[Captain] Daddy, or, We Celebrate Mothers' Day for a Reason

It’s the day after Mother’s Day and the day before my regularly scheduled crew change. It’s the day I’m usually doing the last of the laundry, downloading books on the Kindle, packing my bags and wondering if the children will let me get a nap before I drive 12 hours.

At this point in the crazy cycle of my life I’m usually disengaging from the family. If something on my “honey do” list hasn’t been completed by now, it will have to wait until I get home next time.

If one of the boys has a crisis, my wife deals with it; I’m focused on going back to work, where I will be responsible – at least half of each day -- for millions of dollars of equipment and half a dozen lives.

Parenting fail: he wasn't even supposed to know about the

Golden Oreos Double Stuff cookies. Damnit.

But not today.

Today I’m sitting on the back porch watching the rain, thinking about how badly I bungled my first day of a different sort of responsibility. I fell flat on my face, in fact.

My wife and I are trying out a new arrangement for the next four or five months. In this new scheme, she gets to travel and leave the house and kid stuff to me.

She has in fact always traveled for her consulting business, but usually just a couple days a month. My own longsuffering and generous mother has been available to pinch-hit for the parents; sometimes we’ve been able to find a trustworthy overnight babysitter.

But a new contract that builds toward deliverables in the fall of this year means the travel has increased significantly, and my folks are moving across the state this summer, and … well, it’s my turn to take the strain at home.

Getting some park time so Mommy can take a conference call.

I’ll use the time to study for my next round of tests at the Coast Guard’s Regional Exam Center, too. Or at least that’s the theory. In practice, it’s going to take early mornings and late nights and a lot of patience with sweet-voiced interruptions.

Parents of young children know this already, but let me just put it out there: if you get one little thing wrong – skip a wake-up or delay a nap, in this case – the ripple effects can last for days.

I’m not going to perform a full root cause analysis of why the boys were in the bath at 2300 last night, or why they had oatmeal for supper 30 minutes before that, or why they didn’t actually go to sleep until 0230 this morning, or why they are not in pre-school today …. but the broad outline looks like this:

1. We let Mommy sleep in on Mother’s Day, which meant Daddy had to get up extra early.
2. The 2-year-old went down for a nap about 1430. The 4-year-old not until 1700 or so.
3. They both slept waaaaaay too long.
4. Somewhere in there, Daddy also nodded off (see 1, above, resulting in 3).
5. Now we’re all home together on a wet Monday during the last week of “school” and my plans for garage organization/sorting old clothes for Goodwill/er … a nap … well, those plans are in significant disarray.

This is a lot more fun under an old oak
than under a crane 75 feet above the
water..

It's all a bit confusing. Last night when my wife called to say goodnight, the 2-year old looked at me, reached out his hand, and asked if he could talk to Daddy. Because usually it's Daddy who is gone.

But I love it. Sort of. I just had a conversation with the 2-year-old about why it rains. And reassured the 4-year-old that lightning was not in fact likely to strike the chimney, shoot down through the flue and spear him in front of the television.

Last night, in the wee hours before sleep, the 4-year-old picked his favorite sea creatures out of a book I didn’t know he had and asked me to read about them out-loud. I had photos of a surprising number of those animals – a manta ray, a needlefish (his big brother holding a junior state record), a whale shark, a bull shark and a hammerhead, a sea cucumber – on my phone.

I had just never taken the time to show him before.

But more to the point, in just 14 16 18 24 31 hours I have realized – viscerally rather than just theoretically – this solo parenting stuff ain’t easy.

Neither was the decision to stay home and take on a larger share of the responsibilities.

Despite the progress we have made, as a society, in achieving equality between men and women both at work and at home – and even though we are not quite there yet, we actually do better in the workplace – women still perform an outsized slice of the household and parenting duties.

But because of the first thing, greater professional opportunities and earning power of women outside the home, more than ever before men are taking advantage of the opportunity to stay home with their kids. The number has almost doubled since 1989. 

And if you needed another sign that the era of the stay-at-home dad has arrived, A&E aired a reality show about the phenomenon. 

Not surprisingly, the number of full-time stay-at-home dads peaked in 2012, right at the end of the recession. For many, the decision to become full-time fathers was an economic one.

Rudy's BBQ for lunch? Sure. Why not?

It was for us as well. The percentage of wives who out-earn their husbands has almost doubled from about 17 percent the year I graduated from high school to 29 percent in 2012.

We are part of that 29 percent, and it has rarely been anything more than an occasional source of good-natured competition and a constant source of pride for me.

