Tuglife

By Jeremy Ashkenas

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Design by Rolando Penate and Alexis Smagula

All through June and into July I work in the Port of Los Angeles as a deckhand on a tugboat. Jobs come at all hours of the day and night. If we're lucky, the boss will know about them in advance, and we can plan our sleep around the work. If we're not so lucky we have fifteen minutes notice to wake up, get dressed, fire up the main engines and cast off. I see the harbor from all the angles, in every state of function and disuse - on windy mornings, starry nights; in the headache-causing glare of sun and smog; on the Fourth of July with fireworks on all sides; from the breakwater looking in, from anchorage looking out at the Pacific, from the hills of San Pedro, from the deck of a tugboat. Our tugs have good names: the Defiant, the Avenger, the Patriot. . . I work on the Avenger.

Red Tide

Poison in the water. That's what it means for both the fishermen and the fish when the red tide comes in. But for us tugboaters it's a spectacle, not a danger - the waters of the L.A. Harbor are already toxic enough from oil slicks, rotting garbage, excrement and ancient chemical leakage, that we always do our best to keep out and stay dry. Will the engineer first notices the glow in the wake at our stern. It's a big deal. According to him, the red tide never comes to L.A. in July. It's midnight and our twin engines fill the air with a heavy hum. We are moving an oil barge from the fuel refineries in the backharbor out to anchorage, where all the colossal containerships and tankers wait for shipments of their black blood. And the barges carry oil in all weights and colors. The ships have to wait there, powered down, massive like floating cities and yet completely helpless. They lay stranded until the barges come to feed them.

This barge is old enough that heavy chips of rust can be picked off the deck plating. While we're docked there, with the oil pumping into the side of the ship through a hose wide enough for you to fit inside, Will and I hurl the rust chips into the water. The chips glow as they fall, and scatter small ripples of light where they disturb the water. There are a few leftover steel rods from an earlier maintenance project, so we throw those as well, for bigger ripples and the brighter light.

Economies of Scale

The containerships come to L.A. from China, mostly, and in the harbor you can see precisely how our trade deficit works. So many ships arrive in port loaded with containers of goods for the length of a football field and the height of a four-story house. The cranes are always and forever working at lifting the containers from the ships, but it is rare to see them loading any merchandise back on. Many of the containerships leave L.A. Harbor half-empty. It depresses me, just a little, to see the ships leaving the harbor floating so high in the water. Like we aren't holding up our end of the bargain, the unloaded ships are an obvious mark of shame.

Lonely Sailors

The crewmen aboard the ships come from many nations. Malaysia, India, the Philippines, and China are the best represented. I'm sorry for the sailors who spend two weeks crossing the Pacific, only to turn around and go right back. They come so close to L.A., but stay in the ships just offshore.

Architecture

The harbor is filled with structures. Old dry-docks crumble in the water. The Vincent Thomas Bridge suspends itself over the main channel, decked out in blue bright lights after dark. Mormon Island's gloomy chemical factories give you the evil eye from across the channel. The Coast Guard reserve point is like a little piece of Hawaii, with grass and palm trees, and little whitewashed sunny houses - it's a true rarity in the asphalt and concrete city that is the harbor. The hulls of the ships are rusted and corroded into streaks and color patterns that master painters would envy. The Southwest Marine building is haunted by movie production teams, which use its weathered rafters and open spaces for film sets. The cranes lift and lower their long necks, standing tall over everyone. Downtown Long Beach raises its skyscrapers in the distance.

Captains vs. Engineers

You can tell a captain from an engineer at first glance. The captains are all 40-something men with facial hair and gentle beer bellies. The engineers are all 20-something, tattooed, ex-cons, and the sweetest guys I've ever had the pleasure of living with. While a captain might be grumpy or nasty when he's feeling overworked, the engineers were nothing but friendly. They saved my ass many times over when I was about to do something particularly stupid.

