Well... the captain is a problem. That much hasn't changed.
The transit of the Suez was relatively uneventful... we took on the line handlers' boat much in the same manner as I have in the past, back when I was an Ordinary Seaman, except in this case I put them on the hatch covers instead of lashing them to the rail and leaving them hooked up to the crane. So funny how the last time I came through I was the lowly OS, and this time I'm the gang boss... and how little of a difference it truly seems to make to my experience.
When we let them go, it was fully dark. I was being rushed by the howlers on the monkey deck (ie. the captain), but I refused to allow the operation to become hurried and unsafe, and everything was smooth and efficient, exactly as I like it... until the captain interrupted the operation at a critical moment.
While lowering the line handlers and their boat off the side of the ship with the large #2 crane, the rail of their skiff got hung on the rail of our ship. Without immediate action at that precise moment, the skiff would begin to list dangerously (in less than a second), threatening to pitch the linemen out of their skiff and into the water, 40 feet below.
I do audible crane commands on the radio to accompany my hand signals as a general rule of thumb, and in this case - as it was night and flood lights would hamper the ability of the bridge to navigate - I assumed my hand signals in the dark of night were superfluous, but I did them out of habit, anyway.
When the line handlers' boat began to list, I gave the hand signal for "emergency stop," a horizontal slashing of the open hand much like a karate chop, but when I keyed the radio to say "stop," the captain walked on my transmission (talked over me, in effect, with a more powerful radio), telling us that we had to hurry and get them off the ship, NOW. We were working on the radio channel dedicated for crane ops on #2, not the general ship's channel, so he had to physically go out of his way to interrupt a potentially dangerous operation.
Fortunately, my crane operator is really, really skilled. And has damned good eyesight. She stopped at my hand signal, and as a result, two linemen are still alive.
It prompted us (me and the gang) to designate the words "operational safety" as code to go to channel 14, a place nobody would think to go or listen, so if we feel a job requires focus and has a high hazard potential we can do it unmolested by a certain loose cannon. It also reminded me of the last boat operation where captain crazy-pants tried to kill our security team by losing his mind on the radio and hurrying an already dangerous operation.
From the Suez we went to anchorage in Greece for a couple of days, and then headed in to a Grecian shipyard.
The Greek shipyard workers are fantastic. They all say good-morning, every morning. They smile. They tell us when it's coffee. They do good work.
Without engaging in hyperbole, my lone female-sailor couldn't pick up so much as a broom without one of them sweeping the spot she intended to clean... or being shamelessly ogled as she operated the stores crane. At one point I sent her up into the crane to move one of the car-sized grabs and a Grecian worker was incredulous. I let him know she was the best crane operator on the ship- he raised his eyebrows and said "don't tell my wife."
Regardless of certain 20th century attitudes, they were decent, hard-working (exclusively) men who were really good to this old tub of a boat.
And they did an incredible job. They blasted and painted the entire house and stacks- working from a walkway suspended by a giant shore crane that swung them around to the impossible to reach places. They replaced valves deep in the cofferdam tank spaces and the #5 ballast tank. They welded new fresh water waterline, fire main, and handrails all over the barge and tug. The crazy-haired Costa, a crane specialist, worked on all the cranes and rebuilt the #2 grab.
And we got some shore time! I visited the Parthenon... and stumbled upon many of the Athenian relic sites where democracy was first practiced. I ate Greek food. But my visit to the grocery store, specifically to the yogurt isle, was the most astounding of all.... Greek Yogurt is not the crap they label "Greek Yogurt" in the US. It's cheap. It's sold in terracotta pots, the same pots they pour the cultured milk into to grow, not plastic. I bought every variety I could find, and the goat and sheep yogurts don't have that gamy taste I detest... if anything, it is milder tasting and higher in fat than its bovine counterpart.
Take that, birthplace of democracy! Yogurt! In your face!
I swam, very briefly, in the seasonally cold water of the Mediterranean Sea, where I stepped on an anemone - but so lightly it was without consequence. And I wandered aimlessly through neighborhoods I felt I could live in for a few months as I explored the rest of the country - in comfort and ease. I found Greece to be inexpensive and casual, and it was nice to be somewhere so likable that that isn't Asian, for a change.
