He fires a question.

Today has been another day of lingering in warm spaces.  There are about two of those, and of the two, only one offers a fair amount of solitude; the second is occupied by rational crew.  All the others are still occupied by Sloth, Christopher, and  Geoffrey, the bipolar engineer.  Not much relief.

After a morning of traveling between the deck office and the wheelhouse, I finally had that moment when I was forced to walk in close proximity to Sloth, allowing him to initiate a conversation.  But rather than ask me the usual drivel of boat questions, he put an engineering question out, one that would give him the opportunity to catch me in a situation of managerial incompetence. He asked, "Why do the flood lights keep going out?"  I froze for a second, sensing the attempted entrapment.

Should I explain to him that the generators' governors weren't adjusting quickly the way they used to? Would he understand the term "marginal ballast failure?"  I wondered for a second more.  Then, "Voltage drops," I blurted out, and continued walking.  He had nothing.  It was so obvious and direct an answer that he had to think quickly for something to add.  He had nothing.  Standing there with a dumbfounded look on his face, he appeared stupider than he usually had these last few days and I smiled as I passed through the passageway and into the galley.  It was my first public smile in these last few days and in just a minute or two, my smile grew so wide that my chapped face hurt.

Sloth is going home tomorrow.  Our education is over.

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.