Becoming ....

I recently ran across an article online with this headline: Mark Knopfler: This getting older stuff ain’t for wimps.

That resonates for two … no, three reasons: first, I had a birthday this month. Second, I think Mark Knopfler is a fine songwriter and I’ve always enjoyed his music. Third, it echoes something my cousin Bobby said to me several years ago: “It takes a stout heart to grow old.”

Past a certain point, getting older has certain drawbacks, particularly if you are overly concerned with how the prevailing, youth-obsessed culture regards you.

The fact that in my mind I’m still a 20-something in the absurd and inexplicable situation of being trapped in a 40-something body is beside the point.

That thing your parents and grandparents told you – it goes so fast – is increasingly clear. The clock seems to tick a bit faster with every passing year. You realize that there’s something rather final just over the horizon; the bearing has not in fact changed, and the range is decreasing rapidly.

It’s not all bad. There also are advantages. I’ll admit that it took me a long time – way too long, at great cost – to “grow up.” To accept that those legendary adult responsibilities had my name on them. 

And then figure out how to meet them.

It wasn’t until my fourth decade or thereabouts that I finally started to get a handle on what is really important to me. Or even what I really thought about a lot of things.

The good news in all that, at least for me, is that the model I had in my head in my youth: grow, learn, take what I’ve learned and go do, coast into retirement with a genteel hobby or two…. has turned-out to be not terribly accurate.

It’s more like: grow, learn, do; grow, learn, do; grow, learn; grow, learn … hopefully right up until the end, whenever that will be.

That is to say, people change.

Scott Miller sings: “How am I ever gonna be me? How am I ever gonna be me, Lord? How am I ever gonna be if I’m not who I’m supposed to be?”

I learn new stuff every week: about being a dad, a husband, a son, a mariner, a man. Some of the lessons are bitter and I’m ashamed it’s taken me so long. Sometimes I feel smug, even triumphant, after mastering something, only to discover I’m still not done. Not by a long shot.

So … mid-forties, certainly with more years behind me than ahead of me, here’s what I know today.

1.  I’m not as smart as I used to think I was.
2. But I’m smart enough to realize that much of what I learned in school and in church as a kid was just flat wrong, or at least does not accord with the world as I have found it since.
3. Having a kid takes the skin right off a man, to quote a friend of mine. It’s the hardest thing in the world, and the best thing, and nothing is the same after.
4. Kindness matters more than almost anything else.
5. The practice of kindness notwithstanding, some people are just assholes, or mentally ill, and in either case unless there is a familial or professional (i.e., you are a proctologist or a psychologist) obligation, you should get the hell away from those people.
6. Despite #5, most people are mostly doing the best they can most of the time.
7.   The things you think are really important when you are 25 may not be the same things you think are really important 20 or 30 years later.
8. Friends matter. Especially the ones who have stuck around for 20 or 30 or 40 years, through all that learning and growing.
9. Of all the things I regret, and there are many, among them I cannot identify a single day I spent fishing or birding or just sitting somewhere watching water move. That’s some good shit.
10.  This list will change in the future.

One of the things I have not learned yet is how to splice a plaited (eight-strand) line. We chafed right through an eye during weather the other night, I had printed directions in hand, and I thought: “Well, how hard can it be?”

A couple of hours later, I can tell you it’s pretty hard. At least with this ratty line and in poor light. Maybe I’ll try again in the morning, if we’re not busy at the platform.

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. 

Insomniarium

It’s 0600 on a Saturday and I’m not up early, I’m up again. Or still up. I'm not sure which.

The 3-year-old fell out of bed in soaking wet pajamas. I changed him and tucked him back in. He never woke up. I can't tell you how unjust that feels to me.

The 1-year-old has stirred just once tonight, which is down from four times a couple of nights ago. He’s probably wet, too, but I guess it will keep.

The brown dog has let me know he needs to go outside to pee or look at the stars or get some fresh air or something three times tonight. That’s about average.

Two nights ago I figured I had that beat when I just left him in the back yard (with his food and water of course), but it turns out he's scared of the dark and barks nervously ... all night long. 

