I love not working.

After having a lovely four weeks off from work, I'm just about to start packing my bags and heading back to the ship. I just got news that instead of going back and working in the gulf of Mexico where we've been, the ship will head to Holland for shipyard! Not sure how the rest of the crew feels about this, but it sounds exciting to me. This will be my first time going deep sea! From what I've been told, it should take between 17 and 20 days to get to port in Holland. Not sure what will happen after that, but the ship will probably be in Europe for 3 months. I'm thinking of staying for a week extra and exploring Amsterdam once my 4 week tour is up and I'll have time to actually be a tourist. I know shipyard work will be exhausting and probably frustrating, but I'm sure I'll learn plenty and also hopefully get to check out a new country!

I just got back from another California road trip a couple days ago. Took the scenic route and camped in the redwoods of northern Cali, then visited Jnani in SF and got to go for a sail in SF bay on one of her boats (that's her in the picture). After that, drove to Yosemite National Park and spent a few nights there and hiked to the top of Half Dome. What a beautiful place Yosemite is. My three days there weren't nearly enough. I could easily spend a month exploring that park, if not more. Someday, I'm sure I will.

While I truly have been enjoying my time away from work, I've found that it's not as easy as I'd expected. On one hand, I want to keep busy by doing new things and connecting with friends, but on the other hand, I want to relax and sometimes do absolutely nothing. The other, probably more frustrating part, is that while I'm certainly not homeless, I don't really have my own place like I always used to. I go back and forth all the time between Portland and Seattle and really feel more like a nomad than a resident. OK for now, I guess, but I'm looking forward to when I'm ready to buy a liveaboard sailboat or even a little apartment in town and get back to being able to create my own space again.

M/V Stuyvesant

Greetings from San Francisco

I've been down here for about a week now. What a beautiful city!
Enjoying my time walking around the different neighborhoods and hoping
to get back to work relatively soon. Most likely something will come
my way within the next few weeks. I'm not too worried. There's also
plenty of well paying shore based work I could do here if need be.
Everything will work out just fine, I'm sure! Until then, I'll keep
putting serious miles on my walking shoes making my way all around town.

Back in the northwest

So, the contract ended a little early and I stayed on an extra week in Norfolk to help get the ship ready to sit for a while, but now I'm back in the northwest. Currently, I'm staying in Seattle and enjoying my free time. Winter's not quite over here, so I'd like to get in at least a few more days of snowboarding if I can. Just last week, I had a beautiful day of spring skiing at Crystal Mountain. Blue skies, warm weather, and soft snow! What a delight to come back to.

Overall, the experience to Haiti didn't really live up to any sort of expectations that I had, but nonetheless, it was a positive one. As a company and crew, I think we did as good a job as anyone could have hoped or expected. In the bigger picture I do have some doubts about how the whole relief effort is going. But, I guess considering the level of destruction and the state of the country before the disaster, I can see how one might not quite know where to start and when to say the job has been finished. After all, Haiti was in desperate need of relief long before the earthquake.

So, I'll be bouncing between Portland and Seattle for the next month or so. My plan is still to enjoy my free time and travel to DC for my brother, Orrin's, wedding. But, who knows - if a short term job shows up, I might just decide to take it if I can still make that wedding.

Coming home soon

So, it's definite. Our contract has been cut short and pretty soon,
we'll all be layed off. Right now, we're off the coast of Florida and
on our way back up to Fort Eustis, VA. However, since some bad
weather is supposed to make it's way to the area, we'll most likely
spend a few days waiting it out in Jacksonville. The good news is
that it'll be a few more days that we'll all get paid. The bad news
is that it's Jacksonville. Again.

Although I'm a little bummed that what I thought was going to be three
months of work turned in to six weeks, I'm looking forward to being
back in the northwest where I can hopefully get a few more days of
snowboarding in.

Aside from the grim reminders of what an earthquake can do to an
already desperate population, this trip has been a positive one. I've
made some new friends, got the chance to work on a modern ship and
done my job well enough to hopefully be asked back in the future.
Working on this ship, with this crew has really been a pleasure.
Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't do it for free but all things
considered, it's a pretty easy job.

might be coming home soon

Just leaving Jacksonville right now and headed to Haiti for another
trip. We'll be dropping off some cargo and supposedly picking up some people and cargo and bringing them back up to Fort Eustis,VA. At that point, the contract might get terminated which means that most of us would probably get sent home shortly after. It was fun while it lasted, but i might be looking for another job sooner than later.

