M/V NOSAC RANGER
The NOSAC RANGER (now TELLUS,) was my first ship. The Ranger had a really bad reputation at the school. This was a midshipmans last stop before getting kicked out of the school. It also had the reputation of a cadet "slave" ship. I joined on 2 January 1992. The ship was six hours late and was then delayed one day due to severe weather. I boarded the ship around 6pm and proceeded to work until after 2am, first loading 60 day stores, and then we had to move the ship. I spent the whole second day working with the bosun and then we left that night. I did more work on this ship than any other. My day normally started at 3am and went to 8pm. Then I needed to work on my Sea Project in my free time.
Foreign Ports Visited:
Southhampton, England
Le Havre, France
Bremerhaven, Germany
Antwerp, Belgium
S.S HUMACAO
I was lucky enough to get three days vacation between getting off the Ranger and boarding the Humacao. As I boarded the Humacao at the end of February, there was wire rope laying along the pier. My first job as a cadet on board was to splice the ends of the mooring lines. Noone else on the ship knew how to do it. The Bosun tried but it did not look pretty and the officers did not trust it to hold. Also on this ship were two stowaways from the Dominican Republic. They arrived to NY undetected but were spotted leaving the ship through the engine port. They were easy to spot as they were wearing shorts and T-shirts and it was snowing outside. There was a small feud on this ship between the two captains. The first Captain, a kp'er, wanted all of the internal decks waxed. the other captain wanted all of the interior decks stripped. The only person that suffered the consequences was the steward assistant who had to wax or strip all the decks every other month. On this ship I helped the captain count the cash in preparation to pay off the crew. $150,000 in cash. Pretty cool.
Foreign Ports Visited:
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Rio Haina, Dominican Republic
More pictures of the Humacao (coming soon)
M/V GALVESTON BAY
The GALVESTON BAY was the first ship my second sea year. I joined the ship in December 1992. I spent Christmas in the North Atlantic. New Years Eve was spent in The Netherlands, and we docked the morning of New Years Day in Bremerhaven, Germany. This ship was pretty boring but it had its moments. The captain was the senior Captain for Sea-Land at the time, he was a Kings Point Graduate. He got on the ship and only left once to go the office the whole three months he was on board. On this ship I had to count all of the lashing gear. Myself and three others had to count the gear three times because we kept coming up short over a thousand pieces of lashing rods. It was not until later that the Chief Mate found a message to the ship confirming the removal of that gear years earler. I was the first person to actually count the gear in all that time.
S/S SEMINOLE
USNS Silas Bent
I spent six months aboard the USNS Silas Bent. This was an Oceonographic Research vessel owned by the US Navy and crewed by civilians.The work was done by the Naval Oceanographic Office. I was signed on as an A.B. but as the mates did not get paid for overtime, I spent time on the bridge as mate and over Christmas, I took the place of the C/M between the relief of the old and new C/mates.
I joined the ship in Pareus, Greece in September, 1994. The ship spent the next three weeks there in the shipyard as nothing worked. As you can see from the picture, the ship was not painted in a while. This picture was taken after the top half of the ship was washed to remove the rust stains. Were could not paint the ship as there was no paint on board, or even in the ship yard. Eventually paint was flown in from the US.
Countries visited included Djibuti, Oman, United Arab Emerates, Bahrain, and Singapore. While port visits would last from five days to three weeks, Sea time normally lasted three weeks as that was as long as we could sail without refueling.