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.

Well, Hello There ...

Here we are: 2013. The election has come and gone, a plunge over the fiscal cliff was narrowly averted and all that worry about the Mayan calendar has come to naught. Former hometown hero Lance Armstrong is reportedly set to announce that yes, in fact he is a lying bastard.

The U.S. is enjoying a 20-year peak in oil production and is on-track to claim the title of top oil producing nation in the world in the next decade. Newbuilds are hitting the water one after another, and rigs and boats are making their way back to the Gulf.

Me? I've been hanging out with the family for the past five weeks. During that time we moved across town, celebrated the holidays and explored the new neighborhood.

This Christmas marked the first time since ... well, probably in at least a decade, that I got to spend Christmas with the entire family -- both my brother and my sister (and their awesome significant others), the kids and my folks.

I was grateful for that opportunity.

We're a mile from our neighborhood brewpub (in which we promptly invested) and from a light rail station. There has been lots of kid time, which has been a real joy after spending nearly three months straight away from home.

I even got to head downtown to one of my old haunts for the "Wednesday Night Church Service," and was reminded, again, how fortunate I am to make my home in a place where $8 buys me a couple of hours of truly world-class music.

With another  200 days at sea under my belt, I now have the requisite time in the right categories to sit for the 500-ton Mate Oceans exam, and I'm just a few months shy of time enough for the 500-ton Master. 

I think I'll sit both and be done with license exams through 1600-ton Master and 2nd Mate All Gross Tons.

First, though, I have a long list of endorsements and assessments to complete. Short of spending about four months and $20,000 in a structured program, it's catch-as-catch-can at a handful of schools scattered around the continent's rim.

I start Monday with the Radar Observer Unlimited course at Fletcher Technical Community College in Houma, La. I have used radars routinely since the days when I was running tour boats; maybe this course will help me use them more effectively.

The climb up through the hawsepipe is a long one and is not particularly straightforward after the implementation of STCW 95. But how cool is it that there is even such an option in this country?! Many maritime nations have only one route to the wheelhouse, and that's through an academy of some sort.

The only way this works for me, by the way, is because my lovely bride also works.

She's sort of a superwoman -- holding down a high-pressure, senior-level position for a large healthcare network, taking care of our two youngest children (both still in diapers) and managing to remember to feed the dog and cat.

That doesn't give me the freedom to not work, but it does give us enough float that I can take a little time off and go to school, and I don't have to accept the first job that's offered.

The game plan of the day is to spend half of the week after next interviewing for jobs; I think I'll be looking at companies with larger boats -- mini-supply and supply boats.

Crewboats are cool, but with the growing importance of deepwater E&P, there may be much better opportunities on the larger, slower, steel hulls.

I'll keep you posted.

Rough

Have you ever had a morning like this? You sleep through the alarm, have to rush out the door without your coffee and traffic is stop-and-go. You discover – after you’re at the office – that you’re wearing one blue sock and one black sock and you forgot to shave.

Some hitches start out like that, too.

Supplies we’ve been waiting on for weeks did not show up before we left the dock, our first stop was at a platform we rarely visit on the far side of the field, and then we backloaded an already-crowded deck and made some field moves.

Most weeks, we head to the heart of the field and start clearing the deck, dropping off groceries and jet fuel, parts and other supplies. On a good day, we fall into a rhythm that lets us offload well over half our deck cargo before noon.

So, this week we were a little off-kilter to begin with.

Add to that a fresh breeze from the west – the “wrong” direction for the crane side of many of our platforms -- one less-than-skilled crane operator, construction boats everywhere, and we were slowed-down even more.

Our crackerjack engineer is home with the family (a well-deserved break), and we have a new hand on-board. Nice kid who so far is doing a good job; I hope he stays.

So, all that to say, it was a long first day.

We typically operate with a certain amount of uncertainty – often we don’t know where we’re going next until we’re leaving where we are now. Practically speaking, it doesn’t really matter so long as we make it back to the dock for crew change.

Bottom line is we’re out here to serve the customer and every hour pays the same, so it really doesn’t matter.