Fireball

02:00 Monday, March 7, 2011

I snap into consciousness and check the radar, all clear, flittering dash lights making tracers at the edge of eyesight. I find the bearing line to our waypoint, which sways from port to starboard as we corkscrew into swells, but we're on course. Geovan's still there, staring straight ahead, drumming on his thighs with his hands like he's got some inner concert going to keep him awake. As synapses reconcile, an odd glow beyond the bow, a pale orange iridescence defining the sky. I scan the bridge and look astern but only blackness--and then a body materializes, leaning against the chart table and it gives me a start. A lithe and childlike form shuffling papers, it's Raimundo.

I shift my weight to reconfigure my place, receive a bolt of pain through the lower back. Conversation among the others, they swap out and Geovan heads below. Raimundo speaks a few words and starts his miming again, but I'm not in the mood and he gets the point. We ride in silence as the bow dips and rises, light visible at the zenith of swells--but not ordinary light, not running lights on a vessel, it's way too bright. It's fire. It disappears as we descend, remains invisible through heaving and pitching, but the sky is a luminous orb above the horizon, the coloration undeniable, no visual hoax.

It's not unusual to see flame at offshore installations. Gas is a byproduct of drilling and rigs vent and burn gas as they go about their business. One of the creepiest things I saw in the Gulf of Mexico, aside from the Macondo well disaster, came in thick fog during the middle of the night somewhere south of Port Fourchon, a flame reflecting in water droplets, turning the atmosphere a lambent orange, nothing visible aside from luminescence. You could walk a few paces onto the deck and lose sight of everything, even your boots, envelop yourself in the cadmium glow. There was obviously a platform burning gas, although we never saw it, navigating solely by radar.

In time the blaze is unmistakable, a fiery ball upon the horizon like a lollipop. The single side band is above the chart table, Raimundo retrieves and dials. I'm lost to all of it, even the numbers. We're approaching SS 68, "West Taurus" it says on the AIS, and I know sessenta e oito but it doesn't sound the same. I ask Raimundo about it when he's done, and it seems there's a substitute for sixty pronounced like "mayo" so that 62 can be "mayo-dois" instead of "sessenta e dois". So the West Taurus is in SS 68, "essa-essa, mayo-oito", and it's sporting an incredible ball of flame, a staggering sight, a truly remarkable vision. I feel as if I should comment somehow, and I speak to Raimundo in English, but it garners no response. He has no idea what I'm saying.

For an hour the fireball grows, steadily devouring the sky, transforming the celestial sphere into a spectral radiance. Again a series of dots on the radar, fishing boats, and soon I see them through the window. They're lit like jack-o'-lanterns by the nefarious flame, trailing to the southwest, tethered to a platform leg and then together, four of them stretch a quarter mile or more, all bouncing crazily in the fierce, churning sea. Raimundo's switched to VHF 12 and he's talking to the platform, his face bathed in orange light, his chin stubble glistening. "Bombordo, Cap-i-tan," he speaks and disappears below. I pull back the throttles and come to a drift well clear, calculating the bizarre scene before me, bombordo is port, and this is insane, they wants us on the windward side. The wind and sea come from the east, and with the fishing boats trailing southwest, there must be a southern current. The mighty fireball shoots westward and looks like it's too close to those boats. It's got to be hot.

I let the boat drift and note our course over ground off the gps, 232, check it by the compass, and find the port-side crane of the platform. I would have to bow-up indeed, to put the bow into the swells instead of the stern, which is the safer way to do things on a crew boat. But the platform's starboard crane is too close to the flame, we would cook ourselves going in. Already it's intense, from nearly a quarter-mile, I open the bridge hatch and I'm blasted by radiant heat. Raimundo reappears with Geovan in tow, and I think I understand their schedule--the AB's, the able-bodied seaman or deckhands--they're working four-hour blocks of watch: Raimundo's got the 2 to 6, Charles the 6 to 10, and Geovan the 10 to 2, all am and pm. But that's only eight hours per day, so they're on standby for another 4-hour block, pitching in for offshore ops or for docking, whenever we need two people on deck at a time.

