and as many of us know, Murphy was an optimist.
Yesterday was a day when I wanted to get the lawn mowed and as to be expected, it rained. I don't know when it is going to dry out but as I often say, we shall see what we shall see.
Yesterday I finished writing about getting started in my career. It's kind of a soggy saga because of all the things that led up to it. I didn't start sailing under documentation until I was 38 when happenstance got me hired on a tug.
As kid I wanted to 'get my Z card and sail all over the world'.
Back in the day you couldn't just go to the Coast Guard and get one issued like you can today. You either needed experience or a 'letter of intent' to hire you.
At the time the unions were full of people, companies were hiring either out of the hall or only documented people. It was a Catch-22 for an inbreaker.
The master of a vessel outside of US waters could hire non documented US citizens to replace sick or injured crewmen, however. The way to go was to head on out to someplace like the Phillipines and wait until a ship came in needing someone. You would sail and upon completion of the vouage take your discharge paper to the Coasties and get issued your Z-card. If I recall correctly foreign sea time also counted so it didn't necessarily have to be a US flagged vessel.
When I was 38 I got lucky and was able to find a company suffering growing pains and internal chaos and get a letter of intent AND a job.
The 20 years laeading up to this were somewhat tumultous to say the least.
I'm not posting a direct link to this because I don't want a couple of the assholes to jump in on it with a bunch of snarky crap.
If you know how to back channel me do so and I'll send you a direct link. If not, I'm sorry.
I'm due for retirement soon and when I pull the pin I'll post a direct link here.
No comments:
Post a Comment