Outbound Newtown Creek with two loaded scrappies

Living aboard

Wow! three followers, this like, becoming a trend or something. This is my home. I bought it in June, and have been living aboard. I spent the summer in Quincy, where the boat was located when I bought it. Now I'm in East Boston where I moved because the marina has a heated shower and bathroom. In Quincy, they shut down the heads and showers for the winter.

Living aboard is not a bad thing, as long as you can get used to a few things. The first big thing is space. My whole living area is contained in that little space right there, twelve feet wide by about thirty feet long (plus the back deck which is about four feet long). In the winter it's even a little smaller because I close off the fore peak area to make it all a little easier to heat. I use that area for storage, which leads me to the issue of storage. There isn't a lot of room for stuff. Everybody's got stuff right? Books, clothes, kitchen gear, knickknacks and whatnot. one has to make peace with what's necessary and what's worth the clutter, and all the other stuff that, well, just isn't that important once you've lived without it for a while. Besides the whole space issue, there's also the bathroom thing. On a boat, we're not hooked up to the sewer system like in a house. Dumping waste overboard isn't option - unless we're out at sea - so most boats use a holding tank, or a treatment system. In the winter, there aren't a lot of options for having the waste holding tank pumped out so the way to get around that is to go up the gangway and use the facilities up on the dock. I liken it to living back in the days when there was an outhouse out back, except that there's heat up there. Same with the shower. I'm developing a habit of going to the gym every other day, so I get my shower there on those days, and use the marina shower on the off days. So once you get past those things, there's only a few minor adjustments to make. In the winter, fresh water is something to think about. Our water line isn't in the ground under the frost line. It's right there in the open air where it can freeze. When I was a kid growing up at Fan Pier somebody was always around to check on things, so we kept a faucet open in the tub so as to keep the water flowing. Flowing water won't freeze unless it gets really really cold, so that worked for years. The problem with that is that if a pipe burst in the bilge (if you're not a boat person think cellar) then the boat fills up with said water and sinks. It's not really a good idea to keep a faucet open unless there's always someone there to keep watch on it, not to mention the water bill gets a little high if there's a meter on it. The marina I'm at now runs a water line under the docks to keep it in the salt water where it wont freeze, so all you have to do is top off your water tank every so often and make sure you drain all the hoses that are out in the open air: the one coming down from the pier to the dock and the one from the dock to the boat. That's it for now, I have to get some work done. I'll continue this in the next couple of days, stay warm! ~ AL

New Year Resolution

This was a few summers back, we took the Chesapeake 1000 up to Maine to lift this tug into the water. Washburn and Doughty had a fire and their railway was destroyed, so this was the solution for keeping the work on schedule while they were also working at rebuilding the yard.

The tug is the Laura K Moran. We were told that the boat weighs 500 tons, so the crane is working at only half capacity here - mighty impressive.

As for New Years resolutions, I don't usually make them. I am going to try to develop a routine for writing more though. It shouldn't be too difficult to sit down for a few minutes every couple of days and get some thoughts out there. The big news in my world these days is that I have quit smoking. Yup, started working on it over the holidays and today is my first day without a cigarette! I threw out a half a pack, my lighter, ashtrays, matches, rolling machine, all my paraphernalia. I'm gonna be using the patch for a little bit to help with the physical part of the addiction. That will make it a little bit easier to deal with the mental part - the triggers and associations between smoking and everyday things like smoking with coffee, or driving, or after meals, etc......That's all for now, see ya in a few days. I'm working on a few posts about how I got into this kind of work, and where I came from - that sort of thing.

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The wrong way

What we are looking at here is two lines on a cleat of a New York sanitation scow. One of them leads forward to the tug, and one leads aft. This is what we call "scow style" make up. We do this when there aren't enough cleats on the scow, or if the cleats aren't in the right place for a more conventional make up. One of these lines does the pulling, the other is there for backing purposes. Out of view, back at the stern of the boat, is a stern line that holds the boat alongside while turning.

So here's what's wrong: Notice how each line is only hooked on one horn of the cleat? That's no good! People do it, and make a habit of it for a whole career and never get in trouble, but it isn't right. If one of these lines should fail, the boat will slide until the other lines just falls off the cleat, and then we're just hanging on that stern line. the problem with that is two-fold.

As we're making way through the water, we are cramming loads of water between the scow and the boat. These lines are under tremendous strain holding the two vessels together. Now all of a sudden we have nothing there, what happens? The two vessels get pushed apart by this wedge of water, and the only thing holding it all together is the stern line. First of all, we've lost control of the scow. We have no means of steering it. We could put the rudder hard over, bringing the boat back to the scow and doing a big circle until the deckhand gets a couple of lines out - but we need a lot of sea room to get that done. What if there's another boat, or a rock, or some other hazard there? The other problem - and it's a much greater problem - is that as the two vessels separate, they get sideways to the flow of water. They open up like a V. The scow goes one way, the boat goes the other, and now the boat is getting towed by the scow, instead of the other way around. If the scow starts towing the boat sideways, it leans the boat over. we call this getting tripped. The boat leans way over, water gets all over the deck and into any openings, doors, vents, etc..... and starts flooding the boat. Many tugs are lost in this manner. Tugs are built very low to the water, there isn't a lot of freeboard, or reserve buoyancy. You get a little flooding, and it doesn't take much before it's all over.

So why do guys do this the wrong way? It's faster. It's easier than teaching the deckhand about leading the two parts around one end of the cleat and dropping the bight on the other, or even educating them about terms like "the bight" or the "bitter end" versus the "standing part". It's a little easier to get the line off when they are like this too. Take a look at the next post for the right way to do it.

The right way

So here's the same make up - scow style - but done right. The bright blue line is leading forward, it's the towing line. It does most of the work - that is it does all the forward pulling. The older dingy line leading aft does all the work when backing, or operating astern.

The right thing about all this is that both lines have a solid purchase on the cleat. We refer to it as a "fore and aft" lead, although it's called different things in different places. If one of theses lines should fail, the other line stays firmly on the cleat. It will be a little slack as the boat slides fore or aft, but I've still got a solid hold on the scow - albeit a little sloppy - until we get a new line out. This is basic good seamanship, pure and simple. Do it right, don't take short cuts, no matter how many times you might get away with it. It's only going to take one time to ruin a perfectly good day, or get someone killed, or even just get you doing a bunch of unpleasant paperwork.

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