In the past I have written about one of my nine lives being used up. I have another story of when I felt that I used up another one. During the New Years of 2000 I was working for a tug boat company. There were about 5 full time crews and boats at that time but for some reason on December 31st, 1999 the boat that I was on was the only one that had to work. On that particular boat there was myself, another deck hand, captain, mate and an engineer. The Captain and the Mate were very angry that they had to work as they wanted to watch the fireworks. Our job was to take a fuel barge to the island of Maui.
The night of the 31st of December 1999 was absolutely beautiful! The sky was so clear and the stars seemed s close that you could touch them! The ocean was like a giant pond. We were actually able to see the fireworks display from Maui even though we were far away. I had the midnight shift and I was sleeping when my Captain knocked on my door and said I needed to go to the deck for a big surprise. All of the other staff were there and my Captain and the mate said that we would have our own private fire works! They brought fireworks aboard! Very illegal! They set off a few bottle rockets that shot straight up into the air and fell onto the deck of the fuel barge.
It took about 10 seconds to realize the huge, dangerous error that they had made. The fuel barge has vents that come out of the deck and are shaped like a big upside down “U”. The reason for these are so that air is filtered through the tanks and clears any gases that can build up. The sparking rockets landed under the vents! If even one spark were to be sucked up then the whole barge would blow up along with the tug boat! There was nothing any of us could do. The other deckhand shook my hand and said “It was nice working with you Jim.”
Fortunately nothing happened. I went back to bed and the next morning the Captain asked me to quick get rid of all the evidence when we tied up to the barge. After there was a meeting and the Captain and mate begged us to never tell. From that time on they treated me like I was there best friend in the whole world! They also turned in a report about how great a job I and the other deck hand did! If the worst would of happened it would have been the biggest fireworks ever in Hawaii!