The Hawaii run

Let us sail away from the cold winds and driving storms of the Aleutian Islands for a moment into the tropical climes.  One unique contract our company has is to run freight barges to Hawaii.  The Hawaii Run, it is known as.  Some love this run, most hate or even fear it, and some enjoy it as a break from the grind of working in Alaska.  It could be important to mention here because this run contrasts well with the run of the Malolo, otherwise known as the shuttle run, in which we are shuttling barges all about.  Where as the longest average stint at sea between ports on the Malolo is usually 2 days, the trip to Hawaii averages 11 days with good weather.  And this run can assist us in looking into what a daily routine looks like on ships when the crew gets underway.  

There are two tugs designated for Hawaii.  The Phyllis Dunlap, and the Polar King.  Our journey will be with the Phyllis, which is the company’s newest boat, and also the one that seems to be regarded with the greatest animosity by the crews.  She is spacious in her accommodations, which feels homey and nice until a heavy sea pitches the ship about.  Then the inhabitants are flung about the spacious walkways and galley with nothing to break their momentum, and she is notorious for flinging about.  One sailor said, ‘The bitch will make you dance with her, and she will take the lead every time.’  For reasons of weight distribution and other design flaws she never develops a steady rhythm in her rocking, but instead will seem as though there is a steadiness, then suddenly lurch you, most often while you are in a doorway or descending a ladderwell.  On certain trips the crew have come off with bruises, and some with broken bones from her surly ways.  

The contract for Hawaii has a barge leaving Elliot Bay, Seattle every other Friday.  However, the company office and docks are in Everett, Wa.  So the cook arrives first, around eight in the morning, and takes the truck to the store to pick up provisions for the trip, and by the time he returns the crew is there and ready to help him load his stores. The ship gets underway around noon, the company dock workers wishing those on board a happy voyage and safe weather as they cast off lines.  

She travels the hour and a half into Seattle where she takes on fuel and water.  50,000 gallons of fuel to suffice the 11 days underway, then after dark, usually just before midnight, she goes out into the bay and takes the barge from the harbor tugs.  The crew makes up the tow wire, checks the barge for loose items, secures the docking lines on it, then climbs back aboard, casts off, streams out the tow wire, and away they go.  

12 hours later, around lunch the next day, they pass the Straits of Juan de Fucca and enter the Pacific Ocean.  Here the ship begins the steady roll beneath their feet as they set a course, make their last phone calls, get settled in, and finally can feel that they are underway.  

Now begins the routine that maintains the sailor’s sanity.  Without routine his mind becomes bored, in boredom he looks at the calendar, and the clock, he counts the days, hours, minutes, tasks, barriers, he thinks of home and all the problems he cannot control at sea; he goes mad.  So everyone carefully organizes his time to keep occupied.

The watches are divided into three watch teams of two.  The midnight to four watch is stood by the second mate and the AB, the four to eight by the chief mate and the cook, the eight to noon by the captain and engineer, then it rotates through in the same way for the afternoon.   The duties of the captain and mates are primarily for the safe navigation of the vessel and the paperwork and reports that might be required later to prove their diligence to this duty, morning reports, chart corrections, books regarding hours and pay, fuel reports, all these things go to the office back in Everett.  The AB is responsible for the sanitation of the vessel and the upkeep.  During the day he might be caught up in work with painting projects or gear inventory, while during the night he sweeps, mops, and cleans the heads.  The cook works on lunch through the morning watch, and preps his dinner.  Should he be generous he might bake some biscuits or fry some bacon, though it generally becomes expected that he set something out in the morning for the oncoming watch.  The engineer maintains the engines, changes oil / fuel filters, keeps up the systems of the boat, and often times has to sit and listen to the Captain repeat the same sea stories he’s been repeating for over a decade like a broken record.  

The eight hours in between watches are the sailor’s own.  Most sleep as much as possible, and when they are awake they watch movies or shows. In this industry everyone has a large hard drive and the hard drives are exchanged like the common cold.  Movies, books, magazines, and adult material too, all become common property for who ever wants it, and this keeps them locked away in their cabin passing their time, and before they know it, they are on watch again, and in this way count down the watches and days until they return.  But even on watch there are a good number of them who never get out of their sweat pants the entire time they are at sea, and so the boat takes the feel of a community lounge. 

You can imagine the time when there weren’t computers, or hard drives.  Not long ago days when they all congregated in the mess and socialized.  One remnant from that time that remains on all the boats in the fleet is a cribbage board.  The oldest of card games, and known as a sailor past time, the older salts still play at the change of each watch, and I play with them, and generally lose, but on the odd occasion make a come back from a potential skunking.  

Two days underway and the ship passes out of email range.  Now they enter into an abyss of communication, shut off from the world.  The ship still communicates with the office through a separate system, but contact with families, accept in the case of an emergency, is quiet and will be so for 5 to 7 days.  Now they are truly underway, to go into themselves, into their past times.  It should be said that this lack of contact with loved ones is a peculiarity of our company.  Most other companies provide a way for their employees to communicate with their families.  The technology exists, and in this day in age it is a lack of consideration not to provide it, but our employer would rather not pay for that convenience, and in return a lot of sailors stay away from the Hawaii run, or even working for the company in general.  However, this period without distraction can prove useful for self-improvement.  Few, but some, bring hobbies aboard.  Leather work, instruments, or studies.  The Phyllis is unique in that she is the only ship in the fleet with room for a stationary bike.  Some take advantage of this after their watch.  They have also made weights out of heavy shackles, and spend a good part of the morning exercising.  

