At Long Last - The Oz

When I flew home from my 115 days aboard the Kamokuiki, I needed 5 days on a class 1 ship to get a year's health insurance for me and mine.

Because I had my 1080 sea days enabling me to sit for my 3rd/2nd Mate Any Gross Tons, 500/1600 Master of Oceans license, I immediately enrolled in classes and filled out my USCG paperwork within 10 days of being home.

Don't waste time- strike while the iron is hot!

I figured at some point after sitting for the tests, a 30-day relief job would find me and I'd go out and get the insurance days I needed.

Well, I got called. Exactly two weeks after my 48 hour flight home from Malaysia, I spent another 72 hours flying back.

Within my two-and-a-half weeks away from the ship, the Malaysians had robbed all the rooms, used all the paper goods (or stolen them), and walked off with anything that wasn't bolted down. It was pathetic.

There was no food. There was no power. There was no air conditioning. There were no stores... no trash bags, no coffee, no gloves or hardhats, no paper cups.

Thank god there was toilet paper.

Worse yet, however, was the Malaysian government closed the border the midnight we arrived. I never had a chance to get coffee. I never bought that cheap guitar from one of the 3 music shops I'd researched. I couldn't even buy my own groceries.

It took two days to get stores aboard. We ate cold take-out that arrived on a launch boat with the Malaysian workers until voyage stores did arrive, and as I swung two pallets aboard I asked myself, "where's the rest of it?"

As I directed the gang to put the stores away, the steward and I looked at each other and shared a "holy shit" moment-- it wasn't enough food.

We departed the next day to an anchorage where we would take on fuel. Nine shots of barnacle- and mud-encrusted chain into the locker. Sail an hour. Drop 6 shots. Pull it all back up again two hours later.

We finally left for Japan after everyone was exhausted and fed up, a 6 angry-days of transit north. Breakfast was rationed. Stewie would give me updates on how tight we were and if we were going to make it. We ran out of eggs on day 3.

My sailors break down as one haolie with about 500 days of seatime, and two young island boys who just got their able seaman tickets. The big Hawaiian - we're talking a big smiling sumo wrestling islander - has just gotten his AB ticket and has only sailed as an ordinary seaman.

In short: They're fairly inexperienced. It is a small crew of 4 sailors (myself included) and I have more seadays than all of them combined. As the bosun I am the only day man- the three of them are watchstanders.

I immediately put them to work doing sanitary in the house. This is the landscape that COVID-19 has delivered me to deal with, so I put them to work using Lysol on all the doorknobs, handrails, common sink handles, toilets, and eating areas... in addition to their normal sweeping, mopping, and cleaning.

The planned voyage was a transfer of cargo from Guam to Manila (immediately nixed), and one from Japan to Australia, then take the ship back to Malaysia.

But there was a glaring issue: How were we going to get home if the ship was being laid up in a country we couldn't travel through? Malaysia had shut its borders to everyone--including us.

I asked the old man during a crew-wide meeting and he got flippant. "On an airplane!" he joked. He doubled down when I asked again. Then he admitted he had no idea when I tripled down and insisted on an answer.

He clearly hadn't thought about it and he didn't want to.

So I called the president of my union and asked him. He said he'd "look into it." Based on my previous experience with my union, "looking into it" was the equivalent to "never give it another thought for the rest of my goddamned life" and I seriously began to fret - their lack of forethought was going to strand us.

And the crew talked about it. Disgruntled from lack of food and stores, then enraged by the nickel and diming of our overtime, the mood was akin to a powderkeg.

When we arrived in Japan days later, I went to the old man and quit.

"You can't quit!" he screamed.

"Yet here I am quitting" I yelled back.

"You'll be thrown in jail!" he threatened me.

"On who's authority?" I asked.

Back and forth for 5 minutes, we shouted until he flatly denied me access to the military base where we were tied up.

I stormed out of his office as he was dialing the labor relations board of the company.

 

By the time I got down to the main deck he came on the radio, hailed the chief engineer, and said, "Hey Chief... change of plans. We're laying up in Oakland when we're done. I need you to revise our fuel."

 

Seconds later my favorite person in the union called, so I answered it, expecting some support.  

 

"You're being a spoiled cunt," he told me.

 

So the yelling began again, this time with people who I feel are supposed to have my back.  When you have no food, no gloves, no cleaning supplies, inadequate stores, are denied the overtime you need to run the ship safely... well, if you're not there to stand with me then what in the hell are you there for?

 

Stores came the next day- 7 pallets. More Lysol. Nitrile and jersey gloves.  Touch-free thermometers. A security watch protocol with 100% screening of shoreside crew, longshoremen included.

 

I paid off the International Seaman Center's guy to pick me up some supplies to keep my sailors happy: 10 cases of beer, 10 bottles of rum, 3 bags of BBQ briquettes, and about 50 lbs of pork and beef ribs, and chicken wings.

 

We departed for another dock 5 hours away, then departed again after cargo 3 hours later. The watchstanders were burned on STCW rest requirements instantly. Then we anchored the following morning, and departed again that afternoon...

 

Funny thing on this boat-- the last shot of anchor chain won't fit in the locker without "help," so I have to go down into the chain locker and wrestle the chain so it doesn't pile up.

 

By funny I mean- ain't right. Chain is heavy. It's hotter than burning phosphorus down in the chain locker, and more humid than a fish's puckered anus.  

 

All the barnacles we'd pulled out of the Malaysian anchorage had festered and an infestation of flies and maggots had taken over. The smell was almost 50% the stink of Karachi - and that's pretty foul, right there.

 

And then we were underway for real... the flies, maggots, stink and all.

 

First night out I fired up the BBQ and threw on some ribs. Only the third mate showed up. It was cold, the wind was about 50 knots, and squalls kept blowing through.  I burned the meat, but we ate it out of principle.

 

The next night I did the same. I threw out the fishing lines (even though we're going too fast to catch mahi), fired up the BBQ, and the gang showed up, the black gang showed up, and several officers.  The weather was agreeable.

 

Third night the same.  

 

So now we're in the groove of things and the rage has given way to tedium. The watchstanders are exhausted (it took me years to figure out how to get enough sleep as a watchstander), the tropical heat is bearing down for real, and all I do is work and drink water.

 

And right now we're crossing the equator, which makes me officially a Shellback. All these seadays and countless nautical miles and I'm just now a Shellback. But nobody aboard is particularly excited.

 

The second mate is putting together the voyage plan for our return to Oakland from Darwin, and the old man has set one waypoint in particular-- the point where the IDL (the international date line, or the Prime Meridian's anti-meridian) and the Equator meet.

 

When we cross that point we all become Golden Shellbacks - a very rare sea-going achievement. If that happens, I do believe the whole crew will be very stoked, indeed.

 

I might even have to get that tattoo.

Note:  Those that cross the Prime Meridian and Equator at the same time are "Emerald Shellbacks."