The last day was frenetic- it began at 0530 and the gang worked into lunch and straight through dinner to lower the lifeboats and test the new davit wires. There were problems. I and another sailor were retained to raise and lower the boats, over and over again, until 2200... on empty stomachs. At one point, the captain had us lower the onshore lifeboat.
I have never lowered a lifeboat over anything but water. I didn't know it was legal. I was standing next to the port captain, a man of about 65, and we looked at each other.
I said, stunned, "I have never lowered a lifeboat over a dock, before."
He replied, "I have never, ever, seen this in my entire life."
So... maybe it isn't legal? I honestly don't know.
We were called out at 0530 for a 0800 let-go the next morning, our scheduled day of departure. The 2nd Mate, the only woman on board aside from one of my sailors, informed us the mate and the captain had not returned to the ship from the night before. I mustered the gang, regardless of jokes of them being arrested for disorderly conduct and similar exaggerations, and we put all the cranes to bed, removing umbilical wires and throwing on the storm-chains. The old man and mate showed up at 0630... and they disappeared very quickly and quietly.
There are NO secrets on a ship... the word was they were lit.
The old man called me into his office at 0930 to deliver some documentation to the agent so they could remove the gangway. He was pleasant, clearly in a good mood, and slurring his words.
We let go to shift to anchor at 1000, the mood on the ship... incredulous. I have never been so aware of liability on a ship as I was with a drunk captain on the bridge.
We had what we call in the maritime industry a "near miss" on the bow during let-go. A "near miss" is when something goes wrong but nothing bad happens. In this case, the officer on the bow didn't communicate with the tug operator that we weren't "all fast" while trying to secure the tugline eye onto the bit, but the tug operator began to heave in on the tug line, anyway. The heavy line began to run, and our deck officer was in the bight of the heaving-line. The "bight" is the part of the line that will snag you, and with a line like that, running out of control as it was, can kill you quickly and messily.
Under normal, fully-manned situations, the mate maintains situational awareness and doesn't get involved in the chores of the bow so much as directs and observes the overall picture of what's going on, communicating with the bridge where in the evolution we are, and makes sure line-handlers, tug deckhands, and crew are clear and safe before working loads are applied to winches, lines, etc..
Of course, on this beast, in order to skirt the requirements for 6 sailors on the ship, the manning dictates the wiper and q-med, unlicensed engine department hands, assist in tie-up and let-go. They're worse than worthless, normally, because they aren't sailors, and I spend much of my time keeping them safe from the many things that can hurt you on the working deck.
This particular morning the chief engineer refused to let them come out on deck to do their USCG and contractually obligated job. Because we didn't have the additional back to help heave on the tug line, the officer grabbed it and nobody was able to make sure the job was being done safely and maintaining communication between all involved parties.
I got the running line under control. We weren't "breathalyzed," as we call it out here- a crude way of saying nobody got hurt and the investigations didn't get underway. But my disgust, and the disgust of others, still remains.
I wish it stopped there, but the old man is nothing, if not energetic in his pursuit of pissing people off.
While eating dinner tonight after I did meal relief for the helmsman, the captain sat down next to the q-med with a giant tub of ice cream and informed me, between shoveling dessert into his noisy face-hole, that he and the only sailor I don't like on this ship had gone into my quarters and removed a bunch of my personal affects from above my desk so that they could "hook my TV back up."
I don't watch it, even though I am coerced into paying $20 a pay period for it. I disconnected it. I don't want it hooked up... my computer gear uses all the electrical spaces and I don't fucking watch it. And I sure as shit don't want anyone going through my belongings without prior consent. Did I mention that I don't watch the goddamned thing!?
It is customary, if not required, to get consent first. Repairs? You get consent. Inspection? You get consent. It crossed a line with me.
So now I'm blogging while angry, probably not the best thing to be doing. My options seem incredibly limited, and, therefore, drastic options seem quite plausible. I called a union meeting for the morning with the gang- hopefully, we're going to use our collective bargaining strength, minus the sailor I don't like, presumably, to leverage some changes. Or they'll talk me down. We'll see how it all goes down.
It doesn't change the fact that I'm about to cross the Atlantic with an unfit madman in the wheelhouse.
