Imagine this scenario: Our ports are filled with Bolivian- and Cypriot-registered ships running U.S. domestic coastwise cargo, many of them “rust buckets” crewed by minimally trained mariners and operated by unscrupulous vessel owners.
Maybe it’s because we are used to laying out a course to get from one place to another, but there is no doubt that most of the mariners I’ve known have had very specific plans to achieve their goals — personally, financially and professionally.
I was at our local library on a quiet Sunday afternoon, getting ready to check out some DVDs.
Drummer Ringo Starr of the Beatles famously sang how he got by with a little help from his friends.
Named after the ancient Greek goddess of memory, a mnemonic is used to help someone recall information.
It was a hot Gulf of Mexico day, and we were heading to Tampa, Fla., with a full load of gasoline.
It was a cold, snowy December night in Spokane, Wash., and I carried a plateful of holiday cookies and a huge glass of eggnog in preparation for the Christmas special on TV.
Since the 1980s, there have been foreign-flag ships working in U.S. territorial waters of the Gulf of Mexico’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).
I had graduated from the California Maritime Academy a few weeks before and just finished my first job with a large West Coast tug company out of Long Beach, Calif.
The lifeboatman class (now frequently known as proficiency in survival craft) at California Maritime Academy was one of the first I took there, and it was required to obtain the certification on my Z-card (merchant mariner’s document). We used open…
I was the third mate on an 890-foot crude oil tanker berthed at Long Beach, Calif.
It was a few minutes before they opened the doors of the U.S. Coast Guard Regional Exam Center (REC) at Seattle’s Pier 36, and I waited anxiously.
Last August, the 820-foot Bahamas-registered cruise ship Crystal Serenity began its trip through the Arctic’s famed Northwest Passage above the United States and Canada, the melting ice and continued warming temperatures freeing up open water for much of the voyage.
In accordance with 46 CFR 10.209(d), it was time to renew my U.S. Coast Guard-issued medical certificate.
One night last fall my wife and I were attending a local Audubon Society meeting with a group of friends, looking forward to a talk by an expert on pileated woodpeckers.
One of my favorite holidays, at sea and ashore, has always been Thanksgiving.
I was a young mate working on a crude oil tanker connected to the single-point mooring at Barbers Point, Hawaii.
My wife and I had been enjoying our vacation at Lake Chelan, Wash., on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains. On Saturday morning, as we were waiting to get a table for breakfast at the Apple Cup restaurant, I struck up a conversation with a young couple next to us.
My dad was from Minnesota, and he began his career as a coal passer on the Great Lakes, later sailing as an able seaman and boatswain on oceangoing commercial vessels in the 1950s and 1960s.
I was the cadet on a containership running between Anchorage, Alaska, and Seattle’s Terminal 5, assigned to the second mate’s watch.
The red glow from the radar simulator console illuminated the darkness ethereally as I put down the grease pencil and clear plastic ruler at the end of the test for my original unlimited radar observer certificate.
In retaliation for assisting Israel militarily after it was attacked, in 1973 the oil-producing countries of the Middle East imposed an oil embargo against the United States.
For longer than I have been in the business, the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) has been “boom or bust.”
After getting an urgent phone call for an emergency relief position, I was making an unexpected airplane trip to catch a fish-processing ship working in the Bering Sea near the Arctic Circle.
