Tag: nautical

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Flashback Friday – Gundecking

Just out of Boot Camp and knowing almost nothing about how the Navy worked, I sat by as sailors and petty officers senior to me decided how to explain their idleness on a log sheet. My impression of the workday was that it had been full of BS, coffee, and some very random work.

It was also my introduction to Gundecking. The term Gundecking Derives from the Royal Navy. Midshipmen, officers in training, would take their noon navigational sights of the sun, scurry below to the gun deck, and “fix” the position of the ship in the ocean, often by cheating. Gundecking became the modern naval name for report fixing.

The first-class petty officer introducing me to the mysteries of fixing logs without getting caught was the erudite bosun’s mate, John O’Toole. John deliberately shunned anything that might get him a rocker under his crow and transform him into a chief petty officer.

By the time I came along, Gundecking could be an art form in the hands of a master like O’Toole. Most Gundecking is the simple checking off of boxes on reports for maintenance or inspection. More elaborate needs could require Quiji Boards, modified game spinners, and, critically, the Magic 8 Ball.
Modern Gundecking (pencil whipping in the non-naval services) is complicated. And compounded by the sheer bureaucratic nature of military or civilian life. In the years since I was discharged I can only imagine the absurdities introduced by computers. Everything has a checklist, report, protocol, diagnostic formula, or decision tree. Procedural paperwork can get in the way of effective performance. You can become enmeshed in meaningless BS. Perhaps that’s why the verb “to Gundeck” is offset by the adverb “gundeckable.”

It had to have been an officer or senior Non-commissioned Officer like O’Toole who derived this term because, as we all know – problems always move up the Chain Of Command, and shit drops down. By the time you become a senior in any organization, you should either know all the tricks or have an intuition. Remember, that pencils, Magic 8 ball, Quija boards, and game spinners have been around a while. If only to protect yourself (enlightened self-interest), you better figure out how gundeckable the reports and inspections in your organization can be.

Remember that the general principle dates back to Bronze Age sailors. There are thousands of years of received sophistication going on here.

A few years ago, I looked into the open drawer of my financial advisor’s desk. His Magic 8 Ball was right there. I rapidly confirmed from the Honorable Discharge displayed on the wall that he was a Navy Veteran.
Think about that next time your advisor says: “hold on. Let me check on that answer”., and opens the lower desk drawer. Here are a couple of guidelines: If he or she has any of the following on their wall: Plank Owner Certificates, certificates showing that they are Pollywogs, Shellbacks, etc., or pictures of their last ship, get out fast. Another sure warning is if they start every story with “Now, this is no shit,” – this TINS warning is especially dire, being that it’s the traditional start of any Sea Story. Of course, you should also check the premises for signs of Quija boards, spinners, and the Magic 8 Ball. Full disclosure forces me to admit that one sits on my desk as I write this.

Is there an actual cure for Gundecking? Probably, putting less emphasis on forms would help. Putting a greater focus on actual performance, pride in the job, and professionalism would be critical. But, until that happens, remember your best defense is knowing or learning the angles yourself so no one would even consider Gundecking you.
I leave you with these words from the immortal petty officer first class John O’Toole: “Luck is what you stumble upon in life. Providence is what God plans for you, and planning is how you thread your way between the two without getting crushed.”

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Messes

Some of us are on a safari, sampling life as we move from place to place or experience to experience. Others seem tied to one locale by an invisible byssus that holds them to one environment.
At some time in my wandering, I landed briefly at a coastal community and envied their sense of home location. They, too, wandered away for a while – to work a job, college, or a voyage. But they always returned to the cove, harbor, beach, or bay.
Occasionally, I like to visit, feel connected, and feel home away from home. So last week I called an old friend, Paul. I mentioned I’d love to visit and see the old town. He said come on and visit, but it’s not the old town anymore,” the only thing that looks like it used to is the Town pier, but that’s overrun with riff-raff off the cruise ships. I’ve been thinking about moving further Down East, but I understand they have the same problems.”