Well-played, brown dog.

It’s 0600 and I’ve worn-out Wikipedia (I started-out trying to figure-out the relationship between the Norwegian, Danish Swedish languages and ended-up reading about Visigoths. How’d I get to Visigoths?)

The spousal unit gave up on me long ago, and I’m down to my last cold beer.

I hesitate to say it, but … well, I don’t want to … oh, hell: I kinda miss the boat right now.

Don’t get me wrong; I haven’t put on a pair of socks (or underwear, for that matter) in almost two weeks now. I’ve had Vanilla Porter for breakfast. I got to hear the little guy utter his first complete sentence. I baked bread. Shit is getting DONE around this house, know what I mean?

But I miss 12(ish) straight hours of downtime. The purr of those big Cats. The hiss of water along the hull. That gentle rocking motion ….

I’m sure I’ll get over it.

Just as soon as I get some sleep.

This and That

Back on the boat and we've been running hard the past few days.

This is my last two weeks as permanent crew on this boat, and it is a bittersweet feeling. 

Most of us out here, I think, like the feeling of having a permanent "home" at work. In an unpredictable business, it's nice (usually) to work with a crew you know on a boat you know on a job that is familiar.

I give a lot of credit to my company that I was able to have an extended conversation with the HR manager and VP about options that would give me a little more time at home with the family. From what I read and hear from other mariners, even broaching such a subject at a lot of companies is likely to land you on the dock immediately.

We weren't able to work-out a formal solution, but in a couple of weeks I'll become a relief captain here, a floater ... kind of like a turd in the giant toilet bowl of the Gulf.

The impetus for the change is this: I have a high school freshman and two toddlers at home. My amazing wife, who works about 60 hours a week, struggles to keep up with the little guys, the house and her job while still getting at least five hours of sleep a night.

The 3-year-old struggles with some other things because his dad is gone. The 1-year-old changes almost daily. And the 14-year-old, well, we have some things to work on.

And I miss all of them, terribly, when I'm gone a month at a time. But if it was just me missing them, I'd take the lump, because after all I did choose this work. And I love my job.

At this point, though, it's a matter of one kid's healthy development and my wife's mental and physical survival.

So, now, in a best-case scenario, I'll essentially work 14/14 with no guarantee of the 14 days on. It was like flicking a switch: I went from worrying about the family in my absence to worrying that I won't be making enough money.

But I'm grateful that my company will continue to carry me on payroll and give me an opportunity to work. And they say I'm welcome to come back full-time whenever I like.

Most guys I talk to - and I've actually conducted a poll on this topic - are very happy with their even-time schedules. 

Of course, all of the guys who have that schedule are on bigger boats at bigger companies and making 50-100 percent more per day than I am, which adds up to a pretty good living for 180 days a year.

That's my goal, too, actually, but it's still a year or two down the road, what with sea time and classes and testing.

In other news ...

On the professional mariner forums there is sometimes some back-and-forth about who are the better, or more professional mariners: the blue water shipping guys or the oilfield boat handlers or the towing gurus, the 1600-ton masters and mates or the 100-ton schmucks like me who have to live-boat everything.

As a broad generalization, I'll say that typically the folks with larger tonnage licenses seem to be a bit more on the ball. But I'm here to tell you there's good and bad everywhere.

Chalk some of that up to "we're all human," and "everyone makes mistakes sometimes." But it's also true that there are idiots everywhere......

Yesterday morning in the wee hours I found myself southbound for sea behind a supply boat with all of its deck lights blazing. Imagine driving down the highway with an oncoming vehicle in your lane with the high-beams on. It was sort of like that.

After several attempts (another boat chimed-in: "That's the Seacor Deaf-and-Dumb, Cap. Good luck.") I finally got the other boat on the radio and kindly asked the captain if she needed those lights or might she turn 'em off.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't even realize they were on."

She then proceeded to have a detailed conversation with someone on another boat about (her husbands? brother's? friend's?) appendicitis. On VHF Ch. 13. Which, in Port Fourchon, is not the channel to conduct friendly conversations, or even to think out-loud. 

