One down, one to go ...

Halfway through the hitch from hell and I am really, really looking forward to getting home.

Except that I won't get all the way home until just before I come back. A long weekend with the family at the folks', then back to Louisiana for more training.

These short hitches are nice, but this one already feels three weeks old. It's been one thing after another since just before crew change.

Some of it stuff I don't want to write about in detail here, now, though I do subscribe to Ann Lamott's dictum that: "You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better."

Stuff I will mention: downflooding, bilge pumps not pumping, electrical malfunctions, bad starters and 32 hours straight on DP ("...that ain't nuthin' ..." some of my buddies on big mud boats say).

The customer has finally released us from the site for the morning, and we've taken care of the other issues over the past week with no recorded downtime, and some things we didn't even know were broken are now fixed.

We fixed some stuff we did know was broken, too. Stuff that's been broken for months. And by "we," I actually mean someone else, but it happened on my watch. And I spoke words of encouragement, nodded my head sagely and affirmed good decisions.

Yay team!

And there's only a week more to go.

On the other hand ... I've spent more time than I would like this past week playing armchair psychologist, trying to understand a couple of things that cropped-up.

I'm no doctor, and  I have never even played one on TV, still ... I'm fairly certain that in the past ... oh, let's say 10 days -- I've had to devote some time to dealing with one individual who suffers from untreated schizophrenia, or a schizophrenic disorder, and another individual who almost certainly suffers from narcissistic personality disorder.

Either one of these is a terrible burden to bear, and I'm sympathetic (particularly to the former), but unless the affected individual is a family member or close friend, I'm not very inclined to stand in the line of fire.

Let me be clear: we don't worry overmuch about strange out here; we're all a little "different," or we wouldn't be on boats. When oddness becomes physically violent, or in some way a career impediment to someone else, then it's time to perhaps change the situation. Just sayin' ....

On the other, other hand (I have three) -- I'm sailing this hitch with a couple of guys I really like and respect, so that kind of blunts the drama trauma.

Talking to someone about all this the other day, she said: "Well, I guess it's not so different than an office environment ... you get all kinds ..."

True. But at least in a shore-based job you get to go home at the end of the day.

In other news, I just finished a great novel, Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel (on sale now for Kindle at $2.99). Even if you're not into post-apocalyptic, dystopian worlds, you'll probably still like this book. It even manages to poke some good-natured fun at behavioral psychologist business consultants. Which is what my sweet wife is in her professional life.

And J.J. Grey's new album, Ol' Glory, is out -- bluesy southern soul that's just about perfect listening overnight on a boat in the oil patch in the spring of 2015.

Terror at Tiger Pass!

Somewhere off the coast of Africa this week, an Edison Chouest Offshore supply vessel was attacked by pirates and the American captain and chief engineer were kidnapped.

Elsewhere in the Pacific a couple of weeks ago, some poor ship somewhere was caught in the grip of a typhoon.

I sail on a small ship in a small sea. I suppose I am doomed to diminutive adventures.

I am reminded of the old veteran who was asked which war he served in.

“The Big One,” he replied.

“Oh, wow, I didn’t think you were quite old enough to be in World War II,” the other guy said.

“I wasn’t. I was in Korea, and it felt mighty damned big to me,” retorted the old soldier.

That exchange probably made more sense 20 or 30 years ago when I first heard it – back when Korean War veterans were merely middle-aged. But I digress, before I even get started.

Here’s what happened.

We leave the dock in Venice at 4 a.m. In a driving rain. A left takes us up Tiger Pass, and another left turn to take us north in the Jump to the Mississippi River.

About three-quarters of the way up the Jump, making a little better than 7 knots, I feel the engines suddenly drop out of gear. I pull them back to clutch, and then re-engage the throttles.

According to my gauges, they’re still idling, but there is no response to the controls.

I check my throttle selector -- a tiny toggle switch that moves inputs between the forward and aft helm stations. It’s where it is supposed to be.

Suddenly, my engine monitoring system shows “NO DATA” for two of the engines. The other two flicker in and out.

By this time I have lost all forward momentum and the river’s current is beginning to drag me back. I turn on the Not Under Command lights (red over red), make a security call on VHF 13, and run downstairs to wake everyone up.

Our progress, backwards, to the intersection of the Jump and Tiger Pass

The engineer and the off-watch captain tackle the problem, which we assume to be electrical. The deckhand helps keep lookout, and I man the radios.

There is quite a bit of traffic – supply vessels, crewboats, tugs and barges, shrimp boats --  through the Jump, which portions some amount of the Mississippi River into Tiger Pass and Grand Pass.

The current is not being kind to us, and begins to drag the bow of the boat – the most vulnerable section of the hull – towards a nasty group of pilings on the north bank of the Jump. It occurs to me, belatedly, that I do have control of one engine on the boat, one that is not hooked-up to the malfunctioning monitoring system.

