Bye, Bye

Part of the spirit and the culture of the U.S. military is the creed that you don’t leave anyone behind.

On tugboats, not so much.

Don’t get me wrong. Should the unthinkable emergency happen, everyone on my crew is highly trained and motivated to do everything they can to try to save one another. 

But, when it comes to crew change, we will leave your ass behind in the blink of an eye.

As of late, I am the one being left behind.  Waving goodbye from the stern of the boat as my crew mates  happily depart on their two week reprieve away from the boat. 

See 'ya later, suckers!

However, on this crew change, I was the one thinking “sucks to be them” as the launch boat pulled away leaving not one, but two of our crew behind.

Mongo/Superman/Witness Protection got to stay behind because his relief had decided that tugboating wasn’t the job for him. His relief had only made it one hitch before he quit. Not really a big loss. I didn’t even learn the guy’s name. So our deckhand gets to stay and work with the opposite crew. He then gets to stay and work our hitch with us before he goes home. Six weeks on a tugboat isn’t much fun. We still laughed at him.

JM also got left behind. His relief was stuck in Cleveland (what the hell is the deal with getting stuck in Cleveland?). At least he doesn’t have to work 6 weeks straight. It still sucks nonetheless. Especially, after he paid for his flight home. We laughed at him too.

We are hoping for better luck next time.

Our fearless leader will be back after leaving us with TPWSNBN while he was at home fighting off some nasty infection. Which we suspect he caught while visiting some shady New Jersey highway rest stop.

Mongo will be on the downhill slop of a six week hitch.  

And I might actually have a steady relief.  The third different one in a year.

Fingers crossed.