I've swapped to the stern controls, we're inching forward into the seas. An engineer appears, I don't know him yet, he tells me the C9 is ready, the "see-novi", easy enough to make out, it's the tunnel thruster on the bow, a green light beside the toggle confirms his declaration. These conditions are ridiculous. The seas are at least 10 feet, our wind gauge broken, but it's got to be driving 25 knots, gusting more. No one would ever off-load a crew boat like this in the Gulf. A crew boat isn't made for this. It's got a little, pointy bow, unlike the broad, often bulbous creations on steel ships made for sea. The guys are all standing there, acting like this is normal. I've got the bow at 40 degrees but I've got to come right to 52, the reciprocal course of our drift. That way the elements will take us directly into the platform, and I can pull straight away if necessary, avoid getting sideways in the swells. We fall to starboard just a touch and I'm there, heading 50 degrees. Now I can back straight to the platform crane, letting the wind and seas carry the boat into position, keeping the rudder amidships and using the two outboard engines to bump forward and check our speed of drift. When the bow begins to fall, I sit on the thruster, but the swells are too big. I lose it and we're sideways, another wave and we're dangerously close to the platform. I jam all four engines into gear and pull away, shouting an expletive.

I sense the guys looking at me while I reset the boat, get the bow pointed northeast again and bounce forward. Again I take in the scene, the West Taurus and it's violent, inimical flame. I look at all three crew members, my crew members, Raimundo, Geovan, an engineer. Raimundo speaks, "Você okay, Cap-i-tan?" He's asking me if I'm okay, fucking great. This time the bow's holding. "What do they want?" I practically shout, pointing to the deck. Raimundo and Geovan bolt to the cargo, tapping on a square container, medium sized and midship. They snap chin-straps, we surge aft-ward. I bump forward a couple times real easy, look over my shoulder to check the compass, we're holding at 55. The crane cable is coming down, a 'stinger' at the end, the hooking device, but the crane operator better hurry. "Cable down! Cable down!" I'm yelling. I pick up the VHF and yell again, "Cable down!"

When the stinger reaches deck, Raimundo gets a hand on it, but we pitch and heave and his tiny frame is slung like a rag doll. Let go! He lets go in time before he hits anything, but that did not look good. "I can't believe we're doing this," I catch myself saying aloud. I pull forward again before the sea pushes us into the platform, the bow holding at 50. I touch the thruster to port, we begin to drift back. This time, Raimundo holds the D-ring of the lift and Geovan goes for the stinger. He's got it! They connect. And for a moment, we're in no man's land, on the windward side of the platform, unable to escape. If I pulled out now, it would rip the aluminum side-rails right off the boat. It's up to the crane operator, he's got to pick the lift and finally does, engines forward, I pull away.

That's it for 68, our next destination westward, we'll surf the swells, an easy ride. When dusk arrives to establish serenity, Diniz appears to assume the watch. I retreat to the crew quarters and into the galley, realize I haven't eaten since I got on the boat--or since I threw up. I scan the pantry for crackers and procure a sleeve.

sleep

18:00 Sunday March 6, 2011

Exhausted at 18:00, again delirious and nodding off, I can't wait to climb into my bunk, to relax vertical even if I can't fall asleep with the boat rolling and pitching and pounding. I've been on watch for six hours, and I was told all the Brazilian captains work six-hour rotations, someone on the 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock, am and pm, and someone on the 6 o'clock to 12 o'clock, am and pm. I haven't discussed any of it with Diniz, but after last night it looks like I'm working roughly 12 to 6, and it's 18:00, 6 pm, so where is he? I need bed. Raimundo's already swapped out and Charles is riding shotgun, another friendly type but I'm too far gone to speak.

