What are these people on?
This sort of thing is not because one or two CBP officers didn’t like the color of her nail polish. It tells me that an association in her background or something she said raised a red flag and they are following procedure. It may prove to be irrelevant but who knows…
This is ridiculous. Certainly in the meantime while her getting off the ship problem is worked out, someone can go ashore on that vessel and purchase the supplies she needs. Or whoever the chandler to the ships supplies can get that stuff. They didn’t bring two years of stores with them.
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The vessel only performs lightering operations in the USA. So, is it US flagged? If so what are the US officers on board doing to take care of this crew member? There are some parts missing to this puzzle.
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I had a 5.5 month hitch on a deepsea vessel as a cadet. I would have had the same problem if the crew hadn’t found a way to get me ‘supplies’ (new euphemism). Very kind men. It is embarrassing, I can empathise. But I’m mortified on her behalf that her basic hygiene needs became a news story. Bad enough having to beg a stranger for help…
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Anybody have any information about her vessel, their agent or the dock their supply vessel works out of? Seriously, with a couple of taps of my finger & I can have a small care package put together via Amazon in 10 minutes. It can’t be that hard to get stuff to her. It won’t help her get home any faster but being offshore without necessities sucks.
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Ditto.
I’ve reached out to a few that might be able to track her down and deliver such a care package. Unfortunately, it seems this is the first most people local are hearing about it, but there is effort being made.
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I’ll try finding Shwe Tun Aung at ITP Houston via email to see if he has a forwarding dock address for the boat that supplies her ship.
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As far as I understand she is on a tanker that do lightering and calls at Corpus Christi port regularly:
No shore leave for the crew, even to buy basic necessities though.
They must have an agent. They have to provision somewhere.
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Never easy.
May I suggest to the ladies some washable essential supplies? They’re made of cloth.
No. None of the ships that lighter in the Gulf of Mexico are US flagged. That is all done by foreign flag ships.
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ya, na. at home, what-ever but I’m not going to expose our gallant laundry-men to all that. Bad enough that they clean my work-clothes after I’ve been in the STP. And diva cups are for people with clean hands.
Being an ex captain of lightering vessels I can shed a little light on this, you can get a lightering parole or SPB (significant public benefit) parole for a maximum of 6 months, it is normally tailored to your contract length e.g. if you are on a 4 months contract then that it what you would get.
This case seems to be that the agent/owner should have had this in writing from CBP that the person in question could go over the parole length, if she could not be repatriated then without this being in writing she should have been offsigned to another country. At the end of the day this is a sad case but the lightering parole is already very generous and done like this to stop abuse. In this case I an understand both sides but with CBP you better have your T’s crossed & i’s dotted.
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The fish rots from the head. Shame on them.
I work lightering support at present. If someone can find out who is doing support vessel work for her vessel, I can reach out and set something up through a lightering support vessel.
We routinely buy stuff for crew members on these ships and bring it out to them. Not sure if it is legal but we are trying to help our fellow mariners.
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