a day in the life of an intern

I arrived at pier 25 promptly at 12:00 PM. This time there were thankfully no hiccups as far as train service was concerned. Uniform on, radio off the charger and flipped on. I was ready to start the day. Chad, our assistant dock master, had already spent some time Pier 25 as the pier opens at 9AM on weekends. A short while after around 12:20 there was a knock on the office door. Upon opening it, we were greeted by a man asking to go onto the vessel "At Last" located on mooring #18.

Chad let me drive during our approach to the boat. I was quite nervous as the waves were rougher than normal--possibly due to the weather. Waves were more abundant than usual, thus making the approach much different than it had been in the past. I made my turn a little at a wider angle and my speed a lot slower than usual. In the end the approach to "At Last" was successful, no bangs, dings or scratches on either boat. Everyone that was heading to "At Last" boarded it safely and it only required one approach.

A short while after sitting in the office, I started walking the dock and got a radio call from Bjoern of NYC Media Boat asking if he could go on a mooring and which one. I ended up directing him to mooring #38 which is one of the closest mooring to the dock. I picked him up and he complimented my maneuvering of the launch. Although a little too soon, as I pulled off of his boat the stern of the launch was a nerve wrecking distance from the bridle on the mooring. Afraid of getting the bridle stuck in the prop I felt as if time slowed down while I corrected my angle. All was well. Had I gotten the line stuck, it would have been an experience I knew all too well as I had that happen on one of the first days working at pier 25. But that's a story for another day. While Bjoern was on the launch, there was a radio call on channel 13 requesting the launch, only heard on Bjoern's radio as he monitors channel 13. Bjoern directed the people to channel 69 which we monitor at pier 25, but the vessel did not try to re-contact on channel 69.

After dropping Bjoern off on the dock a huge sailing vessel around 50+ feet tries to approach the dock. They didn't toss me any lines but I managed to grab their bowline off of their boat. After getting it on, I waited for more lines to be tossed but instead they asked me to drop the bow line so they could make another approach. So I tossed it back to them. The 2nd time around they managed to get parallel with the dock but they were around 5 or so feet off the dock and they still didn't want to toss me any lines. They seemed to have 1 passenger waiting to get on so I was going to charge them 20 for a "touch n go" and keep it moving. However, they didn't manage to get their passenger on board so instead asked me to take the launch over to their vessel to do a drop-off. Their vessel was just drifting away because they weren't on a mooring and I approached their boat with the launch. Thankfully, there were no big problems and we were able to get their passenger on board. They wound up paying the 20$ fee without a fuss.

After that ordeal, I had a group of people on an offshore boat waiting for a pickup, so I maneuvered the boat over, picked them up from their mooring and dropped them off at the dock. Directly after that I had 2 groups that wanted to go out to their mooring and so I did exactly that and dropped them off at their boat 1 by 1. Went back and forth from the dock and the series of quick succession events was over. I went into the office and waited around 15 - 30 minutes before I was needed again.

At the crack of the break period I see a familiar vessel on its way in. Tara is a boat operated by Dave of Tribeca Sailing. So I helped him out with docking with the current ripping (which means strong). It must have been ebbing considering they were getting pulled off the dock. Once Tara was docked and ready to go, of course there were already another two vessels waiting for assistance. When the dock isn't busy, it's not busy but when it gets busy, it gets BUSY. So I helped the 2 vessels dock and that was that.

The rest of the day was filled with pick ups and drop offs just as it usually is.I got a lot of practice in the launch. Nothing really out of the ordinary or interesting besides what I've described. I saw a dead fish...