For the non-nautical, the forward mast holds the navigational lights of the ship.
For more than 30 years, I followed the mast through nine different bodies of water, the Panama Canal, the strait of Hormuz, and the straits of Yemen.
Anchor handling, towing semi-submersible rigs, and the world's largest jack-up derrick barge as Tow Master the length of the Persian Gulf are a few of my accomplishments.
Each of these were for me, not only an awesome challenge, but a chance to prove my capabilities as a captain. Very few captains have done the operations I have, only because I kept moving around to see and photograph the world.
The ocean offers a life of adventure and misadventure. Sometimes fun, many times tedious, and most times dangerous. But now I realize it was a time of growing, learning, and grooming for what is next to come. I learned leadership, diversity, management, and supervisory skills as well as dealing with a lot of responsibility in a professional work environment.
Working with men from many different countries was an awesome learning experience. The diversity of having men from 3 or 4 different countries as crew was fun for me. On board we worked as a team, each one had their regular duties and working on the deck during operations, which can be very dangerous. Having started on the deck myself was an advantage with training the seamen and junior officers.
Please join me for some sea stories through my photos of those days. Read the photo captions as I tell of the experience and take you into a world seldom seen by land lovers.