from Facebook telling me that someone had commented about me. I though of it as being rather odd so I checked it out and sure enough, there was a comment as to if I could remember my own phone number or not.
"Check this out," I said, and showed it to one of my shipmates. My shipmate's about half my age and a pretty damned competent seaman.
"What's that all about?" he asked.
"Damned if I know, I haven't seen this clown for over 40 years." I replied. "We went to high school together."
He gave me an appraising look and a mischevious look came into his eyes. "You know, Pic, You do a pretty good job of keeping up out here and that's kept you in pretty damned good shape. Why don't you..." he said, chuckling.
"Let's not go there," I interrupted. He smirked. Then his look changed.
"When you think about it, that's pretty sad," he said. "Remember Al Bundy from 'Married with Children'? His whole life was all about that pass he caught back in high school."
"Yeah, it is pretty sad." I answered. "You got out of school what? Ten, twelve years ago?"
"Back in '90", he said.
"You the same person that you were when you left school?" I asked.
"Maybe in a few ways, but not really." he replied. "Wonder what the guy was thinking?"
He looked at the computer again.
"That's really, really sad," he said.
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In other news, we are sitting in the Hudson up around Newburgh awaiting Irene to blow through here. It will be 36 hours of sweating it out and unlike a lot of nervous people out there that will be sleepless, I am going to take a long nap so I am up and alert when the SHTF.
I may give a blow by blow account here as time goes on.
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We lightered a ship yesterday and you just have to love Filipino crews. They are damned good, competent crewmen and are truly funny.
WHen I was passing papers with the chief officer I pointed to the house where on just about all tankers it they have 'No Smoking' painted in 6 foot red letters across it. Beneath it most tankers have 'Satety First' in green letters.
I told the chief mate that I had seen several ships named 'No Smoking' before as I pointed to the letters.He was sharp enough on the uptake th pick right up on it andto told me with a straight face he had sailed on several ships with that name.
So that became his call sign for radio communication. M/V No Smoking.
My call sign was 'Piccolo's boat'.
There was another of our rigs nearby and I guess he was using the same channel and I could tell by his voice he was having a hard time figuring out communications between our two vessels.
"Piccolo's Boat, No Smoking."
"No Smoking standing by."
"Yes, No Smoking, we are opened up and ready to go. Please start us slow."
"Roger, Piccolo's boat. Start slow."
What was funny is watching the ABs on deck, several of which were carrying handy-talkies look at each other with a perplexed look. A moment later one of the guys pointed to the lettering on the house and they all started gleefully laughing.
One other thing I noticed. The guy assigned to be a hose watcher had no shortage of company. Even the off watch ABs would grab him a cup of coffee and gab with him a while. Filipinos are generally pretty social beings.
Had it been an American crewed vessel, the poor bastard stuck on hose watch would have been stuck out there alone, and bored to tears for his entire watch.
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My mate was funny. He had been a chief pumpman on ships for years and he started busting the chops of the pumpman on board the No Smoking. It was pretty entertaining watching those two go round and round. Little things like that can be pretty entertaining.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
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