Sea Stories are the true (and mostly true) accounts of things that have happened in the maritime realm to you, your shipmates, to other people that you know, or have heard of, and that you (for some reason) feel somewhat qualified to recount for the general public. As there is often alcohol involved, most sea stories get better with the telling… It is a qualified sea story as long as the teller does not stray from the unwritten 12% BS rule. I would like to open this “sea story” category with an often repeated axiom of nautical “truth.”

What is the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story?”

A fairy tale starts with, “Once upon a time…” and ends with, “… and they lived happily ever after.”

A sea story starts with, “So, there I was…” and ends with, “…and I’ve been messed up ever since!”

Maritime Law Enforcement in the Wild, Wild West– As a boarding officer for the United States Coast Guard, you are sometimes called on to hassle perfectly law abiding citizens while they are trying to make a living on the dangerous waters of the ocean. This is particularly true in the Gulf of Alaska where fishermen work hard under difficult conditions to bring their product to market without losing their vessels, their lives or their sanity.

“So there I was…”

One day the buoytender that I was assigned to as Navigator, the USCGC WOODRUSH (WLB-407) was directed by the Alaska headquarters to conduct “safety and law enforcement boardings” of the halibut fleet. We decided that it would be better (and safer for all concerned) if we waited until the boats offloaded their catch at the cold storage plant in Pelican before conducting our “fisheries boardings.”

This would also give us the opportunity to compare the records of the offloaded fish with the “quota” allowed to the individual boats ensuring compliance with the regulations.

Back then (late 1980’s) the Coast Guard sent a boarding team out armed with pistols, shotguns and one M-16 rifle per boat. Normally, the M-16 would stay in the boat with the engineer while the boarding team was on another vessel. In this case, we were tied to the dock in Pelican and the team was walking down the line of boats, watching the offloads and asking questions. It was raining pretty heavily and the engineer got tired of sitting in the rain and went ashore too, leaving the M-16 unguarded in the boat (bad idea…).

I was the team leader and upon discovering this, I took the M-16, unloaded it and slung it over my shoulder before continuing on to the cold storage office behind the general store. I would deal with the engineer later.

In order to get to the cold storage office, you had to walk through the general store, through the back room liquor store and into an office the size of a small closet. All the Coast Guard foul weather regalia, the Mustang float suit, commando style web-gear harness, gun belt, hand cuffs, mace, mega-maglight night stick/flashlight and M-16 rifle were not going to fit comfortably inside this room along with the office manager and an irate fisherman who was potentially about to get slapped with a substantial fine for exceeding his quota.

I handed the M-16 to another team member telling him to wait outside and proceeded to start peeling off the rest of my gear. Little did I know that the other team member didn’t actually go outside to wait in the rain but hung out in the liquor store trying to make time with the girl behind the counter…

We finished our business at Pelican Cold Storage, returned to the ship which had anchored in the harbor, changed from our uniforms into our “glad-rag,” go to town attire and took the ship’s launch back ashore for a few too many drinks with the same fishermen that we had been hassling all day long.

Alaska is an interesting place. There were no bar fights or other altercations that night and like locusts after we had spent all our money and drunk Rosie’s Bar down to cordials, we staggered back to our boat, rode out to the ship to climb up the Jacob’s ladder and into the rack for the night. Much too early the next morning we pulled our anchor and headed back down the channel and to sea.

About midday while we were all nursing a cracker of a hangover and wishing the seas would calm down just a little, the Captain called up to the bridge and told me to change course and head for Juneau. Evidently, the District Commander, a two star admiral, wanted to see him about something. Being summoned by the admiral is almost never a good thing… The Captain called all of his officers together to see if anyone had any idea why we had been summoned. We all shook our heads because the ship’s accounts were in order, training files were up to date, we had not misplaced any classified material lately and were unaware of any outstanding paternity suits. Nope, it had to be something good. Maybe someone was in line for a medal or something.

On the 14 hour transit to Juneau we scrubbed the ship in preparation for the admiral’s visit. We moored at about 0900 the next morning at USCG Station Juneau. The crew was recovered, dressed in clean uniforms and looking forward to a short visit and an “atta-boy” from the admiral, then a night on the town in the big city. Upon putting the gangway over, the door opened on the staff car that waiting for us on the dock and the admiral’s aid came aboard with a newspaper under his arm and asked to be taken to the captain.

A few minutes later the aid walked off the ship, got into his car and departed. This was not a good sign… Moments later, the officers were summoned to the wardroom. The Captain sat tight lipped in his chair at the head of the table. Spread out amid the coffee and croissants meant for the admiral was the front page of the Juneau Empire. The headline read:

“Coast Guard holds tiny village of Pelican at bay with automatic weapons!”

Evidently, the guy I handed my M-16 to was trying to impress the girl behind the counter in the liquor store. My guess is that he thought his manhood enhanced by the machine gun and wanted to use this to his advantage. He had unslung the weapon and showed the lady how it worked including letting her hold it and point it around the room making “ratta-tat-tat” sounds. This probably would not have been an issue if there had not been several witnesses including a couple of fisherman whom we had just handed expensive fisheries violations a short time before. Worse yet, it turned out that the girl that ran the liquor store was also one of Rosie’s daughters.

It’s funny how you never know how your day is going to end. You do a good job,word gets out, somehow things get all twisted around and the next thing you know, your captain is putting on his dress uniform to go stand at the wrong end of “the admiral’s long green table.” That’s Coast Guard law enforcement in the “wild, wild west…”

“… and I’ve been messed up ever since!”