Perhaps somewhere off the map, there are still destinations where cruise ships cannot navigate, climate change does not destroy, or the coast is not inundated with the jetsam and flotsam of a world’s rejected plastics. But I’m not going to go on safari looking for it. I’d only be joining the mass exodus of people looking to escape the mess we’ve made of what we have while carrying the problems we’ve created to new places.
Paul’s advice to the people on the cruise ships? “Stay home, clean your messes up, and don’t bring them where I live.”

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Geedunks

A Flashback Friday Presentation

I was the chief cook & bottle washer. Or, in Naval parlance, Mess cook. Indeed not the chef. Culinary expertise was not called upon aboard the Psyche to serve the Cap’n. The guests may have had other expectations, but it was the Capn’s Ketch, so the cook pleased the skipper. On these cruises, cooking was basic. I only acted as a steward on Friday night, serving whatever Cora ( my mother-in-law) had prepared in advance. On Saturday, breakfast was the prescribed pancakes with wild Maine blueberries and maple syrup. I’ve been able to cook those since my Boy Scout days. Lunch almost any day was King Oscar Sardines and sea biscuits served with hot tea. Saturday evening, we usually planned to anchor in a harbor and go ashore for a restaurant meal. If we ate aboard, it was B&M Beans and Oscar Myer Franks. Sunday was cold cereal with whatever milk remained in the icebox. Lunch was sardines again.

The guests frequently complained about the meal plan, and I just shrugged. They were his children, and they knew from experience how set he was in his ways. They hoped that, as a relative outsider, I might be able to persuade him. But I’d fallen for this game a time or two early in my marriage. The Cap’n would put his foot down, and the children would close ranks with Daddy against the interloper. So I just smiled, shrugged my shoulders, and secretly ate from my stash of hidden food items.
I’d learned in the Navy that what geedunks ( sweets and specialty items not served at meals) the ship sold were not necessarily what I wanted. So I had a private stash. As in the Navy, so too on Psyche. You might think I’d share with my wife, but after she insisted that I share my stash with her brother, I became cagey. Yes, I know you’re thinking, why didn’t they bring a store aboard? Great question. I don’t have an answer except that the hunt for mine was so much fun. And they were lazy.

They knew the stash existed, and she would ransack my seabag when I was up on deck, but she couldn’t find it. But I knew she was closing in on my hiding spot, so I got nasty about the entire thing. Before we left for a weekend sail, I hid a few “special” items where they could be found, but not too quickly.
Saturday afternoon, I came below to find that they had located the cupcakes and the granola bars. My wife and her brother were sitting at the table, contentedly munching away. My brother-in-law generously offered some to me. I refused but sat there with a smile, watching them eat. After a bit, it occurred to them that something odd was going on when I reached into the engine compartment, dragged out some of my stash of chocolate bourbon bonbons, and started eating. I watched them intently. My brother-in-law stopped eating and pulled a strange face; reaching into his mouth, he pulled something between his teeth. “what’s this?” “Well,” I commented, ” when you eat chocolate-covered ant cupcakes, you have to expect a leg or two.” My wife continued eating the cricket granola bar but began scrutinizing it. As one, they bolted for the companionway and then to the rail where, as we say in the Navy, they “chummed the fishes.”
As soon as my wife recovered enough, she began screaming to Daddy about what a jerk I was ( accurate). For once, she got little sympathy from the Cap’n. He fell off course, a once-in-a-lifetime event because he was laughing so hard.
That evening we had to go ashore for dinner. Nobody trusted me enough to eat anything I might cook.

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Lucky

Most people won’t publicly acknowledge their little “luck-enhancing” tokens or behaviors. But most of us have them.
You may scoff at those who tote a rabbit’s foot on their key chain or the sports figure with lucky socks. But the rubber of rabbit’s feet and the lucky sox wearer are honest about their attempts to manipulate fate on their behalf. They postulate that fortune can be influenced to favor them. They are opposed by those who regard these as blatant superstitions. I’ve noticed that some scoffers have fuzzy dice on their rearview mirrors, mutter small prayers or cross extremities.

