Sea Stories and Tall Tales of the Seas by Forum Members

Gee! I wonder what that was all about?

 

I got hired by a company as Relief Captain. Vessel was still offshore, so they "hoteled" me on another of their vessels in shipyard. I went aboard, found groceries, cooked, and was cooling my heels watching TV.
At 6pm, the shipyard din stopped. All the workers went home.
Around 8pm, the racket started again. I investigated. This was a supply vessel and she had cargo rails. A massive railing system made of 10 inch diameter schedule 120 pipe. Purpose is so deck cargo doesn't beat up bulwarks. Also handy for hooking chains to when tieing down cargo.
There was a crew of 4 men aboard and they were cutting into the pipes of the cargo rails. Uh huh. Right. I called the office. Soon, Coast Guard, Federal Marshalls, DEA, Sherrif, State Police, Practically everybody came to the party. This supply boat had been working in Brazil for a couple years, and only just returned stateside. She was in shipyard for long over due repairs and maintenance. And to offload secret cargo, apparently.

 

It's morning now, and the ribs are about like you'd expect: sore as !@#$.

You know how it is; injuries usually hurt more the 2nd day than the first, before they start feeling better. And slamming 200 lbs down on the concrete the way I did, with my hands in my pockets, made me a little sore and stiff pretty much all over...

A little generic Tylenol is working temporary wonders, though.

 

I know the feeling. I had a step ladder fold under me several years ago; one of those fancy ultra-light Euro types with a flimsy locking device. I landed across it with my ribcage acting as a kind of airbag. Nothing broke: the human body is amazingly tough . . .

 

WHO estimates there are 420,000 deaths annually from falls, and 37 million falls require medical attention.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs344/en/index.html
A lot of those are from step ladders.

Your good outcome was partly toughness, but a lot of luck as well!

 

Did they have a Skull n' Crossed bones flag saying; "Don't even think about Hi-jacking this one!"

 

As I understand it, the Skull n' Crossed Bones flag is reserved for use of Hi-jackers and therefore should not be appropriated by Hi-jackees . . .

I doubt it would scare off anybody, the medic-alert bracelet, bald head, wrinkles and liver spots are a dead give-away. They might pass out from laughing long enough for me to escape though!

 

Just put a whole lot of step ladders around the vessel and they'll be too scared to hijack it.

 

"the right of way"

about 15 years ago I built an RC saiboat and had only had it out a couple of times, ( I do did/do fly RC Sailplanes). I was invited up to Lake Manitoba where friends had a family cottage on the lake. so of course I took my sailboat along... so there I am, hot summers day sailing my RC boat, its all good. And sure enough along comes Mr. Speedboat coming straight in! Sh^$T , so ...
Then he cuts engines 100 feet and comes drifting in with a minimal wave ...

I said sorry, didn't know if you could see me?
He smiled an says ...

"Sailboats got right of way"

 

My dad & I took to the back bay in the Outer Banks for some bird watching, fish watching and a general look see.
The sound side of Ocracoke is mirrored by a long flat of shallow water crossed by the tracks of horseshoe crabs, tidal creeks and dotted by depressions filled with sea grass & swirling critters.

I was quite young and we walked for miles scaring up small rays and terrapins. Coming back to the car we had to cross a bit of a deep spot- my tall dad striding along while I struggled with the water nearing my chin.
Just then a large wake made up out on the shallows and closed on us fast. Wow- I was terrified & really had nowhere to go.
Well it came right at us and started to circle closer and closer. I was about to climb my dad like a tree when a large fin broke the surface.. then two cut the water and soon twenty.
About this point I finally saw that a large school of rays had come around to look us over. They were probably looking for the shrimp we stirred up from the sea grass. My dad never told me and I never asked if he knew what was coming at us.
Age and the benefit of height allowed him to view the world differently than I did as a young man & in my turn permits me a longer view now.

 

I was 12, new to the PacNW and salt water, tides, winds etc.
Dad decided we'd go fishing near Point-no-Point in Puget sound.
The boat ran out of gas, so he rowed us up onto the beach, took the little gas can and hiked off to find a station.
I was left to watch the boat.
I did. every time I looked over there, the boat was right where he'd left it.
Meanwhile I was busy throwing rocks at Gulls, skipping sand dollars, catching the little rock crabs....
The tide went out. Waaaayyyyy out.
Dad came back with some gas. He was going to beat me to death, I just knew it, when I saw him walk down to the boat, put the gas in and tried to turn the boat around.