That is to say, I don't feel threatened by my wife's success. I know I'm still smarter, sexier and a better angler than she is.

Okay ... not really. I'm just one of those things. But sometimes I tell myself I'm all that so I'll feel better.

For most guys who decide to take on the primary child care role, the decision is undoubtedly freighted with the same sort of tortured ambivalence I feel: it tears my heart every time I leave to start a hitch and, with young kids especially, I feel like I'm missing so much. 

On the other hand, I am a man, a husband, a father – my job is to go out and earn a living for the family. Never mind my wife makes more than half the income, my own career field pays pretty well and it is (usually) honest labor I can be proud of. In addition, I really enjoy my job, on balance, and I take pride in the progress I have made in a career I chose relatively late in my life.

For many men, what we do defines us, or is at least an integral part of our identities. But the same is true for many women. My wife earned a graduate degree, put in the years in corporate jobs and at one of the “Big Four” consulting companies, and has earned every bit of her successful career. Which she also really enjoys.

But …. my career!

God willing, there will be time for it. I’ll return to my other work in four or five or six or 10 months with a more valuable credential.I won't accept anything less than an even time schedule.  I’ll also go back, if the last 20 31 hours are any indication, with a much greater appreciation for what my wife accomplishes while I’m gone.

The world we live in today is changing at a remarkable pace. Many things our parents and grandparents took for granted – from lifelong employment and comfortable retirements to gender roles and responsibilities to what makes a family – look significantly different in 2015.

Entire industries and career fields have disappeared and others have taken their place (or, sadly, not). Technology and something called the Affordable Care Act have rendered the office and the corporate employer, if not obsolete, at least just one among many options.

(I just discovered I can get vastly superior health insurance for the family through the Health Care Exchange about 50 percent cheaper than COBRA and only about 30 percent more than my monthly contribution to my former employer’s plan.)

For our little family, all of this change has expanded opportunity rather than limited it. It means that, so long as there is an airport within a reasonable distance and high-speed internet at the house, my wife can work from virtually anywhere.

As a merchant mariner, of course, so can I. Just not always at precisely the same time.

All of this change around us has also changed the way we think about things; we no longer feel compelled to do things the same old way, the way our parents did, or the way society considers “normal.”

Instead, we can do things the way that works best for our family. There are limits, of course: no employer will tolerate unlimited leaves of absence; the kids require a certain amount of structure; and we have to pay the bills and save a little money.

There's no replacing Mommy. Best I can do is fill-in for a while.

There may be other limits we haven't yet discovered, something integral to her or me that will prevent this from working. Like the sink full of dishes right now and the floor that needs to be mopped. Also right now.

As long as I feel like I'm moving forward professionally in some way -- even if it's just a couple hours a day of study for my raise-in-grade -- and as long as I can take an active role in my boys' lives, I think I can live with it.

But holy crap, momming ain't no joke. And my wife does this for weeks at a time, while working five or six hours a day.

Hat's off, Babe. And I'll get those dishes done before you get home. Promise.

Sea Bag

I used to work for a guy, an Air Force two-star, who was fond of quoting a bit of wisdom he attributed to his father, also an Air Force general and one of the original Tuskegee Airmen.

"When the train of opportunity pulls into the station, you have to have your bags packed and be ready to jump aboard," he'd say. And, sometimes: "Luck is where preparation meets opportunity."

We recently added a fellow to our crew who has had his 100-ton master's license for two years. After nine-months of after-watch stick time, and repeated promises that he'd be the next one jumped-up to a third-captain's position, he finally figured he'd try his luck elsewhere.

He applied to our company as an "engineer/captain," and that particular day we had a need for an engineer. He seems competent in all respects, and easy to get along with, so at the first opportunity I put a bug in our port captain's ear and now, hopefully, he's on a "training captain" track.

He has a lot more experience on crewboats -- and in the oilfield -- than I do, and that got me to thinking: how did I go straight to the wheelhouse from a completely unrelated career?

I've come up with a couple of possible answers, and I'll share them here in the event they will be useful to someone else.

1. It wasn't an accident; the wheelhouse of a crewboat or OSV was always my goal, and I took the time to research the steps I'd need to take and go after the experience and training that would get me there as quick as possible. That meant spending a year making not-a-lot-of-money on small passenger vessels of the appropriate size.

2. Luck of the traditional kind: I was just at the right place at the right time. This is actually pretty important and probably accounts for at least 50 percent of how folks get jobs in the Gulf.

3. My winning personality: Okay, not really. But I do interview pretty well. Three days of office visits netted me four job offers. It helps to know the basics (dress well, be polite, shake hands firmly and make eye contact), I refer you to the excellent post by a fellow gCaptain forum member on the subject.

