The soup pot is lost.

He had one job.

The deck hand only had to clean the big soup pot after dinner. It had a bunch of stuff stuck to the bottom so he got the idea that he'd rinse it in the harbor. Unfortunately, the line he tied to the handle of the pot slipped its knot and he watched the pot sink and disappear into the dark harbor water.

Gone forever.

940627 We put it all back together.

6-27-94

I get a real day off.

We took a day off.  That is, they told me I could stay home.  I got a chance to sleep in and relax a little.

But all day, I've been thinking about tug boats.  I've been smelling the diesel oil and Varsol in my skin- the smell won't go away.  And I've been wondering what I've gotten myself into.

From the people I've met and the boats I've seen, this doesn't look like the career track I had in mind, but they tell me that this is the way to get to the big companies.

I'm meeting more strange boatmen.

So we're trying to get the gear box back on the engine and it's being a bitch.  They had to cut away a bunch of supports so they called the yard guy, Denny, to bring his torch down.  He was cutting the support irons and the sparks were flying into the bilge, which was full of oily and fuel laden water.  I'm not sure if that stuff will catch on fire but I wasn't taking chances.  I waited up on the fiddley deck for them to finish.

This yard guy is an odd one.  He's a skinny guy with an Amish haircut and squinty eyes.  He talks like he's from the farms down south and he smokes constantly and when he went by me I swear I could smell pot.  According to the deckineer, that's probably the case.  In fact, he hasn't had too much good to say about the yard guy these last few days.  Apparently there's some serious animosity between the two.

The only other person I've seen is a guy that hangs out with the yard guy.  I haven't met him yet.  They tell me he's related to the Old Man.  One thing I know is that he must be happier than anyone around here.  I've seen him smile in one day more than the rest of these guys have in about a week.  Maybe he can be a friend around the yard.

The engineer is a strange one.

The mountain of parts finally disappeared around midmorning.  I got to stand around the engine, watch what was going on, and hand the guys tools and things.   Bill's tools were kept in nice canvas bags, arranged in particular order, and God help you if you mess them up.  It turns out that he used to be a mechanic at a high powered diesel engine dealer.  I got to hear the story, like it or not, during the many breaks he liked to take.  Now that I was finished cleaning all the parts, I was allowed to have a break or two.  More if I listened to his bullshit.

Bill said that he had never liked school.  With no real post graduation prospects in sight, he left school and went to an apprenticeship program at a big maritime union.  He finished and went to sea aboard ships, working in the galley.  That didn't suit him.  He says there were too many blacks and "others."  So he went to work on tugs.  That's where he got the diesel engine bug.  From there he talked his way into the training program at the big diesel outfit.  He learned how to work on big engines and it looks like he's pretty good at it.  Then, the big strike happened.  They were paying top dollar for scab mechanics to fix the tugs.  Bill went for the money and while they were sneaking him down to a boat, the van took a hard turn and Bill was injured.  He sued everyone and ended up with a bunch of money.  He pretty quickly lost it all on cocaine and booze.  Now he's working low level tugboat jobs.  But he hasn't had a drink in these last couple of years, so he feels some sense of accomplishment.

Fuck that.  I'm having a beer or two.  I wonder if I needed to hear all of that.

Parts cleaning sucks.

I found out what the tub was for.  The first thing that the chief had me do was fill the thing with about five or six gallons of Varsol.  That's some nasty stuff.  It's basically paint thinner, but smellier.  I used it all day to clean engine parts.

The mechanic and the chief began removing parts from the engine.  They put the nuts and bolts into a variety of soup cans and brought the parts over to the tub.  The pile beside me grew.  My only task was to wash the oily sludge off of them in the Varsol, scrubbing them with rags and brushes.  The hardest part of the job was removing the rock hard petrified gaskets using a variety of scrapers and blades.  This is tedious and monotonous work.

The Varsol is sucking the moisture out of my skin.  My wrists itch so bad, it hurts.  I have a thousand cuts and gouges on my hands and fingers; when those sharp scrapers slip off of the parts I'm cleaning, they fly at high speed toward the hand that's holding the part steady.  And my back is destroyed.  I've been sitting on a milk crate the whole time, hunched over that tub.  I didn't take any breaks because I didn't want to listen to the chief bitching about how everyone is so lazy these days.

He complains a lot but he seems to like my work.  He throws a lot of backhanded compliments out whenever he comes over to see what I'm doing.  The mechanic likes my work.  He encouraged me to keep it up, that by doing the "bull work" I was learning all the parts and how they fit to engine.

