Some Days You're the Painter

And some days you're the paint. You just gotta roll with it either way.

I joined the new boat in shipyard: bottomside and classification society survey this week, followed by the topside (safety) inspection a couple more weeks down the road.

I was pretty thrilled that the shipyard guys sandblasted the hull and back deck and painted both for us.

I was less thrilled when they sandblasted the boat in dry dock right next to us immediately after pressure-washing our vessel mast-top to keel.

That's sort of the way it's been going: get the windows in the wheelhouse taped-up, then watch it rain for three hours. Start painting the wheelhouse, then quit and hope it sticks when a thunderstorm rolls in.

So it's good we have a little time. Apparently we'll need it.

Not least because there's ... well, there's a lot of paperwork with this company, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the two daily reports, three weekly drills, the monthly and quarterly and 90-day (not the same thing as quarterly) drills, weekly trainers, the three separate monthly vessel condition reports, etc., etc.

The new boat is still under 100 GRT, though it's 170-ft. long. We operate with a five-man crew, which is better than the last crewboat's four, but probably not quite enough to comfortably handle all of the ISM paperwork we're required to do.

Still, great training for the next boat, which will (hopefully) be over 100 GRT.

This company's got them, which is one of the reasons I wanted to work here.

First impressions: good crew with the best kind of friendly, helpful and salty old captains; we don't have to twist anyone's arm to get the supplies we need (heck, we've had five mechanics on board the last week to completely rebuild our mains, generators and bow thruster -- and they're not even broken).

I feel a little like country mouse in the city, arriving on a steel hull from a crewboat. We have an icemaker. We have a pressure washer that is plumbed to fittings throughout the vessel. Our compressed air also is plumbed to fittings throughout the boat.

We have WiFi and satellite TV, and the company pays for it.

We have an honest-to-God satellite phone, and we can use it to call home when we're offshore.

So far, so good. I'm happy to be back at work.

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.

Projects

Just lately we’ve been trying to knock out a few projects on the boat every day. Today was spotlight day: the aft light was frozen in place, and the forward light on the starboard side was dim and diffuse.

A lot of elbow grease, some actual grease, a few power tools and a little ingenuity later, Bill had the aft light operational.

My job was easier – I just replaced the mirror and cleaned the inside of the housing on the faltering forward light. While on top of the wheelhouse, I fixed a broken antenna mount (we have 11 antennas atop the boat – but so far as we can tell, only nine electronic appliances requiring antennas … guess we need to trace those wires at some point) and began polishing our air horns.

I replaced a couple of deck lights and we tested all the high-water alarms, as well.

Yesterday we tested all the engine alarms (oil pressure, gear lube pressure, water temp), replaced two sending units and rewired one control box. We also made up two new 80-ft. mooring lines, spliced and whipped.

Meanwhile, the deckhand on the night shift has been grinding and painting on deck – a process I intend to continue on the next hitch, beginning at the top of the mast.

Well before we go to the shipyard for our Coast Guard hull inspection in November, everything we can reach should be good to go. The shipyard will take care of the hull – which badly needs a couple of fresh coats of paint.

A lot of this is deferred maintenance, and some of it is just the sort of stuff that we need to do periodically. One thing I’m sure of is that we’ll never run out of things to do – this is, after all, a boat.

Plus and Minus

Going through some of our paperwork the other day, I found the 2010 survey for this boat. The value was estimated at $2.6 million. With a full load, and at current prices, we carry about three quarters of a million dollars in fuel, and – I’m guessing – anywhere between $500,000 and $2 million in other cargo and equipment.

For half the day, every day I’m out here, I’m responsible for about $4 million in stuff and four lives. Not to mention civil and criminal liability should I really mess-up.

A text from home tells me the power has gone out again in the middle of the night and it’s not even storming and the youngest son has another ear infection and is crying for me.

Days like those, and when seas are running 6-8 feet and everything’s rolling and crashing on the boat and something important isn’t working right and I didn’t get enough sleep the night before … well, sometimes, I think there’s no way they pay me enough for this.

Other times, as a sunrise pours molten gold across a sighing sea, or off to port I see a pack of big jacks or school of tuna savaging hardtails bunched on the surface, or a pod of dolphins cavorts off our bow, I’m in awe.

Then, there’s Sirius Channel 60, Walt Wilkins singing about sitting under a tree or Ray Wylie Hubbard reminding me that days when my gratitude is greater than my expectations are good days, and I have an hour to sit at my computer or bury my nose in a book and there’s a cold Dr. Pepper close at-hand, and I think: “Man, I can’t believe I’m getting paid for this.”