It's busy, busy, busy here, and boats need to be able to broadcast security calls and make passing arrangements. Right now.

A little later, I noticed an odd set of lights just off the Martin fuel dock, and just ahead of a northbound crewboat. It was a kayaker, paddling up the bayou in the dark. He got bonus points for exhibiting the required all-around white light. He lost all of those points for also exhibiting a bright red light. 

He plunged into a lifetime points hole for crossing the channel ahead of a work boat and for not having a radio tuned to 13.

Or maybe he did have a radio, but just wasn't talking into it. In which case he would have heard himself referred to as a "retard," an "idiot," an "organ donor," and worse.

Compare and contrast with the captain of the pogey boat Vasco de Gama, who called me as I was approaching the end of the Belle Pass jetties, just to let me know he was holding-up before he crossed the channel.

Which he should have, but it's always nice to know that the other guy knows what he's supposed to do.

In the Northeastern Gulf right now, there's a low-pressure trough moving steadily westward over us. 

The National Hurricane Center says there's only a slight (10 percent) chance it will develop into a tropical cyclone, but we should expect thunderstorms, lightning, strong wind gusts and occasional heavy rain over the next four or five days.

We've had a wicked pretty moon over the horizon in the west in the mornings this week, and from the wheelhouse I can see "isolated showers" here and there across the Gulf. It's a pretty nice view.

One of my cousins asked an interesting question on Facebook the other day: "What's it smell like out there?"

It smells like the sea, but not like the beach, where there is more (often decaying) organic matter. It's a clean, briny sort of aroma, most of the time. Sometimes you get the sweet, mulchy odor of feeding or schooling fish. In the vicinity of those thunderstorms you can often smell ozone.

Less often you might get a whiff of diesel exhaust from the boat, or grease or oil or driling fluids near a rig.

But usually the wind is blowing over open water and it's pretty nice.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation (or: Your Birthday is When I Say it Is)

It happens to all of us; we hire on with a company we really want to work for, get to a great boat with a good crew, and fall into the rotation wherever the gap was.

Then we start thumbing through the calendar, figuring out when we're working and when we'll be home for the next eight or nine or 12 months. 

Knowing that this, too, could change, but perhaps will not.

Oh, July 4th off -- good! Damn, I'll be on the boat for Thanksgiving And Christmas? Oh well ... 

Honey, I'll send flowers for our anniversary and make it up to you when I get home. Really, I will.

When I started with the new company, I proposed a couple of start dates that would let me take a long-planned vacation with my wife. 

That didn't do anything for their pressing need for another captain NOW, but -- happily -- true to their advertised emphasis on working with employees to make sure they don't miss important family events, they got that week covered.

I got an extra week off, someone else got an extra week of pay. In the morning I go back to work and he goes home for a week of recuperation. I talked to him earlier today and he's ready.

In the meantime, I got the week away with the wife -- not the one we planned (I have a huge credit with United Airlines now, and a modest one with a very nice hotel in Cabo San Lucas) but salutary nonetheless.

I also made it to my cousins' 25th wedding anniversary which morphed into a very nice family reunion at the beach in the South Texas town where I grew up (and where much of the family still lives).

And we celebrated the middle child's third birthday, which according to his birth certificate is this coming Friday, but according to Daddy's work schedule was Sunday.

I can get away with this maybe one or two more times with him, I figure.

So anyhow, we drank a lot of cocktails. Got sunburned. Held hands. Listened to music. Saw some old friends and made some new ones. Caught up with the extended family. 

I packed for work before we left, so now all that remains is to eat supper, play with the kids and read them to bed, catch a quick nap and get up at midnight to start the drive to Louisiana.

The ATX

It's Wednesday. I'm drinking a Convict Hill Oatmeal Stout for lunch. Because I can.

Sunrise over Ship Shoal, May 14, 2013. A long  run on crew-

change morning. Yep, we were late.

I arrived home at about 2:30 this morning and found a boy in my bed. He rolled over sleepily, said "Daddy" and smiled before drifting off again.

The wife was happy to see me. The brown dog was happy to see me and thought it would be an excellent time to play ball.

