Weather Window

Christmas dinner was two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

In the past week on the boat, I’ve had just two hot meals, not counting a bowl of microwaved oatmeal. Mostly it’s been pretzels and crackers.

Weather, you know.

The Gulf of Mexico in winter, as I’ve written before, is a study in contrasts. There are, in any winter month, days of astounding tranquility and beauty. They usually come on the heels of a raging, blundering cold front that heaps the seas and generally makes us miserable for 24 or 36 hours.

In the day or two leading up to a cold front, typically we have a strong onshore flow that brings with it 20-25 kts of wind from the Southeast and moderate, but still less-than-comfortable seas of six feet or better.

Even in the wake of a cold front, it doesn’t get truly cold out here in the middle. This great basin is also a terrific heat sink (surface water temps in our area of the Gulf right now are averaging about 72 degrees); last winter we had snow flurries in Fourchon, while 100 miles offshore air temps dipped to maybe the low 50s.

We are still, for a few more days at least, working with the seismic fleet. Mind-numbing, 12-hour wheel watches. Headings and speeds dictated by survey lines, not the weather, which means wretched, broken sleep for the off-watch folks when the weather is crappy.

On the upside, it’s a job. And it’s good for the boat to have a job, in winter, when the price of oil is less than $60/bbl.

I’m also getting to see some of the vaunted deepwater projects out here: drillships and MODUs and LLOG's nifty Delta House Floating Production System, finished-out at the facility where my sister-in-law works back in Texas.

The long wheel watches cry out for some sort of stimulation; reading and television are out, which leaves strictly auditory entertainment (below the volume of the VHF radios, of course): Flogging Molly to Jon DeeGraham to The Trishas to sea shanties to J.J. Grey to Townes van Zandt to … Audible!

I downloaded the app, and a couple of books, before leaving the house.

Redeployment, by former Marine Phil Klay, is a thought-provoking punch in the gut.

Some of it resonates with my own (Army) near-war experience. All of it makes me feel more certain than ever that our political leaders must employ and deploy our military might only for damned good reason. Because that shit breaks people. Breaks them beyond repair, sometimes. And I’m just talking about our people, the ones who come home.

Something else I do to amuse myself out here is take pictures. Capt. Dean Thomas, the world’s best (and, quite possibly, most laid-back) kayak fishing guide recently turned me on to Snapseed, a Google app that easily turns ho-hum snapshots into dramatic images.

So, you know, I’ve been overdoing that.

There are a lot of things I see out here that I’ll probably never be able to capture photographically: the spray of stars overhead, the comb jellies and dinoflagellates scintillating in our bow wave, the lights of a drillship reflected from a low ceiling of cloud; a pumpkin-colored moon on the horizon.

Archimedes asked for a lever and a place to stand; I would need a fast, long lens and, also, a steady place to stand. Not terribly likely to happen out here.

I am reminded just now of another fun aspect of the job we are currently working … as I think I’ve mentioned before, the majority of the crews on the seismic vessels are European.

Most – at least the ones we deal with over the radio – have a fair command of English. Some speak an elegant and formal brand of the international maritime language, and all seem to be highly professional mariners.

This appears to have had, over the past couple of months, a salutary effect on both radio procedure and clarity of communication among the crews of the support vessels. Everyone’s just a bit more courteous, too.

And that ain’t a bad thing.

And now for something completely different

Well, we’re back on the job and I can’t decide if it’s the best job ever, or the worst job ever. My opinion changes with the weather, mostly because our heading and speed over ground do not.

We are one of a fistful of support vessels for a five-ship seismic fleet searching for buried treasure about a hundred miles offshore from south of Pensacola, Fla., to off of the South Pass of the Mississippi River.

Sometimes we act as a guard vessel, ahead and outside of one of the big boats, warning approaching and crossing traffic that we require a 7nm CPA astern and 3nm abeam and ahead. Other times we are chasing the tail buoys at the end of five miles of steerable streamers.

On yet other occasions, we act as the safety standby vessel when one of the survey ships launches a workboat to service their cables underway, or crew changes via helicopter. Sometimes they send us out ahead of the fleet to scout for reported obstructions or to provide current readings at a given location.

The planning that goes into something like this – both ahead of the project, and during operations -- is mind-boggling. The two seismic survey ships have dedicated navigation departments. I imagine them to look something like an Aegis missile cruiser’s combat information center.

Anyway, it’s good to be working after too many weeks pushed-up on the mud. An idle boat + oilfield slowdown = one nervous crew.

It’s hardly worth mentioning – but I’m going to anyhow (send the cheese care of my wife) – that with the new job came the promise of my third-in-a-row late crew change.

My first hitch I voluntarily worked-over for another captain and the customer then held us over in the field. I can live with that … weather, customer whims, emergencies – these things make our crew change dates and times a rough guide rather than an actual schedule.

At the end of my second hitch, we were off-charter and at the dock two hours ahead of the relief crew’s arrival. About 30 minutes before they were due to show up we got a call from the office informing us that one guy wasn’t going to make it, but a fill-in was on a plane, and we could expect them in “a couple of hours.”

Mmmmm … not so much. Twelve hours later I was actually, finally, on my way home, by that time going on 24 hours since I last slept.

This time we knew a good 30 hours in advance of our departure from the dock that we would not be back in time for our scheduled crew change. That, in fact, we would miss it by at least several days.

“If you need to get someone down here early, you’d better call your office now,” the company man said. I concurred, and listed the reasons, including the fact that the deckhand who has been on the boat 70-something days at this point had a ticketed international flight the day after we were scheduled to be home.

Anyway, I went to bed thinking it would be resolved through the chain-of-command. Didn’t happen.

I spent, literally, many hours scheduling everything I needed to do in my “off” time so that it did not interfere with the boat’s schedule. 

Two surgeries, two endorsements for my license upgrade and a week-long vacation with the family.

The procedures have been rescheduled, the vacay reservations amended.

And now I’ll have to take extra time off of work to make all this happen, and the company will have to find someone to fill-in for me. I am assured by my crew coordinator it won’t be a problem, but it’s still less than ideal for everyone.

There is no guarantee our crew coordinator could have found fill-ins on 24-hour notice, but he sure would have tried. 

The bottom line is that this little delay is costing the family thousands of dollars. Possibly as much as $6,504, depending on when I get back to the boat. (The $4 was the change fee for my plane ticket home.)

Waaaa, right?

But hey, we’re working. And that’s a good thing. It’s about to be an uncomfortable good thing – a norther blew through at 0552 with 40+ kts of wind. Seas are forecast to build to 10-12 with the occasional 16-footer thrown in for good measure. 

The entire fleet is running before the weather now.