I'm going to keep it up.  It's only my second day on tugs but I hope we finish this soon.  Parts cleaning sucks.

I am to assist the Engineer

I was a little surprised when the girl from the office called again.  But yesterday wasn't a bad day and I think everybody got along.

I got to the yard and headed down to the dock.  The Old Man from the trailer was there with a guy who looked familiar from the crew of the big boat.  The guy was the engineer of the big boat and it turns out that the Old Man owns the company. Go figure.

When I walked up, the Old Man pressed me into service with the engineer.  We met and he took me down to the engine room where he showed me the problem engine and had me running around moving things and preparing for the repair.  Most of the engine has to be disassembled.

The Chief, Bill, is a fat guy with an Oliver Hardy mustache and a perpetual Oliver Hardy scowl on his face.  I was informed that I will call him Chief.  That's short for Chief Engineer.  Neither of those terms describes him for he isn't licensed and he's the only one in the engine room.  I called him Chief.  I think he'll be a right prick to work with.

When the outside mechanic came down, he turned out to be a nice guy.  He's known Bill for years and told me that he isn't too bad a guy after you get more familiar with his ways.  I'll take that as a glimmer of hope while I'm in the engine room.

My back hurts from lugging heavy tool boxes down gangways and planks, over the waist of the boat, and down the ladder to the engine room multiple times.  My legs were so stiff and heavy that I could barely move to put on my brakes driving home.

Bill, or Chief, said that the big tub on deck was mine.  It was made from the lower third of an oil drum.  I was too beat to ask him what that was all about.

It was my first day on deck of a tug.

When the girl in the office finally called, she told me to be to the dock at 7 am sharp. 

I was there early and didn't see a soul when 7 o'clock rolled around.  I thought there wasn't a soul around.  They have a guy who lives on the little tug.  He was funny looking:  Crazy big mane of hair, real skinny, two fucked up fingers on his right hand.  And he talked in this high pitched, sing-song kind of voice with a little big of a Scandinavian accent.  It turns out that he was the deck hand and engineer.  The boat guys call them deckineers.  The coast guard guys call them utility-men.

The captain rolled up next.  He was more civilized looking with a nice haircut, trimmed mustache, and store-bought clothes.  He asked me if we were ready.  I was almost funny.  How the fuck did I know if we were or not? 

The skinny guy started the boat and we left the dock to head to our jobs.  We ended up at a shipyard a short distance away and moved deck barges around for the yard guys.  I learned how to put up pushing gear.  When we were finished and just about to head back, the captain yelled down and said that we had to go help the bigger of the outfits' two boats in from here sea trip.  She had lost one of her engines.  It turned out to be a longer day than they said it would be.

It would take about an hour or more to get to the meeting place so the captain told the deckineer to make lunch.  He grumbled about this.  He tried to say that the Old Man wouldn't like it if we ate any of the grub.  Sounded more like he was willing to eat the grub, but not willing to cook any of it.  I helped him and he shut up for a while.  Hot dogs and canned beans.

We met the big boat later.  She was towing a barge full of containers from Bermuda.  First we tried to tow it along and broke the small towing wire.  Next we made up alongside and pushed the barge along to lighten the load on the big boat.  I got to look around the barge a little.  When we got to the terminal, the deckineer showed me how to handle some lines.  Once the barge was tied up, we headed back.  The captain of the big boat said that they'd be alright to get home alone.

The captain liked me.  When we got to the dock, he shook my hand and said that he hoped to see me again.  The deckineer didn't not like me, but warned me not to trust that captain too much.  He said he'd turn on me.

Anyone anywhere can turn on you.  Until I know more about these boat guys, I'll just keep my eyes open until I figure out who to trust.

I've got my papers now.

So I got my Z-card today.  It was a pain in the ass to fill out all the paperwork, get my items in order, and then drive all the way up to the Coast Guard Center- six hours.  But now I can start looking for some work.

I wish that guy from up the street that told me about the tugs would give me a hand in.   He says he's worried about recommending people for jobs anymore.  Says there are a lot of crazies looking to work on the boats.  I can't convince him that I won't turn out to be crazy.

He says I'm crazy for wanting to work on tugboats.  I think he's kidding.  I think.

And it begins

Once upon a time, there was a tugboat, and some people who worked on it.  And there were other tugboats and lots of other people who worked on them.  They all got together and then this happened:

(next slide, please)