33 days non stop New Orleans to Pointe-Noire Republic of the Congo 140’ utility boat delivery, via Lat 00.00.00 / Long 000.00.00 Stopped Drank a BEER took a piss in the water got u/w, 33 days to get there, 33 hrs. in town, 33 hr. transit home.
[QUOTE=adewailly;130373]18 weeks on a little tow boat making runs for Louisiana to st.marks Florida[/QUOTE]
I remember once on a voyage during the early 90’s to the Far East passing this little ex Navy YTB tug towing a big assed drydock to the US. We here somewhere south of Hawaii and spoke with the mate on watch via vhf. He said they had already been two months since leaving Guam and would stop to take fuel from the tow every so often off tanks in the drydock. He also said they had something like two months to go and were eating canned food the whole way. POOR MISERABLE SODS is all I could think. I wonder if they ever made it to the states or if they broke down and died out there never to be seen or heard from again?
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[QUOTE=Tawn;130388]123 consecutive days at sea…submerged
USS Parche (SSN-683), 2002[/QUOTE]
I cannot image the surreal world of being at sea and not being on the surface? How many men go crazy out there doing that ridiculous shit?
Didn’t that fisherman from Mexico beat us all for consecutive days, what a badass!
Geeze… Been stuck a couple of times at Malongo Terminal. The second time was my fault. 11 months working between Santa Marta and Riohacha. At the dock most of the time. Wound up marrying the mayor of Santa Marta’s daughter. Towing Alaskan Star from Yakutat and getting off in Valpariso. There’s been several other long trips over 39 years.
It all pales in comparison to one of my captains most miserable trips. In 1974 we left Receife for Aracaju Brazil. We picked up an old Zapata cantilever jack up rig and towed it back and forth between Aracaju and Maceio for 2 weeks until Petrobras decided where the rig would go. It was unfortunate that he contracted the clap in Receife and it took 10 days after we departed for him to get his medication.
Any time since when I was feeling sorry for myself, I just harkened back to Aracaju…
Spent 21 days doing circles off ciudad del carmen, mexico towing oil rig pieces waiting for Pemex to pay up (…“no payment today, maybe mañana…”) Should have been a 9 day trip but ended up being 28.
Trip 1= Alaska to Singapore, 28 days then port call- Singapore to Singapore, 28 days then port call - cleared into Indonesia and went offshore and thought 28 more days and go home…well, all of the passports were left with the Agent as we had to be stamped into and out of the country while we were offshore. After 20 days, we got a call from the agent, the 400# safe holding the passports had sprouted legs and walked off! Spent a total of 71 days working at sea with supplies, fuel, and groceries brought to us. Finally got clearance to get into Singapore where we finally did crew change. The idiots had wanted me to take the boat to Jakarta, I said NO, the office said NO, the state department said NO (that’s when all the boom boom stuff was going on, not safe). Total 127 days.
Trip 2 = Singapore, spent 90 whole days at sea with all supplies, groceries, and crewchanges brought to us…the charterer wanted to save money on port calls…
I did not stay for trip #3!
Only 40 days or so here on a coast-coast tugboat ride, with a pitstop in Panama for bunkers (among other things :rolleyes:). Lonely stretch of water on the west coast below cabo, quite depressing getting passed by container ships @ 2x+ the speed every 10 hours or so. Well behaved tow, which was nice for once.
Grain run from Portland Oregon to Eritrea which lasted 83 days with a brief stop for bunkers in Singapore but no shore leave. The fishing in the Red Sea was the only good thing about that trip. When we loaded the grain we had a shore crane load a 20 foot container full of “USA Wheat” sacks for the Eritreans to put our grain in ashore. The crane put the load out too far and the boom tipped down like a tomahawk and dented the 20 footer so bad a surveyor condemned it.
After the bags were sent ashore we sailed and jacked the container up on to 4" pipe. Cut the hand rails and pushed it overboard in the middle of the Indian Ocean with the doors open so it sank. That was pretty cool.
Voyage I wish I could go back and do again: West bound passage trans-Atlantic passage on the S.S. United States, as a passenger in '63.
[QUOTE=c.captain;130405]I cannot image the surreal world of being at sea and not being on the surface? How many men go crazy out there doing that ridiculous shit?[/QUOTE]
In 25 years, I never saw a single legit “freak out”.
It’s amazing what you can get used to.
I did a Tagos job in late 99 early 2000. Tromso to Glasgow. 73 straight days underway. Oh yeah, wintertime above the Arctic Circle for virtually the whole time.
I was in the Navy in the 70’s-90’s and we did six month cruises on average. I did a solid one month on the hook on a destroyer tender off Augusta Bay Sicily waiting for the first libya raid. 1986. That was a long four weeks sans beer. People fought and were generally assholish to be around and I don’t doubt that I was just as “delightful” to be around. Even on shore, Sicily sucks unless you are Sicilian. They still use donkey carts to haul shit around. Anyway, we did do a lot of vertrep on that cruise and set a few records. We also shipped home a CPO (ours) who died in Spain and we’d had to keep him in a reefer for a day or so before we could fly him out. Cliffs Notes: We had a dead crewmember in our reefer and the stupid jokes didn’t help much at all. It sucked, all the way around, carrying him from Spain to the Tyrrhenian Sea where we handed him off to an MSC ship.
Make sure you have your Medical Power of Attorney and Advanced Directives current and on file. Trust me on that. You do NOT want to have your dead ass stuck in a country that has a different notion of life support than you do. You do not want to know what it took to get my shipmate’s body out of Spain. Ok, here’s a hint: Money money money. Spain is a Catholic country. To get the hospital in Madrid to pull the plug was a miracle paved in greenbacks. Yes, we passed the hat. I will never forget it. The man was shipped home to his family and buried, but the journey was a sad one fraught with complications.
Today’s Navy is going for longer cruises of 9 months or so. I don’t speak with Navy folks much these days but 9-10 month deployments won’t do much for retention. Then again, the Navy is in its periodic downsizing cycle. They cope as they always do.
Commercial seafarers I have spoken to (foreign) tell me they average a 10 month contract. Many do not get ashore due to visa issues. Some barely get to call home unless they can cop a calling card from the agent.
My current sailing schedule takes me out for about 2-3 weeks max and then we pull in somewhere for a few days to change out scientists and equipment. Rinse and repeat. I can’t complain, in the face of it.
[QUOTE=Tawn;130388]123 consecutive days at sea…submerged
USS Parche (SSN-683), 2002[/QUOTE]
I’ve read quite a bit about the Parche, I’m sure you were breathing softly the whole time!
The last three years of my life. Fortunately I had some good hands help keep me going along the way. Unfortunately many of them have moved on…
Did an entire 94 day trip on a tanker in the GoM without touching a dock.
Really? Where the hell did ya go lol.