4. Honesty: I was up-front about being new to the industry, but I was also frank about what I thought my strengths are -- quick to learn, not afraid to try, not afraid to ask questions, and willing to work.

5. Confidence: not to be confused with arrogance or cockiness ... but in fact I was confident I could do the job, and that confidence grows all the time and hopefully will contribute to me keeping the job.

I was putting things in my bag -- my sea bag -- for years, and much of the time didn't even realize it.

The Army taught me a lot about how to handle "hurry up and wait" situations, which are exceedingly common in the oil patch, and also how to live rough and to adapt when a plan falls apart upon contact with the enemy.

Live interviews on TV and radio and in print, having to talk off the cuff about natural disasters and boating fatalities and child abuse and all the rest of it, taught me a lot about thinking before opening my mouth and thinking quickly under pressure.

I learned a lot about being a (variously): survivor, team player and supervisor from working in large bureaucracies. Believe it or not, there are office politics on a boat, and in boat companies, too.

All of these are the sort of "soft" skills that are hard to quantify and catalogue on an application or resume.

I've heard more than one person say: "A boat's a boat," implying that if you can drive one boat you can drive any boat. Well ... yes and no.

No, because every boat -- even boats from the same designer and yard -- has its own personality; little quirks that affect performance. Boats of different types sometimes handle in vastly different ways given the same control inputs.

Yes, because some things truly are nearly universal. A lot of the hard skills -- the stuff that really helps on any boat -- came not from what I've done in the past two years as a captain, but the stuff I started learning back around the Bicentennial.

Things like: how to read water (color changes, wind shadows, seas, currents, etc.), how to control yaw and steer a straight course, how to listen to a boat to tell what she's doing ...

Believe it or not, a racing sailboat is an excellent place to acquire all of those skills in spades.

I have been fortunate to have had a lot of good teachers over the years -- right up until this very day, on the boat I now work on -- but none more profoundly influenced my ability (or at least my belief that I have the ability) to do this job than my Uncle Bob.

An ex-Navy man and boat builder who finally let his own master's license lapse on the fifth or sixth issue, he was tough, patient, and extraordinarily generous with his time and knowledge.

So, thanks Uncle Bob, for giving me some stuff to throw in my sea bag.

For anyone reading this, I'd love to know what experiences or skills you picked up along the way help you today.

Going to Sea (Part I)

Reprinted below, with the kind permission of the author (a 500-ton Master, Oceans, and fellow Austinite) is probably the single best primer on how to get started in marine transportation. Originally posted to gCaptain, an interwebs forum for mariners.

Reality Is Nothing Like The Dream

So you got it somewhere in your head that a life at sea is for you. The constant adventure, interesting port calls, the mesmerizing sunrise and sunsets on the water, the never-ending sea stories to tell those back home are all you can think about.

You’ve watched too many movies. Those days, if they ever really existed, are long dead.

The United States no longer has a robust blue water shipping fleet. Military Sealift Command and NOAA are the closest one gets to blue water shipping and the disadvantages far out way the advantages for most of us mariners.

The majority of jobs are now on tugs and oil field vessels. While these jobs offer their own challenges and rewards it’s not what you have seen on TV. This is a serious business and we have no time for guys come out here with romantic visions of shared hardships and gallant struggles.

We bust our ass to make it home to our families and the hope for a better life for them and ourselves through our paychecks. At the end of the day that’s all that counts too many of us.

If you really want to know what life is like on a work boat visit the link below for a real run down of what life is like for a deckhand. While it’s geared more for the navy, 95% of it holds true for the commercial side. http://goatlocker.org/resources/nav/simulate.htm

Are You Sure You Want To Do This?

Still not scared off? Then sit down and ask yourself the following questions and see if you are really ready to commit and make the sacrifices needed to start working.

1- Can you go weeks if not months without talking to anybody at home? I mean this, NOBODY, not your parents, not your friends, not your wife, not your kids. If you are married can your family live without you for the length of your hitch? Do you have small kids and can your wife handle being essentially a single parent for 6 to 9 months out of the year? 

Your world while at work can consist of a very small boat for weeks at a time, with as few as 3 other guys onboard that you will more than likely have nothing in common with and the only time you step on land is to take the garbage to the dumpster while at the dock. There are no quick runs to the store, no nights on the town, just the boat.

2- I don’t care how old you are, what your background is or how educated you think you are. You know nothing the first year at sea. You are now working in a heavy industrial environment with the added fun of inclement weather and confined spaces. I don’t expect you to know everything, but I do expect you ask questions and listen.