The cat, who I officially and publicly despise (but privately am quite fond of) gave every appearance of having missed me.

It's good to be home.

Three glorious weeks of at-homeness stretch before me: kid time, an adults-only trip to the Pacific coast of Mexico. A mini-family reunion and anniversary celebration in Mayberry-by-the-Sea.

Awesome. See y'all in ... about three weeks.

When it Rains ...

Well. Hello there. It's been a while.

I have news.

But, first: there's a thread going around on gCaptain right now on members' hobbies. What do you do when you're at home? (What do you do between hitches? Anything you've had to give up due to working offshore? Leave a comment!)

Me? I change a lot of diapers. Cook. Clean. Sometimes I throw the ball for the brown dog. Occasionally I catch a re-run of House or an episode of Shameless.

My aspirational response is that I read, write, fly fish, paddle a plastic boat, look at birds, carve things out of wood.

And I'm learning to play the ukulele (chosen, in part because chords are simple and there are only four strings, and in part because it's small enough and quiet enough to go to sea with me).

I have been home now for more than two months. My radar endorsement is safely tucked into the little red book. I've primed and painted the front gate. Found a couple of really cool old wooden school chairs cheap on CraigsList and stripped and refinished them. I hung blinds in the kitchen and replaced a couple of toilet seats.

It has been delightful, but I'm ready to go back to work for as long as my long-suffering, incredibly hard-working wife will let me.

With no solid offers arising from my three interviews during the week at school, I decided to head back to Louisiana and knock on some more doors.

But then it was Superbowl Weekend and Superbowl Hangover Week. After that, Mardi Gras.

A trip to Louisiana from the middle of Texas is a significant investment -- a triple C-note in gas roundtrip, plus accommodations, plus I'll probably want to eat once in a while ... it's a gamble, no job guaranteed, so most of us who do this from time-to-time try to make sure we maximize our productivity on any given trip.

And, you know ... Newton's First Law of Motion.

The unbalanced force (e.g., poverty, domestic unrest) had not yet acted upon the object (me) to change its (my) velocity (zero).

I've now buried my lede as far as I possibly can -- so I'll cut to the chase: a couple of days before I had planned to hit the road, I sent out two emails. Late at night, on a holiday. The next day I received a phone call and a job offer from Company Number One -- a smaller, family-owned boat company.

Crewboats, not OSVs, but nice crewboats owned by some folks who have been in business for a lot of years now and have long-term contracts and are willing to pay more than my last employer. Bonus points: an old friend from another life is a captain on the boat they are sending me to.

Ironically, as I wrapped-up my acceptance over the phone, call waiting beeped and it was the other company I had emailed -- bigger boats, newer boats, better bennies.. I reluctantly declined their offer, explaining that I had just accepted at Company Number One and didn't want to burn that bridge.

The personnel manager at Company Number Two teasingly reminded me that she, too, had previously offered me a job and I was turning her down again ....

"Well," I said, "Maybe the third time will be the charm. Can I keep in touch and check back with you down the line?"

"Absolutely," she said.

I am not God's Gift to the Gulf of Mexico, or The World's Greatest Captain. I'm competent, I try to pay attention. I keep my paperwork up-to-date, I speak standard English and I wear clean clothes and look people in the eye when I meet them.

But let me back up: when I say I emailed "companies," that's not exactly right. What I really mean is that I emailed specific individuals, and those particular people called me.

I hold on to business cards, send thank-you notes after interviews, and have been known to share cool photos of boats belonging to companies I did not go to work for -- when I run across them out on the water -- with the people who did not hire me.

My point is this, Grasshopper: never write-off a person or a company just because you don't go to work for them the first time around. This industry in this part of the world is fairly fluid. You never know when a previous good (or at least not negative) impression will pay off.

My other point is that when it rains, by God, it pours. This is my third round of job hunting in the oil patch, and the third time I've had multiple job offers on the same day or in the same week.

And I am so very grateful, because apparently in much of the country still, jobs aren't just falling out of trees.

And for all the sacrifices mariners make, it's damned good money, even in the 100-ton world, even for someone still relatively new to the game.