Captain Stan lives for his daughters. He chats with them on instant messenger and plays checkers with them online nearly every day. Engineer Will lives for the ladies. As the most senior engineer at the dock (with five years of experience), he uses his position to get off the boats and go to bars when he can sneak by the boss. Captain Grant is a mystery. Soft-spoken and masterful at controlling his tug, I can't ever figure out his motive for working here. Engineer Howard lives to work. The boss keeps telling him to take a break, but Howard keeps coming up with new projects and things that need doing. He sweats constantly because he never sits still. Captain Dave is an ordinary guy. For him it seems like tugboating could be any other job. Engineer Casey lives for jujitsu and cage fighting. He has a collection of DVDs of all his favorite matches. We watch them in the Defiant's galley and he explains to me the level of pain that every punch, kick, and hold can bring. Engineer Marshall lives for Burning Man. He runs a tent there: Technoasis. All through the year he plans and prepares. As the date approaches you find him more and more often awake in the middle of the night, sitting in the galley behind his laptop, emailing plans, meeting times, and instructions.

On the tugboat, I live to forget. I came down to L.A. on a moment's notice. I am trying, and failing, to stop loving someone. I also live to photograph the harbor.

Wilmington Paradise

One of the only times that I leave the docks is to go into town to wash my clothes. Wilmington, after being confined to a tugboat for three weeks, is a paradise. The white-shining brand-new Laundromat looks like the future. I walk down the street and buy a sugared heart from a pastelerķa. I drink horchata and it's the sweetest thing.

Midnight Danger on the Rocks

One night, Will and I are on lookout duty, sitting at the bow of the oil-barge, out of sight of the captain, with a radio to let him know if there's anything in the way that he has to dodge. We drink our diet cokes and scan the dark for unlit obstacles. But then the radio crackles and the captain is saying that he snapped a line. There are four lines, made of massively braided twelve-strand rope, which hold the tug tight to the barge; each of them is crucial. A broken line can snap back with tremendous strength - I've heard stories of deckhands being beheaded. We run back to the tug, to see that it's starting to spin away from the barge. It was the stern line that parted, and the captain can no longer slow down. He's trying to, but it's swinging the barge in a dangerous arc. We weren't going all that quickly to start with, but right now we are headed for the rocks, and need to get a replacement up fast. In snapping, the rope had cut through one of the steel winches, turning it into a jagged and useless piece of junk. Will runs to the other side, throws a spare line up to me, I make it fast on the barge and he does the same on the tug. Everything is fine again. Our total response time is two minutes. Later that night I go to sleep feeling like an old hand.

Sleeping in the Shadow of Giants

The cranes watch over us. Popular myth has it that the cargo cranes in the harbors of California inspired George Lucas when he was creating the snow walkers that the Empire uses in Star Wars. Except that the movie version have this malevolent, lethal side to them, whereas our harbor cranes are like sentinels - foreboding from the outside but comforting to those who work underneath them.

Scrubbing a Boat from Top to Bottom

Sometimes the boss has me clean the outside of the boat. I take a scrub brush and a hose to wash the whole thing down, all three stories of it. On the hot days it's the best. On the windy days it destroys me. I'm a shivering wreck by the time I've sprayed all the suds off.

Liquid Grace

The most impressive thing about watching a tractor tug go about its business is the fantastic agility of its movement. Our tractor tug has one main locomotive engine and a forward z-drive that rotates 360 degrees in the water. This means that, while pulling containerships into place, the tug can slip around sideways and adjust its orientation with great precision, all while keeping a strong pull on the line. It's like dancing on a leash, and the best captains make it positively graceful.

I Get a Crush

One day we're doing a tricky docking maneuver - struggling to shuffle three oil barges around the docks of a fuel refinery. I do something stupid: while trying to grab a line to wrap it one more time around the shoulder bit, I stand on the railing at the edge of the deck and wait for the line to come loose. Instead of loosening, it tightens over my foot, crushing my toes with a series of loud pops. I scream. After a few seconds of shock and numbness, I do what I was supposed to, and wrap the line around the bit. No broken bones, I think. And after a couple of days I can walk again. But the toe stays gigantic and purple for months.

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