We're pulling 18 knots in a side sea, haven't lost any time, the ocean swells arriving from starboard. Awhile back, I hooked up the engines, put the throttles to the dash just to see, but an engineer showed up and asked me to pull them back, not to exceed 1450 rpm. I'm used to driving crew boats in the Gulf of Mexico at full throttle, terribly inefficient, practically doubling fuel consumption with very little increase in speed, but that's how things are done in the Gulf. Shocking at first, one gets used to anything. I've been subjected to fuel audits on an Apache contract running out of the Calcasieu River, La., near Texas, a guy shows up with sounding sticks, sprinkles them with Ajax to sound the tanks, says the company has a "fuel problem", and basically accuses us, in a nice-enough way, of selling diesel to shrimp boats. I've heard it was done by crews back in the day. It would work like this: a boat under contract charges it's fuel to the company they're hauling cargo for, and the boats report fuel consumption to dispatchers once during the day. A crew boat burns so much diesel, 3,000 gallons or more in 24 hours, that no one is going to notice a few hundred gallons here or there. A boat could stop somewhere offshore, pump two or three hundred gallons to a shrimp boat for $2 or $3 per gallon in cash, save the shrimper a few hundred dollars, and divide the cash among the crew, add that amount of fuel to the daily consumption report, and no one's going to know. A crew could do that a few times per hitch and go home with an extra thousand bucks or more in their pockets, but I can't imagine it's done much anymore, too much traffic. Plus, captains are paid pretty well these days, so surely less will risk their job selling diesel. I've never worked with a captain who would do such a thing.

At 18:18, I've had enough, I bolt downstairs and bang on the cabin door, Diniz's cabin--our cabin! He opens and speaks but I head straight back to the bridge, contemplating fuel to keep my mind on something. Apache had a fuel problem alright, but it was due to the inefficient use of their fleet. Dispatchers would load our boat with a single lift, another boat with a single lift, and send both boats to the same field 115 miles offshore, to platforms within a few miles of each other. It's like working for the military, from what I've been told, astonishingly inefficient. But the companies are making so much money per well that boat fuel is easily written off as an operating expense, a drop in a pan. Every crew boat captain in the Gulf has stories of running a newspaper to an offshore installation, burning hundreds of gallons, thousand dollars of diesel to deliver a Sunday edition of the Times-Picayune.

And fuel itself can become a game in the Gulf. The first captain I trained with in Louisiana took great pride in his ability to 'make' fuel or oil during a contract job. When a boat goes under contract, the fuel and oil tanks are sounded and recorded, and when the boat is released from charter, the chartering company is responsible to return the fuel and oil to the prior levels. Captains will offer to sound the tanks for the auditor and then not dip the stick all the way into the tank. By playing with numbers, an inch or two on the stick, it's simple enough to shave thousands of gallons of fuel, and a barrel or two of oil, and charge it to the contract company, save your boss a few thousand dollars. I have seen that done.

At 18:24, Diniz finally appears, speaking Portuguese and his broken English but I can't take it. I head below, climb and collapse into my bunk, grasping for sleep, wishing I could just sleep, I pop a meclazine, a sea-sick pill, and eventually lose consciousness.


I wake at 22:03. I've been on the boat for 24 hours. We're pitching, beating our way forward, if anything, it's gotten worse. I have a vague need to piss, but no way I'm getting up. I try to judge speed and engine revolutions, beyond half-throttle but reduced, no way to run the engines hooked up in this shit. At least the Brazilians don't mind slowing down. I've worked with captains in the Gulf who would pound crew boats into swells and pump water off to lighten the boat, to pick up a couple of knots, maybe 22 to 24, impossible here anyway. I sense minutes tick from the clock, from my life, 60 days on this boat--no way, an insufferable amount of time. If I can just make one paycheck, I'll be fine.

I'm conscious when my alarm sounds at 23:45, remain immobile until 23:53, I've got to make a move, throw on a hat, lace boots, grab a water bottle, stop at the head and lean my back against the bulkhead, one hand on the rail, the boat's all over the place. I spray the toilet area and try to wipe it up with a paper towel. I arrive on the bridge blind, the gradual glow of instruments registering, I see Diniz sliding out so I take the helm. He mumbles something to Geovan riding look-out, I say "goodnight", boa noite. Once in the chair, I do feel better, but I'm faced with six hours before I can return to my bunk, and already the lower-back void is conveying vague pain. We're heading to SS 68 with an ETA of 03:45.

