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. 🙂