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I’ve always enjoyed safety training on the ship. I remember one of my first drills where they went over where all of the fire extinguishers were and what they did– there’s 4 different kinds, they’re not just water. Sometimes we forget that we’re in a giant metal box in the middle of the ocean. On land if there’s an emergency, there are usually a few ways to get out. On a ship those are more precarious. Plus I figure that in an emergency, I’ll only remember a small percentage of what I know, so the more I know, the higher that percentage becomes. Even though we use a couple of our lifeboats as water shuttles, there was still more I wanted to know. Last year I wrote about the chance to lower a life boat. That was so cool. We got to climb up next to them and inside them and see where the hooks were and the levers to bring them out and lower them down. Now there was a safety course that Matt had signed up for– he wasn’t required to do it (he actually didn’t have time to take it and do his job), but he was allowed to do it because of his rank. He rubbed it in that he got to take this course knowing that I would be jealous. He said I couldn’t take it because we were already understaffed and he couldn’t spare me for 4 hours every day. Every day I would ask him what he learned and make him teach me. When they got to driving the life boats, he asked the Fleet Safety Guy who was teaching the class, Safety Steve, if I could audit the life boat driving class. Everyone was coming to the morning session, so there were only two people in the afternoon session.
I put on the costume– the boiler suit (aptly named when it’s hot out), the hat and the little life jacket. I was the most excited one there– they couldn’t figure out why. Safety Steve asked the boys questions that they were meant to know if they had studied what they were supposed to study. I looked over their shoulders. We set up the lifeboat to be lowered and climbed in, then lowered it down. That morning 12 people had to take turns, so Steve was enjoying the extra time. He showed us how to drive and then climbed up on the roof. The first guy stood up and stuck his head out the window. He took us back and forth, back and forth, next to the ship.
I only took pictures down below while the other guys were driving. I couldn’t be that much of a nerd to pull out my camera when I wasn’t even supposed to be taking the class. Finally it was my turn. I stood up and stuck my head out the window. Steve was still lounging on the roof. He had an open cup of coke. He said our job was not to spill the coke. I did whatever I was supposed to do, and steered the lifeboat back and forth, chatting with Steve. He smoked his cigarettes and told me about his life. He said that the sign of a good driver was when he didn’t have to tell them what to do– so we chatted and went back and forth, back and forth. I learned later that Matt had taken a smoke break, and was shouting at me from the ship, but I couldn’t hear him.
I definitely don’t have a knack for the technical things, but I like hanging out in life boats and I really like driving them– it feels like getting the inside tour. I’m pretty sure if there was an emergency I would remember none of this stuff, but I thought about that day every time I saw the lifeboats (which was pretty much every day after that).