Wayfarer
Guru
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2014
- Messages
- 2,228
- Location
- USA
- Vessel Name
- Sylphide
- Vessel Make
- Kingston Aluminum Yacht 44' Custom
It had already been a long day. After an overnight transit of the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers, I’d had a 5 hour nap, and had successfully gotten my vessel into Cleveland.
We were doing a a somewhat unusual split unload. We’d offload about half of our cargo at one dock, then head up the river to offload the rest. We do them regularly in other ports, but rarely in Cleveland.
The unload is normally a time I get to relax or catch up on work. This one was a little stressful though. Our cargo of stone was contaminated by a small amount of coal from our previous load. This was completely our fault and could potentially have cost the company a meaningful amount of money. Fortunately this situation wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but I still had to spend some time on the phone doing damage control, and I had to write up some of my crew.
After that kerfuffle, we prepared to depart for the second unload dock. There were several delays. The tug we’d ordered had broken down, and the crew had to scramble a replacement vessel. Another ship, a cement carrier, was also making its way into Cleveland, and we had to wait for him. Then the NS rail bridge made us wait for the worlds slowest train to cross the bridge, stop, then slink slowly back from whence it came.
After all that there was another delay, which I had been expecting. There was another freighter up the river that I wouldn’t be able to pass. I’d have to wait for them to finish unloading and back down the river. We tied up at the holding pier in the outer harbor, shut down the engines, knocked the deck crew off, and waited. It took them forever, and it was midnight before they were finally clear.
I went though my pre departure checklist and noticed that we had a problem with one of our steering gear pumps. We have two, and normally use both of them when we’re maneuvering, since it speeds up the rudder responsiveness quite a bit. It’s nice to have both, but really we only need one to get the job done. The second one is there primarily as a redundancy. Without that redundancy, I wasn’t sure I was legally allowed to sail. The Chief Engineer got to work troubleshooting, and I started waking up my shoreside support team.
I spent a few hours making my reports to the company and the coast guard and coordinating repairs. We’d be waiting for some electricians to come down, so I took advantage of the downtime, and got a few hours of sleep.
By 0730, repairs had been made, and we started our long, tedious four hour trip up the tight and twisty Cuyahoga River.
It started off smoothly enough. The weather was good, the current in the river was low, and the ship was handling well.
There was a moment of excitement while passing through the Center Street swing bridge. It’s one of the narrowest points in the transit, and we have about 10-15 feet of clearance on either side of the ship.
Well, as Murphy would have it, this was the spot where my wheelsman had to have a brain fart, and put the wheel hard left, when I’d asked for hard right. It took a few shouts and a big handful of throttle, but we managed not to touch anything. Just.
This would have been the most notable part of the trip under normal circumstances.
Unfortunately the river just didn’t feel like being normal that day.
I’d just finished making my least favorite turn in the river. It’s a tight left hander that takes place largely under the route 90 overpass. I was just getting lined up to pass under the West Third Street bridge when I saw something in the water.
There hasn’t been much debris in the water that day, making this thing fairly conspicuous. It caught my eye.
‘What the hell is that?’ I asked, more to myself than anyone in particular.
My first mate, who I’ve been training to move up to captain, had been observing the transit. He’d noticed the floating object too.
‘That… looks like a person.’ He said.
I had the helmsman bring out the binoculars. I had a good long look. It took my brain some time to digest what I was seeing. It did look like a person, but it looked… weird.
He was the wrong color. I could tell from his features that he was a black man, but he was a dark ashy gray color, like he was made of wet clay.
I couldn’t tell if it was real or not. It almost looked like a dummy or a mannequin. I thought maybe it was some very tasteless prank. Somebody threw this thing in the river as a really funny joke.
But the longer I looked, the more convinced I was that this had been a person. He was wearing a dark blue suit. It was still fairly clean, too. He was a clean cut fella. Probably late 30s, early 40s. And there he was, slowly making his way down the River.
I called the coast guard for the second time that day. They asked me a hundred questions. Was he wearing a PFD? No. Was he conscious? Definitely not. I passed along all the information I could, but I couldn't stick around. I had to keep moving. I still had a couple of hours of tricky navigating to do.
The coast guard made their broadcasts about a ‘person in the water in a blue shirt.’ Emergency vehicles descended on the area, and coast guard small boats crowded up the River. I started hearing the word ‘victim’ on channel 22a, and that removed all doubt.
They fished him out, and that was the last I heard about it. I checked the news but didn’t find much. I perused the Cleveland area missing persons list, but couldn’t get myself to look at that for very long.
