Shipyard

It’s been a quiet couple of weeks on this site. Not so much where I am.

Sandblasting, painting, welding, big wrenches banging around in the engine room … and every two hours or so an air-raid siren to mark breaks and the end of the work day.

We’re in shipyard for scheduled maintenance and our (bi-annual) hull and (annual) safety inspections.

Shipyard is exciting: we’ve gotten lots of things fixed, a few things upgraded, and even a couple of nice-to-haves.

Shipyard is tedious: everyone on the same watch, 0600-1800, and a fair amount of heavy lifting. Meals are catch-as-catch-can.

Shipyard is messy: lots of cleaning-up after mechanics, electricians and welders, not to mention the sand and dust and overspray.

Above all, shipyard in late June in southern Louisiana is H-O-T.

At least it’s not August.

One of the things I like about my current employer is that the office personnel generally seem to support the crews in doing the right thing when it comes to complying with MARPOL, Coast Guard and EPA regulations.

But out here in the oil patch you see a lot of stuff that is ... well, cringe-worthy. Sometimes it's laziness on the part of a crew or cheapness on part of a boat company or charterer. Sometimes it's just unavoidable.

Shipyard is a whole 'nuther thing, though. I suspect neither OSHA nor the EPA would be very pleased if they were to camp out here for a few days.

It was good to finally get back to the boat after an extra week off. The first five days we ran and ran, and then I brought the boat over to the Morgan City area from Fourchon.

With one spotlight down and one radar down, the trip up the Eugene Island Channel and through the Horseshoe was exciting, but not as much fun as the run up Bayou Chene, my first.

Anyhow, bottomside is done and new bottom paint is on.

Our topside inspection has been pushed back a couple of days while we wait for mechanics to finish on the boat.

We’re ready for the inspection now, and past ready to get back to work. Where that will be is anyone’s guess.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for somewhere in Texas. Most of the other guys, not so much.

Isaac

Forgive me for saying so, but it was a pretty good hurricane, so far as those things go. For me, anyhow.

That's the status I posted on Facebook earlier today.

When I was younger, I took a guilty pleasure in tropical weather. As I grew older and began to understand better the utter devastation these storms often cause, my feelings changed. My complicated relationship with cyclones is chronicled here.

So, by virtue of not having family in harm's way of this storm, by the good fortune of not being stuck in Port Fourchon or -- God forbid -- offshore, I stand by my midday statement.

Turns out a boat is not a bad place to be during a hurricane, provided you have a good hurricane hole. The dock we chose on the ICW in Morgan City was a pretty good spot.

Double-up the lines, lash down the life rafts, stow the life rings, bind the cargo and make sure the hatches are dogged tight. Then, throw a peach cobbler in the oven. That's the routine, apparently.

We didn't have to worry about the electricity going out (it's always provided by our generators), we had plenty of good food on board, and when the water rose we rose with it.

The idle time gave our crew a chance to get to know each other better; normally, we are all awake at the same time only a couple of hours a day and then we're likely pretty busy.

The eye of Isaac, still a hurricane, passed about 40 miles east of us, which meant we never saw the calm in the center of the storm.

We got some serious wind, quite a bit of horizontal rain, and in fact as late as this afternoon we're still getting some bands that make us wonder if the storm really passed. Inconveniently, one of those squalls slammed into us just as I was about to put our boat on the fuel dock.

Morgan City is hosting more work boats than usual; eight of Seacor's pretty, orange and black crewboats are rafted-up down at the Halliburton dock, and a variety of utility boats and offshore supply vessels we don't normally see are in port.

The Coast Guard did not allow any of us to move until after 1400 today, when it began reopening waterways section by section.

The bulkhead at the dock where we usually load has caved-in, and the word is that we'll be offloading and backloading at a different location tomorrow morning.

Seas are still a bit steep out there, if the National Weather Service is to be believed, so I'm happy to wait.