I don’t know if this has been discussed but, it seems to fit with the “waterfront dives” post. What has been your longest hitch without port calls? Mine was back in the late 90s I pulled a 96 day trip in the Pacific; no land, women or beer in sight. Not sure I could have done much longer and don’t think I want to do it again. I know some of the crusty old salts on here have got me beat…
must have been a T-AGOS vessel…
sheer utter misery for even more miserable pay
for myself, I don’t think I have ever had to do more then two months without stopping somewhere even if some God forsaken little hole of a port. Longest I have signed on for was 5 1/2 months back in the 80’s but hit lots and lots of great ports on that voyage!
Not even lucky enough to be on a T-AGOS ship. I was stuck on a 110ft long line fishing boat. Utter misery for an unknown payday
90+ days working for Chevron out of Malongo, Angola. Only a mooring buoy for comfort. Never made it to the beach. They tried to make me stay over by saying I didn’t have a relief. Walked off. Went to another one and camped out till they got me a ticket home. Scumbags. TDW, by the way.
1993 rode the hook for about 7 weeks in the Mogadishu anchorage for $60 a day and zero overtime. This made the blowout in Durban a couple weeks later achieve epic status. Still not sure how the plant stayed online for those 4 days. We just rotated in for our watches made one round at the beginning of each watch. Next thing you know your relief shakes you awake just in time to shower and hit the town again. It’s times like that there should be a limit on your draw.
Made a trip from Long Beach CA to Valdez loaded crude for GOM via Cape Horn. Layed at anchor in the GOM off Galveston for 3 weeks discharging to various smaller tankers. Bunkered and stored for the return trip. I can not remember the actual length of the voyage, I’d have to dig up old discharges, but I do remember the suitcase parade upon arrival back in Long Beach. I was hard up for a job and happy to get it, but learned a good lesson. When you are shipping off the board and every billet position on the ship is calling for relief, there is a reason.
Research Vessel a couple years ago, 52 day voyage from Cape Town to the Walvis Ridge and back. Mainly just cruising around and doing sonar and trawl ops that whole time. Wasn’t that bad actually.
Since I’m not a professional mariner, I’m going to lose this competition. I guess the longest time I have been onboard a ship without a port call was about 20 days. That was in 2012 when I participated in the first Northern Sea Route transit onboard the multipurpose icebreaker Nordica. After assisting Aiviq and Kulluk for couple of days, we headed west together with Fennica and waited for the Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers next to Wrangel Island for almost a week. The transit from Chukchi Sea to Barents Sea took only 10 days.
I didn’t get paid, but I didn’t have to pay for anything either.
Of course I had a happy childhood as well, but I never left the Baltic Sea…
So many long trips, I think my longest would have to be Singapore to Cook Inlet then to Seattle, mid '80s towing the DB Polaris 1, Also, towing the Seabulk Islander from Seattle to Honolulu, barge capsized and floated for 6 or 8 weeks before we were released to Honolulu for the investigation.
45 days towing an old troopship from Suisun Bay to Brownsville. We did get to spend a few days at Rodman though. That broke it up nicely.
42 days from Long Beach to Long Beach. Every person made it off in one port or another except I.
18 weeks on a little tow boat making runs for Louisiana to st.marks Florida
months and months on cgc polar star on a north trip.the only break was when we hove-to in the ice with a canadian icebreaker.i took a tour on the canadian breaker and traded 3 packs of winstons for 2 cans of beer.what were they gonna do fire me?
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;130364]. It’s times like that there should be a limit on your draw.[/QUOTE]
Noted.
My longest voyage must have been either from or to Diego Garcia, about a month and a half give or take.
Longest voyage was 30 days from the Galapagos Islands to the Marquesas Islands.
Favorite was was from Takoradi, Ghana to Walvis Bay, Namibia, when we crossed the equator on the prime meridian.
We took over 20 days to get from Jacksonville to Gulfport towing a raft of pipe for the oil spill. It started to come apart twice and we had to hug the coast. Oh yeah and had 1500hp. Tug life
123 consecutive days at sea…submerged
USS Parche (SSN-683), 2002
None of you are even CLOSE to this guy:
http://1000days.net/home/
Of course he was crazy to start with and got worse…
Also spawned an epic thread making fun of this “voyage”, aka as drifting around…
I think it is 300 some pages long :eek:
130 something days on a Crowley Invader class tug, from Ingleside Texas to Rio de Janeiro. Took 62 days slow belling to get there, then another 2.5 months of stby weather patterns. When we finally got reliefs, the agent took us to lunch and dumped us at the airport. Looked up and down those beaches for months and got a grand total of 3 hours in port. We had 8 boats go down but there was only one crew stuck down there longer than us…
I think it was in 94 towed a Ensco jack up rig from Louisiana around the Cape of Good Hope to India. For some reason we couldn’t go through the Suez. Stopped for 8 hours in San Juan P.R. for fuel, they brought us fuel off shore close to Durban. Set the rig up off shore in India, they brought us fuel offshore, and a material barge to tow back to the states. The return voyage we went through the Suez, stopped in Malaga Spain for fuel offshore again at the anchorage. Made it back to Beaumont Texas, 4 and a half months later with only 8 hours at the dock total.