stern watch
A NYHarbor tugman tells this story of serving on a particular ship, early in his career:
When his ship was in the same port with other vessel of the service, they would have to be extra vigilant to keep rival comrades from playing pranks with the ship’s good name. All it took was two lengths of thick black tape, crossed.
It was called being on the “X” watch.
Someone at A and A Coffee Shop was slacking off:
source here
towmasters
tugster
Oh, I am laughing so. X indeed. Eat Me too. You have widened my view. Thanks.
oh, graffiti is so in our face here, we hardly notice!
Dear Christina,
There’s a somewhat more modern version of pranking between vessels of the same fleet going on today, now that tugs have entered the Internet age.
In one fleet I’m acquainted with – which shall remain nameless – Internet access is provided by those little mobile hot spots, one per tug. It’s quite common, when lying by between jobs at remote piers, for one tug to grab a line on another – it’s convenient and provides company during the dead time.
To do the prank, a crewmember from one tug will visit the other, jokin’ n smokin’ (or at least jokin’) in the galley, where the little hotspot is usually deployed. During the course of his visit, he’ll unobtrusively examine the device, glancing at the security code printed on it.
He’ll take this information back to his tug, switch his laptop’s internet connection from his hotspot to the victim’s next door, and spend the rest of the night surfing porn websites. Guess who catches Hell for using up all of their data allowance on porn sites? In tugboat circles, this is known as humor.
Oh, Reid! you just reminded me of another practical joke, sort of similar. Requires going into the hapless victim’s wheelhouse.
No wonder we never get invites onto tugboats!
Ha ha! Yes, I think must you know the fleet of which I speak. It’s a cruel, cruel world for the unwary!
By the way, I like your little ClustrMaps widget! So I added one to The Chain Locker Blog. That’s neat – another good idea from Bowsprite!
Thanks,
Reid
Practical jokes – it’s hard to do them in a foreign language or sometimes to understand them. Thanks for your good wishes, Christina. I hope the coming year will be everything that you and your family hope for – a year filled with happiness, fun, good health, and lots of laughter with loved ones.
The submarine CUTLASS was prone to a name-change to CUTE ASS with two swipes of a paint brush.
You can read the story of one such inport edit here: http://www.olgoat.com/substuff/dex01.htm
It’s about half-way down in Dex’s story (which actually takes three or four beers to listen to in real life….) Don’t give up — Dex is a MASTER OF THE SEA STORY!
whalen sends