After years of carving for mariners, sailing, time in the Navy, working on boats, and knowing merchant seamen, I’ve concluded that the average sailor is less interested in making luck than avoiding ill fortune. This explains the avoidance of bananas on board. Refusing to sail on a Friday, whistling, having preachers on board, belief in Jonahs, and other items sure to bring disaster. The postulate for the sailor is that the water is a flukey place to be at the best of times, and you shouldn’t make things worse. So instead of seeking good luck, you seek the avoidance of ill fortune.

It’s up to you which way you go. But believers in luck seem to be about material gain or winning, and avoiders in ill fortune are about survival in a hazardous environment. For me, it’s no Jonah’s, bananas, and certainly no whistling.

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bad coffee

What do you complain about the most?

Griping about things is part of being a sailor. I discovered this from my father, a Merchant Marine engineer, and had it confirmed while in the Navy. Griping as an art form was re-affirmed to me while working in the marine trades as a carver and catch as can boatyard worker.
Griping is not necessarily pejorative of other people. We don’t just complain about the bosun, the carpenter, the skipper, or the boat owner. We complain about the food, weather, and workloads. But, of course, a cherished area of complaint is coffee. We can complain about coffee until the third pot of the day is downed, and the thought of another cup will make us bilious.

OK, I’ll say it – take any random sampling of castaway sailors on a desert island with nothing to eat but coconuts, and their biggest complaint will be the lack of coffee. When they get tired of griping about no coffee, they’ll move on to the lousy coffee they’ve had. After exhausting that, they’ll move on to bad chow, the rotten bunks they had to sleep in, the worst liberty ports they visited, and then the miseries of being at sea in heavy weather.
Regardless of political orientation, they’ll rage on all evening about this stuff until they are exhausted and sleep. Then, the lack of coffee will start the day rolling in the morning.

I hate to side with the officer class, having worked for a living myself, but the continual griping is why it’s crucial to keep sailors of any sort busy. Let them sit around and get bored, and the complaints start.
Maybe that is the reason for all the rotten coffee? Give the apes something to gripe about that’s safe.
Rats! I make my own coffee. It’s unfair that I can only complain to myself.

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The Shell Game

A Flashback Friday Presentation

“luck is what you stumble upon in life. Providence is what God plans for you, and planning is how you thread your way between the two without getting crushed.” 

The speaker of these words was the rather infamous first-class petty officer John O’Toole. Destined never to become a chief, he was swimming towards retirement. Along the way, he offered bits of sage advice to drifty shit misfits in uniform like me. After the second pitcher of beer at the bar, he’d offer tips on all and sundry items of life aboard a ship. Everything that is except how he ran his racket as a ship’s bootlegger. Onboard, it was John who, according to legend, had three barrels from which he rendered scotch, bourbon, and rye. The ship was built in the Second World War but still served through the sixties. Along the way, so many renovations and rebuilds had occurred that, supposedly, compartments appeared on no known plan and were complete mysteries to the Master At Arms. In the crevices of forgotten spaces, John’s barrels brewed up the best hooch available outside a base with a Seabee battalion running the still.

We, of course, did not know if any of this was true. But none dared doubt it publically; it was the stuff of Nautical and Naval mythology. Sailors love the mythological; it makes up for their otherwise dull life at sea.

Sailors also like to place small bets on almost anything; they are called pools. An anchor pool would be to predict the date and time the ship anchored. Pools were organized based on when a sailor’s wife had their baby, the baby’s eye color, or if the weather would blow up. In my day, the pools were for dimes and quarters- If kept quiet, nobody minded. But John’s barrels were legendary. Every deployment, there was a pool on whether or not the Masters at Arms would discover them. On every voyage, nothing was found. The Master at Arms uncovered lots of activity, but not the infamous barrels.