Ship stuff

I sort of have a hard time writing much using my phone because the keyboard is so freaking small. Great for texting but not so much for paragraphs.

There hasn't been much happening that's all that exciting on my end.  It's been a lot of more-of-the-same. Were still going back and forth to Haiti but no one knows what were going to do until ten minutes before we do it.

Right now, we're bunkering in Jacksonville. Translation- filling the tanks (all four of 'em) up with fuel, and I'm sitting in the tank room with a fancy roll up tape measure taking fuel soundings so that anyone with a radio knows how full the tank is. We do this about once a week and it takes most of the day.  I think the total fuel capacity is somewhere in the neighborhood of 160,000 gallons. Not really all that much when you consider that this ship generally burns through a thousand gallons an hour.  OMG, you say - but consider our cruising speed is somewhere around 32 knots.  This boat can really move through the water.  Our top speed probably just under 40 knots.  Much faster than any of the other boats around our size that we've been seeing.

So, if you didn't already know, it's got a catamaran hull, but the really fancy stuff is what's under the water. It's got this 'ride control' system that involves these foils on the underside at the forward end of each hull that can move independantly and allow the front of the boat to sit out of the water just a little bit more as well as counteract the sideways rocking of the ship as it rolls around in rougher weather.  They call them T-Foils.  Then there are these things towards the back that sort of do the same thing but they're called Interceptors.  Don't forget about the T-max system either.  All hydraulically controlled, of course.  Oh yeah, no propellers. Just four bigass water jets. Like what jet skis have.

The ship is also super light.  It's all aluminum.  Seriously, e erything is aluminum.  Even the cabinet doors are made out of this lightweight honeycomb/cardboard structure Aluminum. Then the piping is also all stainless steel (expensive), and some PVC (for the plumbing- lame!).

So, it's a pretty slick ship. I put a few pictures up on flicker.  The link for them should always be at the top of this page. Something like 'fast boat to Haiti images' I think.

So far, so good.  We might be in Jacksonville for a few days this time so I just might get another chance to put something else up here.

Few pictures

Until I can figure out how to have a 'photos' link on the side of the
page which links to Flickr, just use this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45971768@N00/

ok, album is now posted at the top. Just click on fast boat to Haiti.

Greetings from Gitmo

Well, I'm not actually in Guantanamo Bay anymore, but when I was, that's what the headline would have been.

I'm not really sure where to start. It seems like so much has gone on in this last week but at the same time, one thing has remained constant and that's the fact that none of us know what will happen next.

I'm getting a little ahead of myself. A week ago, I signed up to work on a brand new high speed ferry that was supposed to go into service in Hawaii last year.  A different company now owns the two Hawaii Superferries as well as other ferries and is in the business of doing contract work for the military/government. Things like transporting troops and military vehicles I'm guessing.

So that's what we've done. So far, we brought a bunch of troops and vehicles down to Haiti and also refueled and spent a night in Guantanamo Bay.  Right now, we're in Jacksonville, Florida and it looks like we'll be loading some more troops on first thing in the morning. Supposedly, there's some sort of mobil kitchen in Veracruz, Mexico that we'll be picking up and bringing to Haiti. 

I don't really have much to report on things in Haiti. I barely got to set foot on land there. I didn't see any collapsed buildings or piles of rubble. I did see a group of Haitians in their own little boats selling hand carved goods. Right after we tied up, they all rowed up and started selling what they had.  

Anyway, things are going well so far. It's not exactly what I was expecting but I'm working with a good crew and the food is so much better than my last job. 

I'm going to Haiti

As most of you probably know by now, my next job is working for a company that got a government contract to help out in Haiti. I'll be working on a former Hawaii Superferry. I think it's called Huakai. At this point, I don't really know much about the details yet. I've read that it's likely we'll be moving people and supplies back and forth between Haiti and possibly Guantanamo Bay or Miami. This will be a normal job for me, so I'll most likely just be working in the engine room and not really working outside of the vessel.

If I can, I'd like to be able to update this-here blog somewhat regularly since I think it'll be a three month gig.

Here's a link to someones flickr account of photos of the ship I'll be working on. Looks a little nicer than the Seattle Ferries, huh?