The transit of the Suez was relatively uneventful... we took on the line handlers' boat much in the same manner as I have in the past, back when I was an Ordinary Seaman, except in this case I put them on the hatch covers instead of lashing them to the rail and leaving them hooked up to the crane. So funny how the last time I came through I was the lowly OS, and this time I'm the gang boss... and how little of a difference it truly seems to make to my experience.
When we let them go, it was fully dark. I was being rushed by the howlers on the monkey deck (ie. the captain), but I refused to allow the operation to become hurried and unsafe, and everything was smooth and efficient, exactly as I like it... until the captain interrupted the operation at a critical moment.
While lowering the line handlers and their boat off the side of the ship with the large #2 crane, the rail of their skiff got hung on the rail of our ship. Without immediate action at that precise moment, the skiff would begin to list dangerously (in less than a second), threatening to pitch the linemen out of their skiff and into the water, 40 feet below.
I do audible crane commands on the radio to accompany my hand signals as a general rule of thumb, and in this case - as it was night and flood lights would hamper the ability of the bridge to navigate - I assumed my hand signals in the dark of night were superfluous, but I did them out of habit, anyway.
When the line handlers' boat began to list, I gave the hand signal for "emergency stop," a horizontal slashing of the open hand much like a karate chop, but when I keyed the radio to say "stop," the captain walked on my transmission (talked over me, in effect, with a more powerful radio), telling us that we had to hurry and get them off the ship, NOW. We were working on the radio channel dedicated for crane ops on #2, not the general ship's channel, so he had to physically go out of his way to interrupt a potentially dangerous operation.
Fortunately, my crane operator is really, really skilled. And has damned good eyesight. She stopped at my hand signal, and as a result, two linemen are still alive.
It prompted us (me and the gang) to designate the words "operational safety" as code to go to channel 14, a place nobody would think to go or listen, so if we feel a job requires focus and has a high hazard potential we can do it unmolested by a certain loose cannon. It also reminded me of the last boat operation where captain crazy-pants tried to kill our security team by losing his mind on the radio and hurrying an already dangerous operation.
From the Suez we went to anchorage in Greece for a couple of days, and then headed in to a Grecian shipyard.
The Greek shipyard workers are fantastic. They all say good-morning, every morning. They smile. They tell us when it's coffee. They do good work.
Without engaging in hyperbole, my lone female-sailor couldn't pick up so much as a broom without one of them sweeping the spot she intended to clean... or being shamelessly ogled as she operated the stores crane. At one point I sent her up into the crane to move one of the car-sized grabs and a Grecian worker was incredulous. I let him know she was the best crane operator on the ship- he raised his eyebrows and said "don't tell my wife."
Regardless of certain 20th century attitudes, they were decent, hard-working (exclusively) men who were really good to this old tub of a boat.
And they did an incredible job. They blasted and painted the entire house and stacks- working from a walkway suspended by a giant shore crane that swung them around to the impossible to reach places. They replaced valves deep in the cofferdam tank spaces and the #5 ballast tank. They welded new fresh water waterline, fire main, and handrails all over the barge and tug. The crazy-haired Costa, a crane specialist, worked on all the cranes and rebuilt the #2 grab.
And we got some shore time! I visited the Parthenon... and stumbled upon many of the Athenian relic sites where democracy was first practiced. I ate Greek food. But my visit to the grocery store, specifically to the yogurt isle, was the most astounding of all.... Greek Yogurt is not the crap they label "Greek Yogurt" in the US. It's cheap. It's sold in terracotta pots, the same pots they pour the cultured milk into to grow, not plastic. I bought every variety I could find, and the goat and sheep yogurts don't have that gamy taste I detest... if anything, it is milder tasting and higher in fat than its bovine counterpart.
Take that, birthplace of democracy! Yogurt! In your face!
I swam, very briefly, in the seasonally cold water of the Mediterranean Sea, where I stepped on an anemone - but so lightly it was without consequence. And I wandered aimlessly through neighborhoods I felt I could live in for a few months as I explored the rest of the country - in comfort and ease. I found Greece to be inexpensive and casual, and it was nice to be somewhere so likable that that isn't Asian, for a change.