I want to say that the night John blessed me with the formula for success or clued me in on his secret, but that did not happen. Years later, I ran into a former shipmate who told me the secret. There were no barrels. They were just a distraction. The hooch was snuck aboard before each deployment in sealed cruise chests by confederates who shared equally in the take. I have no idea how the whole thing was secret for so long. But, the barrels eventually became so famous that they became the absolute focus of the racket and the search. A shell game. Where are the barrels?

Over the years, I’ve discovered that John’s formula pretty much had it right. Luck was fickle and could run hot or cold. Providence could get you in a lot of trouble while intending to “save” you, but planning could ease the berth between the two.

I understand that there was a pool among the former crew when the ship went to the shipbreakers. The pool was for finding the barrels.

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Beating to Quarters

What skills or lessons have you learned recently?

Crafters and artists are constantly in motion learning new skills, altering perspectives, and looking for the next project that excites them. Tradition is fine, and working in a tradition laden with favored designs and techniques is also great. But boredom can set in and, with it, a creative staleness from doing the same old thing time and time again.

For several years I’ve been working on developing my skills in boat and ship portraiture. Although I’ve been doing the basics for years – your standard catboat, sloop, or little one-design sailboat- I’ve been tackling larger and more ambitious sailing vessels. The fundamental challenge is to carve a convincing portrait in about an eighth of an inch of relief carving.

This is easier when the wind is coming over the stern or aft quarter of the vessel but toward the viewer. Being a bit “chicken,” I avoided portraying ships as they might be viewed from aft, sailing away from the viewer. This year I created a design and tackled the approach.

The portrait was called Sloop of War and portrayed a small vessel of the Napoleonic Wars era that I imagine as Beating To Quarters to engage the enemy.
I have not solved all the technical problems with this approach, but that’s the beauty of new things. There is always more to learn and master.

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On Style

We were at a tavern in the Seaport district in New York. I had just won a bet on recognizing a carver’s work based on their tool cuts. It was an easy win; the carvings I had identified were by a carver whose work I was familiar with. Carvers have habits like everyone else, ways we like to do eagle feathers, eyes, or our taste in how fancy the volutes are ( those carved spiral designs that you often see on violins, columns, or holding up figureheads). See enough of this, especially if it’s your professional interest and you recognize the style.
Of course, the most carving is anonymous. Whether in stone, wood, or other media, most of us and our carvings will be nameless. An occasional mentor of mine had trained in France before the Second World War and told me that daily, hundreds of feet of exquisite trade carved molding and detail were produced in his master’s shop. All of it was destined to be nameless.
So yes, I can recognize the styles of Samuel Robb, Bellamy, Rush, or Skillin in many cases. But museums are full of unattributed work. Some of this is happenstance; the carver was in a small harbor and attracted little notice. Or, in the case of Bellamy, he was located in space and time when his work attracted attention. Bellamy also developed a distinctive and unique style that captured much attention.

Friends who’ve been with me on visits to the Peabody Essex Museum or the Mystic Seaport have to stifle yawns if we pass a particularly lovely piece of carving. Then, my whole demeanor changes, and I begin to discuss the style and execution of the design. Then, getting deeper into the weeds, I discuss if the carving represents a particular regional style. Please don’t laugh; when it comes to volutes on billet heads, there is a regional difference between, say, the Chesapeake and New England.

I imagine two old ships carvers in the 19th century getting snookered and getting into a fight over the curves on a volute to the disgust of their wives. The marine trades are full of passionate people.

