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.