WorkBoat Show: Day 1

After a VERY late night, I drug myself out of bed to check out the WorkBoat Show.

I didn’t really plan on staying up half the night, but I saw on Facebook that a friend and travel writer was going to be in town for a ‘comp trip’. I had met her at a travel writing workshop in Boston a couple of years ago. After messaging back and forth on Facebook before leaving home, we agreed to meet up here in New Orleans after she finished up her work.

Turns out, when I went to meet her, she was in the middle of dinner with the whole group of writers involved on the comp trip. It was an interesting evening, for true! 🙂

I got back to my hotel about 0200 in the morning, but for some reason I just couldn’t sleep. So it was pretty hard to get up and out. Once I did, I walked over to the Convention center for the WorkBoat Show.

In the same Facebook conversation, I learned there was another writer (and fellow blogger who I met at the same workshop)  coming to town for the show. We planned to meet up too. The first thing we wanted to do was to hear Capt Phillips. He was the Keynote speaker.

Remember the Maersk Alabama, the American flagged ship that got attacked by pirates a couple of years ago? Tom Hanks played him in the movie? Yep, that Capt Phillips. He gave a good presentation and we got to ask questions and afterwards have pictures taken with him (I skipped that but my friend got hers done).

As the presentation was ending, I spotted another friend of mine from Kirby Towing. We stopped to say hi on the way out. That’s what I love about these events. I always wind up meeting so many of my old friends. It’s great to catch up and hear what everybody’s been doing. 🙂

I had a couple of hours before the next presentation. My writer friend was doing an interview with a guy from the Deadliest Catch, so I went to wander around a little bit and ran into some other old friends.

Father Sinclair and Doreen from the Apostleship of the Sea. They always have so many good projects going on to help the sailors and the maritime community. Sinclair still sails, but he somehow finds the time to get involved with all kinds of important stuff.

I went to the presentation on mariner health issues. I picked that one since I have a lot of concerns of my own about how the medical standards are getting harder and harder to meet and are being used to throw a lot of us sailors out of our jobs. It seems a lot of the companies want 50 years of experience in a 20 year old body. 🙁

Spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the convention center and checking out  some of the things there that I’m especially interested in. The latest DP systems from Kongsberg, MT, L3, etc.

I met a few more old friends. Hope to spend some more time with them tomorrow in between all the other events. 🙂

5 thoughts on “WorkBoat Show: Day 1

  1. Hi Jill,

    Glad you are having a good time at the Workboat show. I just talked with Bob Kuskis and found out he was with you on the G. Orion in 2008, one year before you and I worked together.

    Thanks for always forwarding the job leads to me,I appreciate it very much and I have actually gotten pretty close to getting one of those jobs.

    I am home now , and am just waiting to confirm hopefully by next week on a Captain’s job with a tug & Derrick Barge tow delivery to Maricaibo,Venezuela.

    Any interesting info or job leads you can tell me about from the show?

    Have a Happy Holiday Season.

    When do you go back to work on the drillship?

    Rgds,

    Jim Fish

    • Hi Jim,
      I’m leaving to go back on the drillship tomorrow. I’m not really looking forward to it but it’s a job and things are slow now.
      Yeah, I keep in touch with Bob Kuskis. He’s in the market too. I think you’re lucky you kept your towing endorsement. You’ll probably find more work having that at this point.
      At the show, they had a job fair. HOS was there, Edison Chouest was there, Kirby was there, ACL, a couple more towing companies. The AMO was there (at MITAGS last week MMP people were all telling me they need people badly). They were all looking for people. I think they didn’t get the word out about the job fair in time. There weren’t many people there asking about jobs, and some companies who would have been there (like Oceanwide) didn’t even know about it.
      I think, as usual, it’s being in the right place at the right time. Keeping in touch with everything and everybody (as much as possible).
      I’ve been hearing from lots of people that things are slowing down and will stay that way until oil prices go back up. It’s really amazing, it’s fallen more than $50 in the last month or 2!! I’m kind of trapped in this job now because of obamacare, but at this point, I think I need to hold on to it at least until things start normalizing again.
      OR is still advertising to OIM, Master, CM, DPO, but they still don’t want to hear any recommendations from any of us that already work there. Just keep bugging them if you’re still interested.
      Good luck with the towing job. It sounds a lot more interesting than my work lately.
      Happy holidays to you too. Hope you get to spend them at home!
      Take care,
      Jill

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