An Act of Piracy

Along with my recent promotion, I was also rewarded with a different boat in a different locale. No more sunny days with the sparkling blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. So it's back up to New York harbor and once again I'm working on a local harbor tug. Just in time for the cold northeast weather. Yippy. Now I have to buy pants. Pants! It's been shorts and t-shirts for years. I may even have to find a jacket.

It's a nice change from working on a tug and barge unit that essentially was just a small ship with a portable engine room. Now the work is more of what people would consider "traditional" tugboat work. It's the kind of work that brings me back to my roots. The type of stuff I've done on tugs since I started many years ago. It's fun. Everyday is something different. We do assist work. Move oil barges. Shift vacuum barges. Move construction equipment. Run crew changes for the other boats as they pass by. Provide fuel and water to the smaller barges. Standby other units as the tugs go to resupply, fuel, grub up, and take potable water. We do just about anything and everything.

One such task we found our self doing recently was running a crew member from a different tug back to the dock so that they could go grub shopping for their boat. It's a lot easier for our tug to be a waterborne taxi cab for them, than it is for them to leave their barge unattended. The other day we did such a task. And since we were standing by waiting for that tug's crew to come back for grub, we decided to go up and get some of the essentials that we needed as well. We go through a lot of eggs for some reason.

Arugula. Because it's fun to say. Arugula.

Our return from the grocery store was timed perfectly to coincide with the arrival of other tug's crew. We loaded up the grub onto the boat and off we went to deliver them back to their anchored vessel. Grub was transferred, pleasantries were exchanged, and off we went to go do our next job. It was only later that we noticed that some of the grub we had purchased was nowhere to be found on our tug. And it wasn't a bag full of things like canned peas, asparagus sprouts, or arugula. Those are the kind of things that we could probably live without. The bag that was missing was full of items that were IMPORTANT!

They took our bag full of Halloween candy!!!

Not cool.

Granted, it was a honest mistake. We went shopping at the same time and used the same grocery bags. When loading the grub onto the boat it was easily misplaced and simply went into the wrong pile of foodstuff.

And it wasn't that Candy Corn crap either!

However, when the other boat noticed that even though they had only bought two bags of Halloween candy, and they now miraculously had 8 bags of candy, we should have gotten a phone call with 10,000 apologies. Alas, it was not to be. Those pirates took our candy and went out of town so we couldn't even publicly shame them over the radio for all to hear that they were candy thieves.

We're not talking to them anymore. They can find someone else to run grub and crew changes for them. Canned vegetables are one thing. Halloween candy pilferage is a direct violation of the Law of the Sea.

I'm sure it is.

I'll have to look that up.