I started at McAllister N.Y. on the 28th - the day after thanksgiving. Spent about an hour filling out paperwork, then hung around for aboput another hour or so waiting for my boat to show up. I wound up on the Charles D. McAllister which is an old Exxon/ Sea River boat. She's a nice boat, real quiet and smooth. the quarters are a little small though. where it counts it's real nice. she's a twin screw with flanking rudders which makes it real manueverable.

Funny thing happened when I got aboard though. I'm sitting at the galley table reading through some of the papers that the office gave me, trying to get through it and get it over with. A guy comes down and gets his coffee, sits down and just kinda' ignores me - so I just kinda' ignore him back. Long story short, it turns out this guy's the captain! Argh!! Note to self: always, always, be the first to say hi and introduce yourself. Man! Talk about an awkward first couple of hours.

Anyhow, they lost a deckhand today to another boat, apparently they move people around all over the fleet here. So I wound being the deckhand on the mate's watch. On a tug the captain stands two watches a day, from 6 to 12 on both sides of the clock. The mate's watch is from 12 to 6. No big deal, I'm supposed to be demonstrating my boat handling abilities and getting some local knowledge, I was hired as a mate. But I can be deckhand for a couple of days, there paying me the same, after all. We assisted a tug/barge unit into K.M.I Staten Island, then we sailed a ship out of Carteret. Ah, just like the old days! I figured I'd better get right into the role, so I cleared everything off the counters in the galley and got out the bucket and a rag and cleaned all the counters, bulkheads ( those are what we call walls on a boat) then swept and mopped the deck. I figured I'd do it just like I expect my deckhands to.