how to simulate the tugboat feeling
you have tugboat life envy? I have tugboat life envy. Envy no more! now you can enjoy the same benefits tugwomen/men have in the comfort of your own home:
1. Sleep on a shelf in your closet.
2. Replace your closet door with a curtain.
3. Five hours after you go to sleep, have your significant other whip open the curtain, shine a light in your eyes, and say “time to go on watch”.
4. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle. Move the shower head down to chest level. Install the hot/cold, on/off valves backwards.
5. When you take a shower, turn off the water while soaping.
6. Every time there is a storm, sit in a wobbly rocking chair and rock as hard as you can until you’re nauseous.
7. Put diesel fuel in your humidifier instead of water, and set it on “high”.
8. Using a spray bottle filled with diesel fuel, lightly mist your clothes.
9. Don’t watch TV, except for videos in the middle of the night. Take a vote on which one to watch, and then watch a different one.
10. Leave a lawn mower running in your living room 24 hours a day, to provide the proper noise level and exhaust odor.
11. Have your paperboy give you a haircut.
12. Store all your trash beside the chimney in the sun for a month.
13. Wake up every night and eat a peanut butter sandwich.
14. Make up your family’s menu one month ahead.
15. Set your alarm clock for random times. When it goes off, run outside and break out a fire hose.
16. Once a month, take apart every major appliance in your home, and put it back together again.
17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot, and let it cook for 6 to 8 hours. Call it tugboat coffee.
18. Invite six to eight people you don’t really like to stay with you for two or three months.
19. Install a reading light under your coffee table, and do all of your reading there.
20. Raise all the doorway thresholds, and lower all the top sills in your home, so every time you pass through you hit your head or bang your shins.
21. Lockwire all the lug nuts on your car.
22. When baking cakes, prop up one side while baking. Then, when finished, level it up with frosting.
23. Every so often, throw your cat in the swimming pool, and yell “Man Overboard!”
thanks Capt. Rustchak! compiled by Marc Jobin,
and written by those who live the life (Misunderstood Mariner.)
Need more? go here, then go beyond just this post,
and poke around this blog…¡buxomly illustrated!
towmasters
tugster
Bowsprite 
Wonderful post – i’ll begin living modifications right away!
Just absolutely delightful. I’ve not lived on a tug, but I’ve lived on an old leaky yacht. Many of these points work well with there too. I’m still laughing. Thanks.
LOL… wonderful post!!
I’ll never look at a tug the same way again!
i can’t look at my closet the same anymore!
bowsprite, you’re killing me!
What was I complaining about again?
I have tugboat artist envy.
Picasso probably would, too. Once, when he visited an exhibition of children’s drawings, he remarked: “When I was their age, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.
Hard not to fall in love with your child-like drawings.
i’ll second barista’s sentiment. i love your illustrations. and marc jobin might like it if we tried to add to his text …. like “add a power grinder to your wind chimes to deafen you with scraping noises whenever it makes random contact” to simulate icescraping against the hull in winter. bravo .. . whenever you post more, i get merrier. merci, bowsprite!
[…] hue blends perfectly with the sky fragranced by diesel fuel. Bowsprite should add this to her simulation illustrations. Yes, I even accept the orange-to-blue former June K, although she didn’t parade or […]
[…] will enjoy this piece at Bowsprite about how to simulate the tugboat feeling when you are off the water. Substitute fisheries vessel or research […]
The imagery is wonderful!
It seems that mariners of all walks share similar thoughts about their accommodations. Here’s one submariner’s view: http://www.howdydave.com/sub-alt.html (caution: some naughty words)
Part of your description sounded like the ship we used to go down the Norway coast last month. We had no TV, were next to the engine with a lot of noise, no beds but two bunks which opened, one on top of the other, as beds. In open sea the ship went up and down so much I almost fell out of my bunk bed – but I loved it. It certainly was not a cruise ship. It was one of their oldest ships. I’ll do a post on it soon but next week we are off to Savannah and in October we go to New York for 4 days. I’ll try to write in between.
Awesome!
Actually that tugboat coffee sounds kind of good right now. That was a very entertaining post.
[…] more » […]
Hmmm. Makes me think the mariners were better off before the diesel engine came along. At least it was much quieter and clean then. The good old days WERE the good old days. I guess I won’t be trading in my 30 foot sailboat with it’s clean quiet electric auxilary propulsion motor for a paid position working on a tug anytime soon. Thanks for crushing my dream. Though it still might be better than spending one’s life in a cubicle or building under artifical lights.
Sounds like cruising.
Would love to get blog posts
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Rolling on the floor….laughing.
I got your e-mail from Carolina at Portside. What you do and see is a everyday occurance on my daily ventures.
you have posted really nice images. I was just getting bore but now its great feeling…. ha ha ha ha ha
…laughing….ok…so now you are giving away all of the secrets behind the methods we use to design these things. I run focus groups before starting a design. I make sure to stock the group with only crew who used to work on canalers – in this way, anything we design looks good and we get great feedback. Carolina was right about you…. 🙂
LMAO! Been working on tugs for 14 years now. Worked for 12 companies on 47 tugs. I work for Moran in NY Harbor docking ships. My current boat I have been on for the past 6 years. My room is 6ft 6inches long by 6ft wide. My closet takes up 3ft x 2ft of that so when I lay on my bunk my legs go in a cubby hole. A sink and a shelf take up more of the room as does my bunk. It’s smaller than most half bathrooms, but it’s cozy. Mind you I am the mate on here. Much of the list is true, but it’s still the greatest job I can think of. The family separation is tuff though which can be worse if you work over often as I do. It pays a 6 figure salary to work 14 days on and 14 two 6 hour long watches per day.
This is the most realistic…funny …depiction i have heard of… “Tug Boat Life”…now add personal stories and i think you got a bestseller
my son is on a Tug for almost20 years I think this way to funny , I laugh out loud
If only I had a cat… and a swimming pool here.
I used to live on a cruise ship and some of these are on point
I love it!!!! All so true!!!!!!!!
OMG! You got most of it correct. Was on a Research Ship that was originally a rescue vessel for 5 years.we always ate very well and there was hardly any diesel smell since we had a great Engineer on board. RIP Steve Jackson, Kings Point. He was always keeping everything clean.q
Hello, WF! Thank you SO much for writing. I cannot take any credit–I have had good sources, like Capt Rustchak and this fellow blogger: http://bigironbegfish.blogspot.com/2011/08/word.html
Very curious now: what vessel was this? a research ship what was once a rescue vessel?
Thank you, again! Christina
On a tugboat in Cordova, AK currently, and our engineer just read this aloud to us. Excellent and so true. Thanks for providing a laugh for u.
Thank you, Amanda! what tug are you on? be safe, happy holidays to you and your crew! Christina
All so true, and goes for pretty much any boat. Makes me homesick, I must be crazy but I still want to be back out at sea and still prefer it to being on shore.