Remembering Karen

Karen was a tease. Drawing ever nearer, then dancing away, then disappearing altogether. The days of unrelieved anticipation were eerily reminiscent of my late, unlamented dating career.

We wondered last week which weather system would win: the strong cold front bearing down from the northwest or the tropical storm wobbling north. I'm hardwired to bet on tropical weather.

As late as the end of my watch Saturday, we were still expecting at least a little rain and some 30-knot winds from a tropical depression.

My faith in the National Weather Service led me to scoff publicly at the old mariner's rhyme:

Red sky at night, sailor delight;
Red sky at morning, sailor take warning

I scoff no more.

I got up early Sunday to see the wind and rain and was instead greeted by blue skies and a northerly breeze.

Shoulda known better. That rhyme, after all, has been around for a while. The Good Lord himself uttered something very much like it in the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew:

When in evening, ye say, it will be fair weather: For the sky is red. And in the morning, it will be foul weather today; for the sky is red and lowering.

And, man, was it red. The sun was red. The sky was red in every direction. The air itself was red.

We headed offshore this morning, and the promised delight apparently has an expiration date, because it was pretty bumpy and windy out there. It's an early preview of coming attractions in the Gulf, I guess.

At any rate, Karen was just about a perfect storm as these things go. We got some down time to catch-up on maintenance and paperwork, no one got hurt and no one lost homes, vehicles or places of employment.

I'll take the tease any day.

This one was for New England Waterman, who was whining that I needed to update the blog. You'd think the guys who drive those big boats would have better things to do than bird-dog my writing schedule. And thanks to my colleague Shawn and quickmeme.com for the Hurricane Karen art!

Small World

A shout-out to my compadre from Florida who sherlocked his way through this blog and correctly deduced not only what company I work for, but what boat I’m on and what field we’re working. Of course, he’s a captain on a sister ship for the same company.

Anyhow, thanks for reading.

More proof that it’s a small world … I’ve been puzzling over why this damned norther just keeps blowing and blowing after the front passed through. Navtex delivered the answer this afternoon:

High pressure well NW of the area is combining with the large wind field of Hurcn Sandy to produce fresh to strong NW to N winds behind the front. These winds will persist thru early Mon over W portions of the Gulf … and linger to the E. Winds will diminish basin wide Tue and Wed as high pres builds SE across the Gulf ….

And here I thought that the late-season hurricane that barely brushed the Gulf was a mid-Atlantic and Northeast problem, one that wouldn’t affect us at all. I looked at the projected track last week and dismissed it from my mind.

“Fresh” and “strong” are adjectives with specific meanings in marine meteorology; they correspond to Force 5 and Force 6 on the Beaufort Wind Scale, or 17-21 knots and 22-27 knots, respectively.

So, thanks Sandy, for the extended cold front. And my very best wishes to the mariners who must deal with the comparably much worse conditions up the east coast and in the Atlantic.

Winter

Winter in the Gulf of Mexico comes like a freight train, frequently but on no set schedule. Blowing through, shaking and rattling and roaring, then gone.

This particular cold front has dropped temps to the “chilly” mark – we’re all staggering around the boat in jackets – and a low moan of protest has been emanating from the rigging on the boat the past 24 hours.

An aluminum crewboat – especially one that has pumped-off about 150 tons of water and fuel and been relieved of its deck cargo – bobs erratically like a cork in a maelstrom. Not usually to the point that the vessel’s seaworthiness is endangered, but it’s damned uncomfortable.

Navtex showed “6-9 ft” seas for Saturday, and that was pretty close, though I didn’t see many six-footers.

My watch turnover notes directed me to a platform about 5 miles distant at daybreak to offload a crane box and three crane weights.

I’m not sure what they’re using the crane weights for – pedestal cranes like the ones on the platforms out here don’t need them as counterbalances – but we’ve been toting the 11,000, 13,000 and 14,000 pound (respectively) hunks of iron from platform to platform since we got out here.

I was skeptical about getting the crane weights off the deck – lifts that size require the big block, which is slow -- but figured it wouldn’t be much of a problem to fastline the crane box up to the platform.

We ended up getting all of it off the deck without taking-out a deckhand, deck plate or a crash rail, but when the call came to pump water at another platform, I declined.

I did call the field boss on the phone and explain the hazards of trying to do much of anything on the windward side (almost all of our cranes out here are on the NW sides of their platforms) in these seas and 25-knot winds.

He dug it. But he’s also about to be out of water, so we’ll have to figure-out something before too long. The weather report says this sucker will blow itself out in the next 24 hours … I imagine we’ll be running and gunning again by tomorrow.

Today, though, may be another day at the buoy.

Logs are all caught-up. I can work on next week’s grocery order and the next iteration of our perpetual requisition order, and then it might be hammock-and-Kindle time. There’s not a lot of outside work we can get accomplished in this stuff.

Back at the fuel dock last week I got word that the jerk dispatcher at our dock was no longer employed there, a fact later confirmed with a grin by the logistics manager. That was happy news. Everyone else there – including the other “new” guy brought over to help run the construction boats – is just peachy.

Our port captain brought a couple of parts down for us. Two of them – a stop solenoid and a fuel priming pump – are intended to cure the a.) engine won’t stop from the helm station and b.) engine won’t start from the helm station problems.

Because Caterpillar makes at least three versions of the stop solenoid for three different electrical systems, but all three have the same part number, I was careful to specify that we needed a 12-volt solenoid on the requisition. Of course we received the 24-volt version.

The other day the first captain on the boat brought up the notion of going to even time, if the other captain agrees and we can find a fourth. Finding the fourth captain is not a problem – I called a friend I used to work with down south (he’s now working out of Fourchon) – and he said he’d be game if we could start after the holidays.

Like me, he’s the father of a toddler and is missing the kid time.

Anyway, our port captain said running even time is not a problem if we all wanted to do it. My fingers are crossed that we can all come to an agreement here on the boat.

It’s less money, because we each end up working 180 days rather than 240, but with day rates being what they are, we would all still probably make enough to pay the bills.

For me, anyhow, money isn’t everything. I figure I can always make more money later, but I can never get back a first step, a first word or any of a hundred other things I’m missing.

And not just with the toddler – I’ve been home just three weeks of Aidan’s first three months, and even if my 13-year-old doesn’t think he needs his dad right now, he probably does, and his dad definitely needs him.

Not to mention a several-times-weekly glass of wine and long talk on the porch with my wife, throwing the ball for the brown dog, attending Wednesday Night Church Services down at the Continental … I guess that, after a month-going-on-five-weeks on the boat, I’m missing home.