Dan

Technorati Tags: USCG, Coast Guard, Bouytender, buoy, Pelican, Alaska, Juneau, Rose’s Bar and Grill, Southeast Alaska, M-16, Boarding, fisheries, halibut, IFQ, quota, sea story

This is a repost. I was updating software and totally messed up the formatting…

It was better to delete the original and repost it.

The difference between a fairy tale and sea story is that
fairy tales begin with, “Once upon a time…” and ends with “…and they
lived happily ever after.” A sea story begins with, “So, there I was…”
and ends with, “…and I’ve been messed up ever since!”

The Oldest Ship Pilot in Alaska

Each year, many thousands of people make the trip to Alaska on the large
cruise ships that parade up and down the waterways of the Inside
Passage from Seattle through British Columbia and into the 49th state.
Aside from stopping in each little town along the way to be herded
ashore like sheep to the mercantile slaughter, the food, entertainment,
drinking and gambling draw many thousands of visitors each summer
season. However, the real attraction is just the beautiful scenery and
the wildlife of Alaska itself. The highlight of any cruise is the scheduled
stopping of the ship in front of one of the many tidewater glaciers that
are found calving icebergs into the water.

“So, there I was…”

The Holland America Cruise Line operates ships that are run by Dutch
officers. Holland America ships have a “tradition” for their weekly
stops in front of the glaciers. They pick 20 or so “VIP’s of the day” at
random from the 2500+ passengers, and invite them into the pilothouse
to speak with the Captain and look out the bridge windows at the ice as
the ship slowly maneuvers near the face of the glacier.

During this time, the “VIP’s” are fed split pea soup, thick crisp bacon and crusty
bread. Because it is illegal in US waters, to have anyone in the
pilothouse who is not directly involved with the running of the ship,
the Dutch get around this by having all guests to the pilothouse
stand in the back in a roped off area.

At the time, the oldest ship pilot in Alaska was a man named Captain Bob
Johannson. He was 76 years old. Bob is gone now but he was one of the
saltiest men I have ever met. During the visit to the glaciers, the pilot on a
cruise ship stands at the front of the pilothouse, watching out the windows
and directing the navigation through the icy strewn waterways. He brings
the ship to a stop off the face of the glacier then slowly spins the ship around
a couple of times so that the passengers who were too lazy to get out of bed
in the morning can look out the window of their staterooms and see the ice
without having to get dressed.

It was nine in the morning and Bob had been up for hours guiding the ship
to the head of College Fiord in Prince William Sound. As he brought
the ship to a stop in from of the glaciers, the door to the pilothouse
opened and the stewards brought in the rolling carts with the soup,
bacon and bread. Once the food was set up, the stewards departed and
the daily VIP’s are led in by the cruise director.

The last person into the pilothouse was a little old man in a wheelchair. He was
wrapped in a blanket, had an oxygen mask over his face with a tube
leading to the tank attached to the back of the chair, and on his lap,
his bony liver-marked hand clutched one of those electronic wand
devices that you use to talk when your voice box has been removed. As
this gentleman would not be able to eat the soup, bacon or crusty bread
and because he was sitting so low in his chair that he could not see
anything from the back of the pilothouse, the captain of the ship
lifted the rope and told the nurse accompanying him to wheel him up to
the front windows next to the pilot. The man sat in his chair watching
Bob and looking out the window as the mask over his face wheezed and
hissed with his every breath.

After a while Bob broke the silence by asking him a polite question.

“So, how are you enjoying your trip?”

The man sat a moment, then raised his shaky hand with the electronic voice
wand to his throat as he pulled the oxygen mask away from his face with
the other hand. He swallowed loudly and then said in an electronic
automaton like voice,

“I JUST WANTED TO SEE ALASKA BEFORE I DIED.”

His wand dropped to his lap and he successfully got the mask back over his
mouth and nose before a fit of coughing shook him. A minute
passed as he recovered his breath and was again able to sit looking out
the window. Another minute passed before Captain Bob Johannson, the
oldest ship pilot in Alaska, looked down at him and said, “You’re
cutting it kind of close aren’t you?”

“… and I’ve been messed up ever since!”

Dan

Technorati Tags: cruise ship, Alaska, Alaska cruise, ship pilot, marine pilot, HAL, Glacier Bay, Glacier, College Fiord, Seward, Icebergs, iceberg

Well I didn’t actually break it myself, but I was steering when it broke. It was an exciting afternoon.

The Jumbo Mark II class ferries run by the Washington State Ferry Service are 460 feet long, 90 feet wide, generate over 13,000 horsepower and have a service speed of 19 knots. They carry over 200 vehicles and 2500 people on scheduled voyages across Puget Sound. They are the largest double-ended vehicle/passenger vessels in the world. There is one propeller and one rudder on each end of the ship so that by switching the controls from one pilothouse to the other, the ship is always going forward (picture Dr. Doolittle’s “Pushme-Pullyou).

We were on our regularly scheduled afternoon run to Bainbridge Island. We had a pretty full load. There were gale warnings in effect and the wind was blowing over 30 knots. The ship was riding pretty well with the wind and seas on the port bow and everything seems to be going well. Then, as we made our turn to starboard to enter Eagle Harbor, we felt a WHAM!! followed by a heavy shuddering throughout the ship. It was immediately apparent that we had lost control of our bow rudder and that it had “flopped” over to starboard. This is not a good thing when you are moving along at a pretty good clip. It is tough on the equipment. (more…)