The last day was frenetic- it began at 0530 and the gang worked into lunch and straight through dinner to lower the lifeboats and test the new davit wires. There were problems. I and another sailor were retained to raise and lower the boats, over and over again, until 2200... on empty stomachs. At one point, the captain had us lower the onshore lifeboat.
I have never lowered a lifeboat over anything but water. I didn't know it was legal. I was standing next to the port captain, a man of about 65, and we looked at each other.
I said, stunned, "I have never lowered a lifeboat over a dock, before."
He replied, "I have never, ever, seen this in my entire life."
So... maybe it isn't legal? I honestly don't know.
We were called out at 0530 for a 0800 let-go the next morning, our scheduled day of departure. The 2nd Mate, the only woman on board aside from one of my sailors, informed us the mate and the captain had not returned to the ship from the night before. I mustered the gang, regardless of jokes of them being arrested for disorderly conduct and similar exaggerations, and we put all the cranes to bed, removing umbilical wires and throwing on the storm-chains. The old man and mate showed up at 0630... and they disappeared very quickly and quietly.
There are NO secrets on a ship... the word was they were lit.
The old man called me into his office at 0930 to deliver some documentation to the agent so they could remove the gangway. He was pleasant, clearly in a good mood, and slurring his words.
We let go to shift to anchor at 1000, the mood on the ship... incredulous. I have never been so aware of liability on a ship as I was with a drunk captain on the bridge.
We had what we call in the maritime industry a "near miss" on the bow during let-go. A "near miss" is when something goes wrong but nothing bad happens. In this case, the officer on the bow didn't communicate with the tug operator that we weren't "all fast" while trying to secure the tugline eye onto the bit, but the tug operator began to heave in on the tug line, anyway. The heavy line began to run, and our deck officer was in the bight of the heaving-line. The "bight" is the part of the line that will snag you, and with a line like that, running out of control as it was, can kill you quickly and messily.
Under normal, fully-manned situations, the mate maintains situational awareness and doesn't get involved in the chores of the bow so much as directs and observes the overall picture of what's going on, communicating with the bridge where in the evolution we are, and makes sure line-handlers, tug deckhands, and crew are clear and safe before working loads are applied to winches, lines, etc..
Of course, on this beast, in order to skirt the requirements for 6 sailors on the ship, the manning dictates the wiper and q-med, unlicensed engine department hands, assist in tie-up and let-go. They're worse than worthless, normally, because they aren't sailors, and I spend much of my time keeping them safe from the many things that can hurt you on the working deck.
This particular morning the chief engineer refused to let them come out on deck to do their USCG and contractually obligated job. Because we didn't have the additional back to help heave on the tug line, the officer grabbed it and nobody was able to make sure the job was being done safely and maintaining communication between all involved parties.
I got the running line under control. We weren't "breathalyzed," as we call it out here- a crude way of saying nobody got hurt and the investigations didn't get underway. But my disgust, and the disgust of others, still remains.
I wish it stopped there, but the old man is nothing, if not energetic in his pursuit of pissing people off.
While eating dinner tonight after I did meal relief for the helmsman, the captain sat down next to the q-med with a giant tub of ice cream and informed me, between shoveling dessert into his noisy face-hole, that he and the only sailor I don't like on this ship had gone into my quarters and removed a bunch of my personal affects from above my desk so that they could "hook my TV back up."
I don't watch it, even though I am coerced into paying $20 a pay period for it. I disconnected it. I don't want it hooked up... my computer gear uses all the electrical spaces and I don't fucking watch it. And I sure as shit don't want anyone going through my belongings without prior consent. Did I mention that I don't watch the goddamned thing!?
It is customary, if not required, to get consent first. Repairs? You get consent. Inspection? You get consent. It crossed a line with me.
So now I'm blogging while angry, probably not the best thing to be doing. My options seem incredibly limited, and, therefore, drastic options seem quite plausible. I called a union meeting for the morning with the gang- hopefully, we're going to use our collective bargaining strength, minus the sailor I don't like, presumably, to leverage some changes. Or they'll talk me down. We'll see how it all goes down.
It doesn't change the fact that I'm about to cross the Atlantic with an unfit madman in the wheelhouse.
Your women all still want you to get off that ship. You have cause. You have ample reasons. Be a ladybird, fly away home ...
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