It was a Rental boat. It had two big wheels screwed up to the bottom of the boat. Which were sticking into the sandy rocky beach with a vengeance.

Jeez he was Mad at me. I had run down the beach a ways, and I refused to come back to help him. At that time I didn't care about getting back or anything else. I just knew what was coming if he ever got his hands on me again.

Finally he was exhausted from dragging the boat, the Sun was way over in the West, the boat was a long ways from the water, and Hi tide was still hours away. Although I didn't know all that at the time. I was fresh off a Farm in Southern MO.
My Dad was about as tired, depressed, and frustrated as a young guy with a nit-wit Kid could be.

Finally, he talked me into helping him.
He somehow got the Oars under those wheels. I was in front of the boat, holding those Oars apart. Dad got the back and pushed. Somehow that worked! We made it to the water.
He put the outboard back on the boat. He'd taken it off way up the beach to lighten the load.
He made me Row out into the surf while he got the motor started.
That was the end of the fishing trip though.
The next trip we went on together was almost 30 years later and it was a Charter.

Somehow in my memories later I do remember him trying to explain that I had to keep the boat in the water. And how to keep the boat floating by keeping it going out with the tide. "HUH"? Sometimes I wonder if I had the brains of a Dead Bird.

I think all that was just too much of an overload for a kid in a strange place, nothing like what I'd grown up in and around. I still love that Puget sound area. An I learned never to put my son in any kind of a predicament like that.

 

Cook Islands

The Cook Islands are a group of 15 small islands in the South Pacific between Samoa and French Polynesia. I was there on holiday and decided to visit the remote northern group on the freighter "Manu Nui". She had previously seen service in the North Sea.
As a landlubber from London, it was all very exciting for me.
Palmerston Island is inhabitated by the descendants of an Englishman who settled there with a harem of south pacific beauties. Everyone has the surname Masters, and everyone looks alike.
Suwarrow was uninhabitated, and we delivered the caretakers, who would stay until the cyclone season began again. There we had a massive feast of coconut crabs who infest the tiny atoll. One of the caretakers brought a moped. I think he was dissapointed to find the island was only about 200m by 50m!

Nassua has a freighter parked high up the beach, the Tongan registered 'Manuvai', with coconut trees growing out of it. Apparently on the 28 December 1988, the first mate fell asleep drunk and the boat rammed the reef on autopilot. Before it was recovered a cyclone picked it up and deposited it in the trees forever.

The most entertaining moment was at Pukka Pukka, or Danger Island, where the women are reputed to **** the men. I had no such luck. We arrived early morning, and I went ashore while the crew unloaded the freight. There is a single pub there and 99% of its trade is from the visiting freighter. The Norwegian Engineer, the English Cook, and myself sat down to a pleasant all day drinking session. By early evening the boat was ready to depart. The crew had been slaving under the tropical sun, and the cook was very unpopular for beeing too drunk to make dinner. Tempares flared, the first mate had to be held off the engineer, everyone was drunk except the captain and about three others.
So the engineer went below and dismantled the injector pump on the motor, then locked himself in his cabin with a bottle of whiskey and his battery powered tv and stereo. There we were stranded in darkness in the middle of the Pacific with only the voice of the mad engineer singing karaoke to Guns and Roses. In the morning everyone made friends and off we went.

Penrhyn, or Tongareva was my final destination. It is famous for sharks. Within 5 minutes of landing I had already spotted 10 fins in the lagoon.
I was staying with some locals, and they decided we should go fishing. Great I thought. The rods were made from bamboo, and we ripped up some fibre optic cable to make the flies. I find it quite weird that I had never seen this material before, and should be introduced to it in the most remote place on earth as fishing tackle. Then the fuel hose would not fit the outboard, but this was quickly modified with a cigarette paper box seal. Black clouds were looming but this did not deter my friends. Fishing involved standing on plastic garden furniture in about six foot of water. The wind was howling, the sky was black, and I was waist deep in shark infested water. I kept thinking,'I wonder what the fibre optic cable was for?'

 

Yah...ladders are dangerous. Ive known many seriuos accidents over the years.

In Spain , at the shipyard, regulations prohibit ladders taller than one and a half meters.

As you can imagine the regulation is troublesome. When hauled out if a simple task on the topsides must be performed a steel scaffold tower needs to be erected.

Expensive and time consuming when all you needed to do was remove a piece of masking tape stuck to the topsides.

 

Couldn't you employ Castellers from Barcelona?

Also, make sure that the masking tape is not actually holding together something really important.

 

Yeah maybe use plastic chisels too. You know if your a dork you can hurt yourself with anything.