A couple days back, during my perfunctory orientation at headquarters, I heard a group of American big-boat captains discuss the 6-hour watch schedule in Brazil. They're all used to working 12-hour watches in the Gulf or other parts of the world, and they find the 6-hour watch strange, the captain-turned-office guy called it "ridiculous", a "do-nothing" watch. I'm not even sure what he means by "do-nothing", I mean we're running the boat, right? But I was the only captain in attendance headed to a crew boat, and therein lies the significance, the polarity of being. The big work-boats are just not doing much. They obviously spend the majority of their time standing by offshore, bobbing to and fro in the swells, but they're on DP, at least in 'auto-along' mode. A boat is not supposed to stay on DP when standing by for more than 30 minutes. They also have to move out of the 500 meter safety zone--away from the platform where a loss of engine power or serious shift in the elements could result in an accident. But they can use partial DP by setting the 'auto-along', which will check the fore and aft movement of the vessel with reduced engine power and keep the boat heading into a swell and out of the trough, where it will roll severely, and that's got to make a huge difference to the captain on watch. All boats will naturally drift into the trough if left alone, they're all designed that way. If we're stuck standing by, I've got to manually engage engines to pivot the boat back and forth to keep it from rolling. It gets tiring after hours, and many captains will just let it go and deal with the roll, which is fair enough as long as no one is trying to cook or do anything aside from sit and brace themselves. One thing at least is sure about the watch schedule on a crew boat: no one could pull 12 straight hours of this shit. Even the hardened, veteran crew boat captains are doing sixes in Brazil.

I glance at Geovan who looks to be the youngest crew member, a blockish head and body lit by the glow of instruments. We've been introduced, rode out together last night, but I try to get further. He's from Fortaleza, which I've actually heard of and read about. It's up north and on the coast, a reportedly beautiful spot with surfing and sand dunes. I ask him if he's married and he is, children, he says "seven". He looks like a kid to me. "You've got seven kids?" I ask. Você tem sete filhos? "Não!" he bursts out laughing. He has one kid, a seven-year-old daughter. We let the laughter fade. It turns out he's 27.

Geovan breaks the silence, speaks directly in Portuguese, not even attempting English, and I'm drawn to it, my opportunity to learn. I frequently ask him to repeat, repetir, por favor, and so many of the words are that way, just like English but with different endings and pronunciation. If I hear it enough, my brain has occasion to forge a connection, to bridge a gap, to assimilate as knowledge the bits of interaction. He's describing his family, his town or life and he's lost me, but then there's still some miming--but continuing to speak, he strums an air guitar or some stringed instrument--he says not a guitar. But he's a musician, I understand. The effort tires me and I begin to drift, wafting recognition, I check the radar and nothing on a 16-mile scan, a lone ship on the AIS, a growing CPA, closest point of approach. My eyelids close, I bid them open, they seal again. I let Geovan know I'm nodding off, make sure he understands, that he's aware, then I succumb to sleep, I let go.

Raimundo

15:00 Sunday, March 6, 2011

With boots on the dash in a gap between engine control monitors and a bank of shaft tachometers, my head rests on the pale blue vinyl of the pilot chair, metal springs underneath absorbing shock. At 15:05, the vessel yaws in a following sea, motoring roughly 247 degrees at 18 knots. I've got Raimundo riding look-out. He's tuned the single side band to 4125, and it crackles and spits and blends into silence as we ride without tunes or conversation. Faced with an uncomfortable void in the lower back area, I shift from hip to hip, and so does Raimundo, looking at me from time to time like he wants to speak, his head angles and bobs on a long and thin neck, and either he struggles to find English or doesn't want to bother me, hidden behind my sunglasses, I wonder what he sees.

I glance at our ETA, 16:15, and check our speed, watch tenths of miles tick from the 'distance to waypoint', but there's nothing on the radar for 12 miles, a sea that must brim with life beneath the surface void. Then I see vessels on the horizon, what look to be derrick towers poking skyward. Raimundo's practically squirming in his chair, so I break the silence, ask him where he's from,"De onde você é?"

It's as if his tiny body deflates from the relief of a pressure. He twitches, nearly spastic, "Isla Grande." Grande comes out like grungy with the swapped consonant sounds. He says it twice, the second more animated, as if his enunciation should express the grandiosity of the place. It's an easy translation, Big Island, imagine that. He's waving his arms to portray big, then a pinch with the thumb and forefinger, small. "Grande, pequeno". He's teaching me. "Big and small." I announce in English. "Yes! Cap-i-tan." It's an emphatic response like he's surprised I can speak.