Good rule of thumb is if you don’t know what something is or what it does ask about it, but until then do not touch. This means you are going to have to put your ego in check and expect that you are going to be chewed out over something eventually, multiply times actually. You are going to be expected to do the tough dirty jobs that have to get done. Your days are going to consist of long hours of boredom separated by tons of cleaning, painting, and working on deck.

3- You need at minimum a Transportation Worker Identification Cars (TWIC). This cost $150 plus the time to it takes to go to whatever office is closest to you TWIC. Once to apply, once to pick it up. If you want a better chanc,  a Merchant Mariner Document (MMD) with your Basic Safety Training (BST) as laid out by STCW can help. The MMD along with physical and drug screen will be around $300 and your BST is another $500 to $1000. This plus the cost needed to go find a job can add up so best to have some money saved up.

4- Chances are if you found gCaptain then you have some aspirations of being an officer. That’s fine, but realizes that it will take years of sea time and weeks of classes to even get your Able Seaman (AB) or 100 ton master license. If you want 500/1600 ton mate or masters then even more years of sea time and month of classes.

All of this outlined by the Coast Guard and they change the rules all the time. You are never really done as every five years when you come up for your license renewal you will have to take some refresher courses. Sadly none of this will be done while you are at work but done while you are on your off time.

It is expensive to take these classes and while sometimes you can get your company to pay for the classes, room, and board, don’t count on it. Also these classes are only held in certain parts of the country so unless you are extremely lucky to live close to one of these schools count of more time away from your family.

5- This industry is EXTREMELY cyclic. We go from boom to bust literally overnight. If a steadfast job security is important to you look somewhere else.

Look Mom I’m An Ordinary Seaman!

So you’ve taken some time and thought about it and are still interested in starting a career at sea but don’t know quite how to start let’s see if I can help.

1- TWIC http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/layers/twic/index.shtm

Start here. Find your nearest enrollment center, make an appointment and go get it. Takes about 6 weeks for it to come in. You cannot apply for your MMD until you have applied for your TWIC,

2- Get a Psychical using Coat Guard Form CG-719ke. Print it out and hand it to your doctor, make sure they sign it when they are through filling it out. http://www.uscg.mil/nmc/medical/forms/cg719ke.pdf

3- Don’t forget your drug screen. Here is a list of CG approved place to go along with the form that needs to be filled out when submitting everything to the CG.

http://www.uscg.mil/nmc/drug_testing.asp

http://www.uscg.mil/forms/cg/CG_719P.pdf

4- Find a BST class close that you that you can afford. Go to the pull down menu and select Basic Safety Training and the approved course throughout the country come up. 

If you see a course being offered somewhere but do not see them on this list ask to see their certificate from the Coast Guard. It will have the name of the course on it with expiration date on it. Make sure it’s for the class you want and that it hasn’t expired. http://www.uscg.mil/nmc/courses/appr...ses_course.asp

5- Ok now you’ve got everything together fill out the application for you MMD get all your copies of forms and certificates and submit everything to the nearest CG office and hopefully in 2-4 weeks you will get a packet from Martinsville WV with your MMD in it.

http://www.uscg.mil/nmc/download-docs/CG-719B-F5_(03-04).pdf

Going to Sea (Part II)

The following post is Part Two of the excellent "going to sea" primer by a member of the gCaptain community. Re-posted with his kind permission:

Time For A Road Trip!

Now that you busted your ass and spent several months getting your MMD, or years getting your Third Mate license, you feel like you deserve a job from the first place you think is lucky enough to have you.

Hold up and put that ego in check. Sad to tell you that you are not a special and unique snowflake, there are hundreds of guys just like you looking for that first job, and even more with experience looking at any one time for their next job. You might get lucky and have a job fall in your lap, but don’t count on it.

The industry is just starting to turn around and while an experienced guy can find work pretty easy, it’s harder for somebody with no experience. Hopefully these few tips will help:

1- What to pack in your sea bag. All you really need are steel toe boots, helps if you can also get a pair of steel toe rubber boots also, enough cloths to last a week mainly long pants and t-shirts, whatever medicine and stuff you need for the bathroom.

If possible bring more than enough if you end up working over. Not exactly a pharmacy right around the corner out here. Keep this in the back of your car on every interview. We are not kidding when we say have your bags packed when interviewing. What you think you are being hired for your sparkling personality and witty conversation? The reason they are hiring you is they need somebody RIGHT NOW! All you are is a warm body to them.

If you can’t leave right that second to get on a boat the HR guy is just going to wait 5 minutes for the next guy to walk through the door with his bags packed, and thus give that guy a new job.

