prices are pretty reasonable compared to some other services I've used.

In other news, upgrade classes are proceeding ... slowly. Most recently I completed Bridge Resource Management at San Jacinto Community College in Pasadena, Texas. The portion of the class devoted to voyage planning was useful, but other than that it was a bit of a snooze.

Advanced Firefighting, at Fletcher Technical Community College in Houma, La., on the other hand, was actually fun. Who doesn't enjoy playing firefighter?

I think I wrote in an earlier post that I was done with crewboats. Well, maybe not.

It looks like I'll have to go back to work before I am ready to test for 500-ton Master. Here's hoping I can do that with a company that also has larger boats so I can just move up without moving on.

Getting Underway

It’s not quite as impressive as a pilot circling his aircraft, kicking the tires, testing control surfaces and draining fuel, but getting a 165-foot fast supply vessel ready for a voyage has its own rituals and procedures.

Verify tank cargo levels, perform stability calculations, prepare voyage plan, complete pre-departure checklist (check propulsion, steering, navigation and communication equipment, etc., etc.), bind deck cargo if necessary, ensure passenger and cargo manifests are complete and in-hand, check-in with dispatcher or rig, make security call, drop lines, don’t forget to check over my shoulder before pulling out ….

Getting underway involves all that and more. 

I can pretty much do it without conscious thought after so many repetitions. Not so much at home.

Wake the 3-year-old, breakfast for the 3-year-old, TV to cartoons, wake the baby, change and dress the baby, breakfast for the baby, dress the 3-year-old, make lunches for both boys, find socks – where are Conor’s damned socks?! – matching shoes for each child (on the correct feet this time, please), remember key card for the day care entrance, remember to carry everything to the truck, carry the baby and strap him into the truck while trying to keep tabs on the 3-year-old … shoo the dog back into the house. Did I even close the door?

Meanwhile, the subjects of my preparations are not made fast to anything, much less a dock. They are in constant motion and need frequent intervention while I’m doing everything else.

Truthfully, getting the boat underway is a lot easier – and faster – than getting the littles out the door to school with everything they need. (And damnit, I just remembered that I was supposed to take a blanket in for the baby this morning).

Some days it’s easier just to keep them at home with me.

My long-suffering and beautiful wife has her own rituals and procedures for mornings, and I’m guessing they are slightly more efficient than mine. Still, she gets the kids out the door and to school every workday before hers even starts, and that’s nothing less than amazing.

My hat’s off to you, Babe. 

Despite the Shenanigans, Joy

For all the shenanigans, for the sometimes crappy conditions, for all of the time away from home, working on a crewboat still affords many moments of what I can describe only as joy.

Folks end up working on boats for many reasons, not the least of which is money. It is not difficult, within just a few years of entering the profession, to make what many doctors and lawyers are making.

There is much more to it than that, though.

For some people – I’m one – being on and around boats is a pleasure in and of itself. We were dropped on our heads, into salty water, when we were babies. The experience rewired our brains forever.

I’m no gearhead, and my truck is a mid-sized one sans brush guard and lift kit. I don’t go “mudding,” and I’ve never seen a NASCAR race. I have never been inclined to operate heavy equipment, and I’m not especially fond of loud noises. But …

There is a sublimely powerful feeling in having 6,000 horses at one’s fingertips, literally.

Speaking for myself, I get a real charge out of standing on the 40-yard line and precisely controlling a very large object (the stern of the boat) in the end zone just feet or inches away from some very large obstructions.

In 1996 I was named U.S. Army Europe military journalist of the year. I have won top awards at the Department of Defense level. I have planned every facet of a successful overseas deployment to a war zone.

I have seen my stories and photographs published in dozens of magazines. I’ve rescued people from flood waters and retrieved them from the destruction of a hurricane.

None of that, or anything else I’ve ever done, matches the feeling of accomplishment that comes with a calm, controlled and safe offload or backload bow-up in 8-foot seas and 30 knots of wind.

I love the sailorly arts, the ones that connect me to age-old tradition: making-up mooring or dock lines, plotting a course, making passing arrangements in a busy port.

I enjoy teaching new guys the things they need to know to keep themselves, the vessel and their shipmates safe. I enjoy learning about my shipmates; you get to know the people you sail with (and live and work with 24-hours-a-day) on a level that compares only to family or brothers-in-arms.

Hell, I don’t even mind the ever-growing mountains of paperwork our customers require.

There are other benefits that you’ll never see listed on a boat company’s web site: in this line of work, one gets to experience things that people working and living ashore can barely imagine.

Things like a whale shark snuggling up to the boat for a couple of hours, or a pod of dolphins cavorting in the wake, flying fish skimming the wave tops next to the boat, a towering thunderstorm reflected in a glassy calm sea … a fat orange moon rising out of the Gulf, sunrises, and sunsets.

Those sorts of things never get old, truly. And sometimes when the shenanigans are in full swing, a single spectacular sunset can ransom another week of enthusiasm for the job.