I’ve since found myself wishing I could talk to the poor guy, find out who he was and how he ended up that way. I don’t suppose there’s much chance of that though.
What a day.
We were doing a a somewhat unusual split unload. We’d offload about half of our cargo at one dock, then head up the river to offload the rest. We do them regularly in other ports, but rarely in Cleveland.
The unload is normally a time I get to relax or catch up on work. This one was a little stressful though. Our cargo of stone was contaminated by a small amount of coal from our previous load. This was completely our fault and could potentially have cost the company a meaningful amount of money. Fortunately this situation wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but I still had to spend some time on the phone doing damage control, and I had to write up some of my crew.
After that kerfuffle, we prepared to depart for the second unload dock. There were several delays. The tug we’d ordered had broken down, and the crew had to scramble a replacement vessel. Another ship, a cement carrier, was also making its way into Cleveland, and we had to wait for him. Then the NS rail bridge made us wait for the worlds slowest train to cross the bridge, stop, then slink slowly back from whence it came.
After all that there was another delay, which I had been expecting. There was another freighter up the river that I wouldn’t be able to pass. I’d have to wait for them to finish unloading and back down the river. We tied up at the holding pier in the outer harbor, shut down the engines, knocked the deck crew off, and waited. It took them forever, and it was midnight before they were finally clear.
I went though my pre departure checklist and noticed that we had a problem with one of our steering gear pumps. We have two, and normally use both of them when we’re maneuvering, since it speeds up the rudder responsiveness quite a bit. It’s nice to have both, but really we only need one to get the job done. The second one is there primarily as a redundancy. Without that redundancy, I wasn’t sure I was legally allowed to sail. The Chief Engineer got to work troubleshooting, and I started waking up my shoreside support team.
I spent a few hours making my reports to the company and the coast guard and coordinating repairs. We’d be waiting for some electricians to come down, so I took advantage of the downtime, and got a few hours of sleep.
By 0730, repairs had been made, and we started our long, tedious four hour trip up the tight and twisty Cuyahoga River.
It started off smoothly enough. The weather was good, the current in the river was low, and the ship was handling well.
There was a moment of excitement while passing through the Center Street swing bridge. It’s one of the narrowest points in the transit, and we have about 10-15 feet of clearance on either side of the ship.
Well, as Murphy would have it, this was the spot where my wheelsman had to have a brain fart, and put the wheel hard left, when I’d asked for hard right. It took a few shouts and a big handful of throttle, but we managed not to touch anything. Just.
This would have been the most notable part of the trip under normal circumstances.
Unfortunately the river just didn’t feel like being normal that day.
I’d just finished making my least favorite turn in the river. It’s a tight left hander that takes place largely under the route 90 overpass. I was just getting lined up to pass under the West Third Street bridge when I saw something in the water.
There hasn’t been much debris in the water that day, making this thing fairly conspicuous. It caught my eye.
‘What the hell is that?’ I asked, more to myself than anyone in particular.
My first mate, who I’ve been training to move up to captain, had been observing the transit. He’d noticed the floating object too.
‘That… looks like a person.’ He said.
I had the helmsman bring out the binoculars. I had a good long look. It took my brain some time to digest what I was seeing. It did look like a person, but it looked… weird.
He was the wrong color. I could tell from his features that he was a black man, but he was a dark ashy gray color, like he was made of wet clay.
I couldn’t tell if it was real or not. It almost looked like a dummy or a mannequin. I thought maybe it was some very tasteless prank. Somebody threw this thing in the river as a really funny joke.
But the longer I looked, the more convinced I was that this had been a person. He was wearing a dark blue suit. It was still fairly clean, too. He was a clean cut fella. Probably late 30s, early 40s. And there he was, slowly making his way down the River.
I called the coast guard for the second time that day. They asked me a hundred questions. Was he wearing a PFD? No. Was he conscious? Definitely not. I passed along all the information I could, but I couldn't stick around. I had to keep moving. I still had a couple of hours of tricky navigating to do.
The coast guard made their broadcasts about a ‘person in the water in a blue shirt.’ Emergency vehicles descended on the area, and coast guard small boats crowded up the River. I started hearing the word ‘victim’ on channel 22a, and that removed all doubt.
They fished him out, and that was the last I heard about it. I checked the news but didn’t find much. I perused the Cleveland area missing persons list, but couldn’t get myself to look at that for very long.
I’ve since found myself wishing I could talk to the poor guy, find out who he was and how he ended up that way. I don’t suppose there’s much chance of that though.
What a day.
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