Read Online Rescue of the Bounty: Disaster and Survival in Superstorm Sandy by Michael J. Tougias, Douglas A. Campbell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael J. Tougias, Douglas A. Campbell
Ads: Link
Jim Salapatek would become the Internet voice of Bounty , making all its Facebook postings, and he would visit the ship. He was so connected to the vessel that when the ship left New London, he got a quick text message from a crew member.
The tight-knit Bounty community was even closer when standing watch together. C-Watch was a good team. Cleveland, Sprague, Salapatek, and Scornavacchi shared one thing above all: their mentor and the source of virtually all of their tall ship knowledge was Robin Walbridge.
Only twelve crew members were standing watch on the voyage toward Hurricane Sandy. This was almost a minimum crew. Had a handful decided not to sail, the watch standers would have been spread thin.
Three members of the crew—in addition to the captain—were exempt from standing watch.
Laura Groves, twenty-eight, of Apalachee Bay, Florida, the bosun, was in charge of deck work and thus was spared the rigors of the four-hours-on, eight-hours-off watch system. She had plenty of her own work to keep her occupied.
Groves was raised in a sailing family, had a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies, and had worked as a science instructor on a research ship. She joined Bounty in 2010. In the off-season, she’d earned a hundred-ton coast guard intercoastal license and an AB rating. She had had no experience on wooden vessels before she joined Bounty , but when the bosun job opened in February 2012, she applied for it and Walbridge gave her the duties.
The bosun’s job, as Groves saw it, was to create work lists to meet the ship’s needs, prioritize those lists, then to delegate jobs to crew members and oversee their work, whether it be on deck under sail or onshore when the ship was hauled out for maintenance and repairs.
Bounty was the only tall ship on which Groves had worked. But she’d formed an opinion of the captain. Walbridge was knowledgeable, caring, analytical, thoughtful, and a good teacher.
Unlike Groves, the ship’s engineer, Chris Barksdale, had minimal sailing experience when he came aboard Bounty . As a ship’s officer, he was exempt from standing watch, a role through which others learned the ropes of the ship.
Barksdale’s role was to keep the machinery running, and Bounty had lots of machines: two large John Deere diesel engines for propulsion, two smaller John Deere diesels to turn two electric generators, and various pumps to keep the bilges dry.
Chief Mate John Svendsen had met Barksdale on a vessel operated by the Nature Conservancy and invited him to join Bounty in September 2012, in Boothbay Harbor when the previous engineer left. Barksdale characterized his experience as thirty years in “horticulture,” operating and maintaining loaders and backhoes. On the Nature Conservancy vessel, his job was maintaining the drinking-water system.
Aboard Bounty , if he had not known it before, Barksdale learned he was prone to seasickness when out on the high ocean.
Like Svendsen, Barksdale said he could not remember a time in his life, even at an early age, when he was not on the water. As a teen, he worked at a marina. He was a small-craft operator, but his work was primarily shore-side support.
Bounty was hauled out of the water when Barksdale arrived in Maine. He found a copy of his job description posted in the engine room on the bottom deck, down a stairway and then a ladder from the weather deck. It said the engineer was responsible for operation and maintenance of the engines, electrical systems, plumbing and water systems. Even after the ship left the dock in New London, Barksdale wasn’t certain the bilge pumping system came under his authority.
The cook, Jessica Black, had never been aboard a tall ship before the night of October 24, when her train pulled into the New London train station. She disembarked, and there Bounty was, just a few steps away on the City Pier.
Black, thirty-four, was a graduate of the New England Culinary Institute in Burlington, Vermont, and after
The tight-knit Bounty community was even closer when standing watch together. C-Watch was a good team. Cleveland, Sprague, Salapatek, and Scornavacchi shared one thing above all: their mentor and the source of virtually all of their tall ship knowledge was Robin Walbridge.
Only twelve crew members were standing watch on the voyage toward Hurricane Sandy. This was almost a minimum crew. Had a handful decided not to sail, the watch standers would have been spread thin.
Three members of the crew—in addition to the captain—were exempt from standing watch.
Laura Groves, twenty-eight, of Apalachee Bay, Florida, the bosun, was in charge of deck work and thus was spared the rigors of the four-hours-on, eight-hours-off watch system. She had plenty of her own work to keep her occupied.
Groves was raised in a sailing family, had a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies, and had worked as a science instructor on a research ship. She joined Bounty in 2010. In the off-season, she’d earned a hundred-ton coast guard intercoastal license and an AB rating. She had had no experience on wooden vessels before she joined Bounty , but when the bosun job opened in February 2012, she applied for it and Walbridge gave her the duties.
The bosun’s job, as Groves saw it, was to create work lists to meet the ship’s needs, prioritize those lists, then to delegate jobs to crew members and oversee their work, whether it be on deck under sail or onshore when the ship was hauled out for maintenance and repairs.
Bounty was the only tall ship on which Groves had worked. But she’d formed an opinion of the captain. Walbridge was knowledgeable, caring, analytical, thoughtful, and a good teacher.
Unlike Groves, the ship’s engineer, Chris Barksdale, had minimal sailing experience when he came aboard Bounty . As a ship’s officer, he was exempt from standing watch, a role through which others learned the ropes of the ship.
Barksdale’s role was to keep the machinery running, and Bounty had lots of machines: two large John Deere diesel engines for propulsion, two smaller John Deere diesels to turn two electric generators, and various pumps to keep the bilges dry.
Chief Mate John Svendsen had met Barksdale on a vessel operated by the Nature Conservancy and invited him to join Bounty in September 2012, in Boothbay Harbor when the previous engineer left. Barksdale characterized his experience as thirty years in “horticulture,” operating and maintaining loaders and backhoes. On the Nature Conservancy vessel, his job was maintaining the drinking-water system.
Aboard Bounty , if he had not known it before, Barksdale learned he was prone to seasickness when out on the high ocean.
Like Svendsen, Barksdale said he could not remember a time in his life, even at an early age, when he was not on the water. As a teen, he worked at a marina. He was a small-craft operator, but his work was primarily shore-side support.
Bounty was hauled out of the water when Barksdale arrived in Maine. He found a copy of his job description posted in the engine room on the bottom deck, down a stairway and then a ladder from the weather deck. It said the engineer was responsible for operation and maintenance of the engines, electrical systems, plumbing and water systems. Even after the ship left the dock in New London, Barksdale wasn’t certain the bilge pumping system came under his authority.
The cook, Jessica Black, had never been aboard a tall ship before the night of October 24, when her train pulled into the New London train station. She disembarked, and there Bounty was, just a few steps away on the City Pier.
Black, thirty-four, was a graduate of the New England Culinary Institute in Burlington, Vermont, and after
Similar Books