2- What to wear to a job interview. You can wear a suit and tie, but don’t be surprised if you are better dressed then the guy interviewing you is. It’s a very informal industry. That said I have seen people show up looking for a job in flip flops, shorts, and a tank top. Please don’t be that guy, and if you are don’t complain that you can’t find a job.

I keep it simple, blue jeans, tennis shoes, and a button down shirt tucked in. I have long hair and keep it in a ponytail. Also if you have facial hair, keep it neat and trimmed up. The reason I wear the above is that when I get that new job and have to go to the boat I don’t have to worry about changing out of my suit in the bathroom someplace. You also don’t want to wear something that you are afraid to get stains on or snag on something when getting on a boat. Also boats are smelly and you don’t want your nice suite to smell of boat when you get home, do you?

3- How to actually get that first job: I work in the Gulf oil fields on supply boats so this next section will mainly apply to finding work in the oil patch. I’m sure other places are the same, just the locations are different. Don’t waste your time with online applications or constantly calling on the phone for your first contact if you have no experience.

You are going to have to get in your car and drive down to where the boat companies are. Most of them are located along Hwy 90 between New Orleans and Lafayette, with a high concentration of them along LA-1 towards Golden Meadows. If I see another thread in the Jobs section from somebody complaining that they cannot find a job and they have not gotten off their ass and made multiply trips through southern Louisiana I am going to scream.

I live in Austin, TX it’s a 10-hour car ride down there so I get that the trip can be expensive and time consuming. It takes a week to seriously hit most of the boat supply boat companies, and you are more than likely going to have to do it multiply times.

So plan to take at least two weeks. The first one to see everybody you can and the next to go back to the ones you liked and showed the most promise. I’ve had to repeat this several time over the course of several months to find a job before. To find where to go in Louisiana type “Supply Boat Companies In Louisiana” or any such variant in Google to get their address.

4- The Interview: Most importantly besides having your bags packed for work it to have all your documents together. I have a file folder to keep them in along with receipts and any other work related stuff I want to keep together. Also it helps to have your Social Security card and your passport, if you have one. When you walk in, go to the receptionist and ask to fill out an application, look smart and bring your own pen, she will hand you an application and ask you for your documents so she can make a copy to go along with your application.

Be nice to the ladies at the front desk, they are the gatekeepers and are just as important to you getting a job as the HR man. Make small talk with them and use lots of please and thank you with them. After you fill out the application and hand it back to the receptionist ask if they are seeing anybody toady.

Hopefully they are and she’ll either give you your documents back or keep them for the HR man to look over. Go sit down and wait. If she says they are not seeing anybody today ask when the best time might be to stop by and see someone is and come back then. If she says that the HR guy only sees people by appointment, thank her for her time and move on to the next company.

When the HR guy comes out get up and shake his hand look him in the eye and introduce yourself and what job you are looking for. You guys will then take a few minutes doing the usual interview thing; he will then offer you a job or tell you that they have nothing available right now. If that’s the case then get up shake his hand and tell him that you will check back with him in a few days.

And so with the next company and the next. The thing to remember is that you want to make a good impression because you will more than likely be talking to him over the next few months as you keep looking for a job. He will start to remember you and it you just might get a call one day looking for a deckhand because he remembers you and knows that you’re serious about working.

In Closing

Did I mention if you have questions please do a search first? Any general question you can think of has been asked and answered numerous times. If you search and can’t come up with an answer to a specific question then go ahead and ask, but please include as much information as possible and put some thought into how you are asking it.

We are constantly answering the same question over and over, and this has caused a few members to equip them selves with pointy sticks and others to get even bigger ones. So to save your self some embarrassment do a search. This also keeps the number of threads asking the same questions down so that when someone does a search they don't get page after page of related threads and then you have to dig through all of them to find the information you are looking for.

You will find discussion about the use of head hunters around the forums. Avoid the ones asking you to sign a contract stating that if they find you a job you will pay them an amount equal to 14 days of work. Don’t sign on with those blood suckers. Along with taking your money they give kickbacks to whoever hired you to use them.

So you are essentially paying the HR man to hire you. What they are doing is technically illegal, but have yet to be brought to justice. There are a few companies that don’t charge you and they try, but I have never had luck using them. I’ve always found my jobs the old fashioned way, with the employment agencies calling me a few days after I get my new job with job offers.

Every now and then a guy looking for a spot on a yacht gets lost and ends up on this forum. If you haven’t figured it out yet we are commercial- oriented and can give little if any help outside of questions related to license upgrades.