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Surreal Dream

A Flashback Friday presentation from 2019

I’ve had some doozies of lucid dreams in my time. But, about six months ago, I had the most extreme case. ****Spoiler alert John Haley Bellamy is the Dean of 19th-century American Shipscarver ( IMHO). Dali was my favorite Surrealist and habitue of New York growing up. So I wondered what would happen if Dali and Bellamy ran into each other. So – A Surreal Dream.
I was sitting in my usual spot at the Rienzi coffeehouse in Greenwich Village, and joining me that night was John Halley Bellamy. John was down from Kittery for his first trip to the Big Apple. He wanted me to fill him in on who the local shipscarvers were, the best time to visit the Empire State Building, and the Guggenheim directions. We were pouring over one of those little accordion maps of the city that hotels give you when in walk Salvador Dali. Dali siddles up and starts praising Bellamy for being an early Surrealist. “My only dispute with you comes in the calculation of spirals and curves you use; I’ve always preferred logarithmic spirals; you, on the other hand, use something that looks like it’s part of an ellipse? Bellamy, admiring Sal’s logarithmically twined mustachios, takes time to twirl his mustache ends into a number seven Copenhagen curve and replies, ” I started in a boat shop, so I used ships curves.” They happily spent the next ten minutes discussing how to simplify for emphasis, stretch proportions, and play with conventions. For once, I was without words.
After an hour or so, Dali said he’d pick up the check. So he and Bellamy wandered out onto McDougal Street. Dali suggested they head to Paris and visit. Pablo – “Not really a Surrealist, but an interesting artist…”
Pondering my next move, I noticed the signed credit card receipt – I quickly pocketed it and walked out with a signed Dali.

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Special Orders

Plum Island sunset -copyright, L.N Carreras

Woodcarvers sometimes get strange requests. But they are usually the sentimental type of thing, specialty designs of various sorts. Well, I know one carver who has a kind of specialty in erotic sorts of things, but this story is not about her designs.
I tried to break into the occult carving market by doing runes sets for people telling fortunes, only to be priced out by Chinese mass-produced junk. However, the shop owner in Salem did save my card and referred to me unique clients with special needs.

This was how I received a small series of annual commissions for boxes of a particular type. While dimensions varied yearly, they always needed to be made from hand split, hand sawn, and planed ash. In addition, the ash had to be fastened with wooden pegs. The hinges and lining were of a hide they provided for this purpose. Finally, each box was carved with specific runes on each surface. I received the orders in September; delivery was always the final week of October. The commissioners were pleased because the orders were repeated for several years.

Then one year, a new order came in from another group for oak sticks of a certain length, taper, and thickness. Each was inscribed with an old word in Glagolitic that I found impossible to translate. I felt odd about this order, and after completing it, I told them that I would not accept future orders of that kind. That was OK, they said, and the following year it was a specific type of crucifix they wanted. Crucifixes and stakes? The next year they sent along some small bottles with a design for a wooden holder. The text was something in Latin, and I suspected that the bottles were for Holy Water. They said they were so pleased with my work that they would mention it to their friends.

And oh, did their friends contact me; there were particular orders for Samhain and special orders for Beltane. And then came the orders from cults, sects, and rites from Africa, India, and Micronesia. It got so turning them down was difficult. There’d be pressure, a sort of do it, or misfortune might befall you. “Oh, Mr. Carreras, you over billed us on our last order. We took the liberty of reducing your payment. We hope you are satisfied.”

It was the damned Ouija boards that tore it. Having had a terrible experience with one in the sixties, I put my foot down and flat-out said no. As of three years ago, I refused all orders of the occult. Yes, they paid well and on time, but they were much more demanding than my nautical customers.

Then the little box with the doll arrived by FedEx. It was then I knew that I had to take action.

It pays to keep up your dues in specific organizations. Working in boatyards, carving eagles, and other significant work associated with the deeps stood me in good stead. A trip to the harbor, a few poured libations to Davy, Neptunas Rex, and the other deities of the port, seas, and oceans took care of things. Those powers of the depths resented flatlanders horning in on a dues-paying member. So cease and desist notices were sent.

I know this hasn’t turned out well. And I know that science refuses to believe that it’s a war of natural orders, But Ian, yep, the Santeria, Voodoo, and a few other groups found out that you don’t mess with the sea. That town in Idaho that became a ghost town, I feel awful about that.

I am very sorry now that I have started it. Evidently, the Olympians are trying to get everyone to the peace table. And I hear rumblings that some think It was all my fault for trying to do what I shouldn’t have.
But while the big guys are duking it out, most people think it’s just Climate Change.

I guess that’s good for me; I’d hate to change my name and move at this stage of my life.