I turn-on the bow thruster and use it to steer the boat. We pirouette gracefully off of the steep bank of a slip, and I flip the boat nearly 180 degrees, hoping to be able to catch an abandoned dock where the Jump meets Tiger Pass.

No one is more surprised than me that I’m able to swing the starboard stern to within a few feet of the dock. 

The deckhand catches a piling and makes us fast, and I use the bow thruster to ease us up against the dock, where we secure the boat.

We are no longer a hazard to navigation.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew is troubleshooting at a rapid pace. We find a couple of wires melted together in a control box. We isolate and reattach them. We regain throttles for about a minute, before the whole system crashes.

Another crewboat that works our field – and whose captain holds a master of towing vessels – comes alongside to take us back to our dock. Back in the middle of the Jump, we are in the midst of letting go the other boat so he can come around to our starboard side when once again our throttles come to life.

“Let’s see if we can hold ‘em long enough to get back to the dock,” I tell the other captain. “But if you could shadow us back, that would be great.”

And … we make it. Two hours after our departure. We thought we had the problem beat, too, until we tried to leave the dock an hour later and the same thing happened all over again.

Turned out the problem was in the interface between one of the big Caterpillar engines and the aftermarket control system.

Or one of the problems was.

Regardless, it was fixed, and we’re none the worse for the experience.

It was a bit of an adrenaline dump that left me feeling wrung-out the rest of the morning.

And that’s my sea story for this hitch.

Four Little Monkeys

Last week, I reported for my first at-sea watch as we were coming out of the Eugene Island Channel. We were floating over silvered glass, and between the full moon and the robin egg-speckled radar screens, I struggled with a surreal sense of vertigo.

The night was breathtakingly beautiful.

The first day of our week in the field, which begins in darkness late on Wednesday or early Thursday morning, is a long one: 110 nautical miles (that’s about 126 miles on a truck odometer) to the field, then offloading cargo and pumping water (and possibly fuel) throughout the day. For a captain, it’s 12 hours on tower.

The tempo usually slows by Friday afternoon, and over the shoreside weekend, we move equipment (and occasionally people) between platforms, pump more water and fuel, and begin backloading empty grocery boxes, fuel totes, trash and any equipment that is destined for the beach.

Downtime is devoted to radio and anchor watch (not that we ever actually anchor, but we tie-off to platforms), cleaning, maintenance and paperwork catch-up. I typically spend some of that time reviewing CFRs, tank capacity tables, our Safety and Environmental Management System manual, and the like.

The pace of backloading picks up Monday and Tuesday, which is the long day for the captain on the noon-to-midnight watch. We usually head in by 5 p.m. Tuesday, which puts us at the dock at midnight. Some weeks we get to go back earlier.

This week, for instance, we are spending Tuesday night in a different field operated by the same customer, but about 30 miles closer to shore. We’re covering for a utility boat that’s back at the dock, and the plan is to backload us with two large nitrogen tanks in the morning. Hopefully, we’ll then get an early release and head in.

Mid-week, after changing our secondary fuel filters, our engineer noticed a knock in the number one engine. Diagnosis: a burned (i.e., chipped, broken, effed-up) air intake valve. It’s possible we could have operated the engine the rest of the week with no real problems. It’s also possible the port outboard would have “had a baby,” resulting in $20,000-$70,000 in damage.

So, we locked it down and have been running on four engines the last few days.

On a boat with five mains, losing one doesn’t hugely affect speed. But losing an outboard engine does have a pretty significant impact on maneuverability, making it more difficult to walk the boat or hold it in place in some combinations of wind/current/crane location.

In that regard, this week has been a great learning experience for me, figuring-out different combinations of throttle and rudder to convince the boat to do what she did when that outboard engine was available.

As soon as we’re released in the morning, I’ll call our port captain and let him know our ETA at the dock, and Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning, we’ll spend about five hours installing a new valve and head on that engine, and barring any other surprises we’ll be back out here on time for my second week.

Over my first two hitches, I’ve had the midnight-to-noon straight through, which is a pretty good shift for a new captain; with our customer, 6 a.m. through early afternoon is when most of the cargo transfers occur so I’ve had ample opportunity to practice my boat-handling skills and learn the field.

Beginning Wednesday, we’ll go back to this boat’s regular schedule: the incoming relief takes the night shift, and the man in week two switches to days. That’s good for me, since it more closely matches my schedule at home. Plus, I’m having a hell of a time figuring out breakfast, lunch and dinner. Pizza for breakfast? Cereal for lunch?

I’ve seen some pretty nice sunrises out here in the last month, but precious few sunsets. I’m looking forward to those.