My personal routine is to get off watch, then work out from 8 until 9.  Then shower and take a nap until 10:30, when I get up and make sure lunch is out.  Lunch is around the changing of the watch, so it becomes a bit of a social time when most are awake and talkative.  Then I make a cup of tea, take a bit of dark chocolate for a small desert and retire myself to reading, or in the present moment, writing a blog.  There is a place called the fidley.  This is the space above the engine room.  The deck is openly grated and the stacks run directly up through it, and a ladder runs from the fidley down to the engines .  Mostly there is a lot of storage here, but at the aft end there is the hatch that goes out onto the backdeck, and it affords a little fresh air, and a view of the water.  By this hatch there is the smoker’s chair, which becomes a decent reader’s chair.  I have read and written many off watches here.  Some will earn their post graduate education in classrooms, but my self education will be earned in a folding chair among the deafening engines and passing smokers, ears stuffed with plugs, looking out over the great pacific ocean while working out plots and developing characters.  In this way I kill my time until my evening watch when I make dinner, clean the galley, then hit the rack, thinking at the end of the day, ‘that passed tolerably well’.  

Once we are a few days out the weather freshens up.  You can smell the warm humidity and feel the sun break through the gunmetal sky, the wind moderates and shifts into an easterly trade, and large moisture laden clouds form on the horizon.  Flying fish begin to alight from the waters in the wake of our bow and hand lines are thrown out on jerried outriggers for catching Mahi.  Now you can bring your deck chair out into the sunlight with your spf 15 and soak in the healing powers of the sun.  There are days when the deck is lined with tugboaters tanning themselves, watching the fishing lines, and listening for the engines to be brought down when a fish bites and jumps from the water, struggling against the hook. 

The idea with fishing is that we tie off a hand drawn blue line of parachute chord that runs a good hundred yards behind the boat.  Attached to this is a leader with a lure.  Who ever is standing watch keeps an eye on the wake behind us and when the fish jumps then they bring back the engines.  The sudden change in the constant drone alerts everyone, and usually one of the watchstanders, or whoever is closest, will go down and pull the fish in hand over hand until it is directly in the wash, then lift and walk straight back with it.  Here is the comedic part, as the fish comes on deck it flails about and the sailor, weary of the hook, bounces around the deck trying to get a grip on it without impaling themselves.  To see this dance is on equivalent of watching a monkey pouncing a banana, but instead of an agile monkey it is a large sized surprisingly agile tugboater or two, and this sight should liven the spirit of any sullen landsman.  Now with a grip on the fish you put your thumb in their eye and that pacifies them.  Then bleed them and hang them upside down and let their life fluid flow out onto the deck and wash into the sea.  

The Mahi ranges in its bodily color from a beautiful and vibrant yellow belly to silver mid section and a darkening blue along its back that arrays the spectrum of the sea it lives in.  When it is bleed the vibrant colors flow out of it as it shivers in death throws, and the yellow fades, and the blues and silver shimmer for an instant, then pale from a depth of natural warmth to a cold dull steely grey.  It is beauty fleeting before the eyes.  It is the closest manifestation one can actually see of a being’s soul fleeing the body.  Magnificence gives way to no more than an object of sustenance.  Here there is a mixed reverence.  As a fact, most tugboaters give it no thought, but for one in particular there is a moment in which a, ‘Thank you brother, you are beautiful,’ seems appropriate.  The thrill of harvesting the catch, gives way to a thankful sorrow for the death of something beautiful, that in return gives way to a communion, in which the first fish goes immediately to the grill, and what isn’t eaten is packed away in vacuum sealed packets and frozen for the crew to divide up and take home with them.  One styrofoam fish box can carry 42 pounds of Mahi fillets, and travels nicely on a plane, in case you find yourself in possession of such a succulent sea treat.  

Then, in due time, we raise the islands out of the tropic waters.  Shore birds drift atop the waves, cloud banks gather, we return into communication with our loved ones.  Time in Honolulu usually doesn’t extend past a thirty-hour window.  Stores are provisioned, fuel taken on, and all get away to the nearby café (attached to the Hawaiian shirt outlet store) to check their mail, or download some pod cast or book.  Some go to the beach, all go about to their favorite diners and restaurants.   The Honolulu art museum has a fantastic collection of Polynesian art and relics, as well as a collection of art from all about the rim of fire, though I believe I might be the only tugboater to have taken in its treasures.    Then it is off again, and all begin to look to the northeast, toward home, another 11 days beyond the far horizon.  

Summer trips give way to winter, the fish migrate south to warmer waters, and the weather turns rough as low pressure systems roar unhindered across the northern pacific.  Here the easy trip into the tropics quickly turns to a long drawn out ordeal of being thrown about for weeks at a time.  Sleep is dogged by the pitching of the waves, and homecomings are delayed when at times the ship is blown backwards away from Cape Flannery, and the entrance to the somewhat protected waters of the Peugeot Sound.  Here a toll is taken on one’s psyche, here men begin to get to each other, darker spirits brood, and discipline seems to wane with the loss of the long lighted days.  During this time it becomes difficult to imagine any other reality but the current suffering.  In this in-between voyage the happy world of home fades into distant memory, and is something vainly sought after, a disappointing hope that often materializes to nothing.  

And so we return from the contented tropics 2,000 miles south to the waters of the Aleutian chain, where the wind currently howls down on us, and the ship is hove-to under the old steaming giant Pavlof.  The crew has served their allotted 60 days, and there is no end in sight, for the weather worsens, and we too are held in a suspended state of anticipation for our homecoming.  We now await in limbo…