"Rio aquí, Cap-i-tan." He holds up a left fist and pats it with his right hand, then points at the binnacle, South, drops the word bus, it's 'boose', and then points to the clock and holds up fingers like we're playing charades, until he finds the English word time and he's out with it excitedly. It's two or three hours by bus from Rio, which he pronounces 'Hee-o'. I venture, "Duas horas, três horas," and again he's excited by my response. I try a few more things back and forth, but he keeps miming and speaking to me in broken Portuguese. I guess he thinks I won't understand his Portuguese, which I won't, but I need to hear it if I'm going to learn.

We ride again in silence until Raimundo picks up the SSB, call's our destination. I can pick "uma hora fora," one hour out, but I'm lost to the rest. He's thumbing the stack of paperwork and obviously explaining what we have for delivery. I've got SS 77 on the radar, and on the AIS, it's the Victoria. The target is ovated on screen, an odd clump to one side, and as we draw closer, the dot mutates and multiplies into individual targets, a series of buoys or other vessels at the rig, nothing on the AIS.

Raimundo wishes to speak, and I solicit response with a lone word, familia. "Minha familia, Cap-i-tan," and he lightens up with pleasure. He's got three kids, a 27-year old daughter, a son early twenties, jovem e forte, young and strong--I get that from another round of charades--unlike himself he says, old and weak. His son is a surfer, lots of them on the island, and he also has a 7-year-old girl, I think granddaughter at first, but no, a daughter, Vilma. His granddaughter is a baby--bebê, the same word in every language--his older daughter's, a one-year-old named Chloe.

"Irmao muito bom, cap-i-tan, muito bom…" Children are the best and more I can't follow. He launches into another round of enacting. He has a kayak, it's the same word, he takes Vilma and she loves it. He says he should be home with the kids, especially Vilma, she's so young, impressionable, to play with them, to sleep. I've been told each of the crew works 28's, four weeks on the boat followed by four weeks of vacation. I inquire to Raimundo and he confirms. I remind him he's making money for his family, dinheiro, with a 'g' sound, the rubbing fingers, an international sign. "Yes, cap-i-tan, obrigado!" It's thank you.

On radar targets now visible, the Victoria, a square, semi-submersible drilling platform, chained to the ocean floor but staying in place under engine power with dynamic positioning. We're in 5,000 feet of water. It's a similar outfit to the Deepwater Horizon, the one that blew up last summer in the Gulf, although I never saw that one directly. The southwestward trail of dots are fishing vessels, four of them, fairly small boats maybe 25 to 30 feet long, I can't believe they're out this far, nearly 200 miles from land. They're all tied together and tethered to a platform leg because it must be too rough to fish. They're bobbing up and down like corks in the 6 to 8 foot swells. I would expect that's miserable.

Raimundo's on the VHF now, boreste, cap-i-tan, he points to starboard. I think it's my second lesson of port and starboard, bombardo and boreste. Atop the platform, a helicopter landing pad is usually the identifier of what's considered the bow of the square structure. They want us on the leeward side, which is nice, but the fishing boats are in the way. I top the boat around and get the stern into the swells, back toward the line of fishing boats. It doesn't look like they're going to move.

"What the hell are they doing there?" I speak but no one's here to understand. They obviously want me to go in there and offload, with those fishing boats in the way. Our horn is atop the wheelhouse at the bow, so I spin the boat around again and sound a long blast. That wakes a few people up. Gradually they appear on deck, surprisingly spry, several smoking, they crank engines and man lines, and eventually move out of the way. They probably expect a DP vessel, I make eye contact and wave, but I'm not about to take this conventional boat in there with those fishing vessels, they've got the whole sea, we've got to be right here.

Once the fishing boats disperse, Raimundo has woken Geovan, and they make an easy click, a rectangular tool-basket, stern into the swells, a simple matter, and we're out of there standing by for our next destination, it's NS 28, another 55 miles but northwest this time, bearing 311 degrees, we're gonna roll.