While the industry hasn't gone down the tubes completely yet it is well on the way.
The Old School rule of what happens on the boat stays on the boat seems to be slowly slipping away as the world changes. It seems like there is an increasing number of sissified girly men entering the trade. Some of the new generation think the office is there to settle beefs that have been settled on the boat for generations.
As it stands now I enjoyed the company of the tiny handful of women I sailed with because they were competent, capable and played by the rules. In fact I miss two of them. Both of them played by the written and unwritten rules. They were far better company than some of the new girly men I've met recently.
Neither of these two tried playing the 'be one of the boys' game because that never works. They were simply women doing a job that was traditionally a man's job and they performed well.
One of them took to knitting Afghans in her waiting times. I was quite entertained once when I walked into the wheelhouse while she was knitting and told her we were going to leave in fifteen minutes.
She stuffed the Afghan into a big plastic bag, went over to the sound powered, spin the crank and picked up the receiver. "Fire 'em up, Chief."she said to the engineer and went from knitting an Afghan to running a tugboat. The incongruity of it was rather amusing to me.
I counseled both of these women a time or two that had a 'how do I handle this' question and later they returned the favor by supporting me when something questionable came up later on.
The quieter of the two, completely out of character, stormed in on a higher up that was giving me some pre-tour 'apply anywhere' crap and snapped, "Leave him alone! He's the only one in the entire fleet that had the decency to send my mother money to bail me out of jail!"
He was so stunned to hear that he walked off with his jaw dropped to his knees. I stared at her wide-eyed and we both laughed. I was pretty proud of her and think that maybe some of my advice had contributed to it because I told her once, 'keep 'em guessing'. She sure belted one out of the park that morning!
It seemed that all of the few women I worked with seemed to share two things in common. One, they were waterdogs and loved being on the water. The other is that they seemed to have a strong male influence early on in their lives. One used to go to work with her father on a tug and another was close to her father who was a military pilot of some sort.
I digress.
Anyway around the end of my career I ran into a couple of snitch types that forgot the rules of whatever goes on in the boat stays there. I handily dealt with that by feeding them disinformation which wound up leaving them with self-inflicted wounds.
Then there was California Joe who was 100% completely woke and tried to advertise his various stupid causes. He came complete with an Antifa hoodie, the usual assortment of facial piercings and tats and an attitude to match. I told him to ditch the shirt if he came over to help us tie up. I explained that we wore no political identifiers in front of customers and he replied that I couldn't tell him what to do.
I agreed that I had no authority whatsoever to tell him what to do. I also pointed out that if he didn't do what he was told I was going to lead him over to the rail by the nose ring I had pinched between my thumb and index finger while we discussed the matter and throw him over the side.
The shirt got turned inside-out.
My next dealing with him a few days later turned out to be a Jack Nicholson trying to keep his temper moment.
Back to 'The Rules'.
After a load three people have to calclated exactly how much cargo has been loaded. Generally the three are the person that loaded it, the dock representative and an outside inspector. The outside inspector is a third impartial person hired by the customer. (conflict of interest, anyone?) There's a lot of numbers involved and distractions are not welcome at all.
During inclement weather, by tacit agreement, the deckhands are permitted to stand inside the galley/office entrance landing with the agreement they keep totally quiet and speak only when spoken to. This is actually a simple courtesy. A courtesy can be revoked at any time for any reason.
The dock rep and inspector were seated, I was headed to my desk and then bull in a china shop California Joe and an oncoming deckhand entered and stood in the landing and California Joe started talking about his transgender girlfriend. The other deckhand was kind of stunned because he knew the rules. He looked at California Joe and stammered, "But she's not even a real women!"
"What's a real woman?" replied California Joe.
I glanced at the inspector, a slight Asian man that was probably an immigrant and saw he was turning slightly red faced. I came unglued and was just about ready to roar ''Take it outside!"
Instead for some reason I kept my temper and went into a Jack Nicholson getting ready to fly off the handle mode and went up to the pair. "A real woman has two t*ts and a c**t and I don't care if they are Original OEM from the factory, originals, Chinese aftermarket knock-off bolt-on or spin-ons or even Army surplus. Furthermore I don't care where they came from. They could have come from God, Amazon, K-Mart, Walmart, the Salvation Army Thrift Store or even be army surplus that they bought from the Old Grouch's Surplus store in Clyde, North Carolina. I don't care. Now CLEAR MY GALLEY or I will drag you two outside and throw the pair of you over the side! MOVE!"
They fled like and they were being chased by the Devil himself. California Joe muttered something about it being raining out. Still in Nicholson mode, I explained to him he would get a lot wetter if he went over the side as he scrambled through the hatch, the pair of them tripping over each other.
I turned to my guests and still in Nicholson mode, but with the aplomb of an upper class Brit that had accidentally crashed a workingman's party said ''I didn't mean to offend. I simply had to take the trash out."
The dock rep, a woman in her early to mid 50s that had taken the job when she had been widowed years ago in order to raise a couple of kids. She'd been there for years and seen it all. She simply said, "No offense taken. I understand completely." She was sort of surpressing a smirk.
''Did I miss anything?" I asked her. I realized she knew how the game was played. She looked thoughtful for a few seconds.
"No, I believe you got it all, and quite colorfully, too, I might add, she replied, cheerfully and I knew it would never get back to the office from her.
Then I reverted back to being Piccolo and said, "Now maybe we can get some work done." and headed to my small desk.
I was just getting seated when the dock rep asked me, "Does that Army-Navy store really sell woman's replacement parts? Some of mine are getting kind of old and worn out and I wouldn't mind going into the shop for a rebuild."
That brought the house down. The Asian turned beet red and started laughing out loud.
"They probably do. They sell practically everything else," I answered and we turned to and crunched the numbers. They came out pretty close to perfect and shortly after we sailed.
For quite some time I never did figure out why my conniption fit didn't hit Rumor Control and get back to me. A few months later I figured it out. I figured the woman had heard worse in her near 20 years on the docks and had shined it on. The Asian inspector was probably too embarrassed to repeat it.
The other deckhand had been too embarrassed to say anything to anyone about it. As for Joe California, I figured he'd run his mouth until I realized he was terrified of being thrown over the side. After that he gave me a wide berth which was fine my me.
Aftermath.
We came to the dock a month or so later and the woman caught our lines. When she saw it was me she said she had bought something from the Old Grouch's surplus store.
"So what is it?" I asked, dryly. "You found replacement body parts, perhaps? New in wrapper?"
The deckhand later asked me what that conversation was all about and I told him to mind his own business.
"No," she laughed. "I bought a toolbag for my oldest son. His old one was worn out and they said they had some gently used ones for sale. When it arrived it was brand new."
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