The Hass Vet's
Assn
has welcomed the MSC gang with open arms. Hope the Kawishiwi
group
does to. We loved those ships.
I was up in the mothball fleet last fall with a select group of Hass reprobates and got a run throught the ship. This was a week before the Hass reunion. The Kawishiwi was just outboard the Hass and I have photos of the nest as we were approaching. It looks like the elephant's graveyard.
September 25, 2010 / I'm cleaning out my attic and have
bags of hats,
including these:
I've got lots of others. Those are only the oilers I commanded. I generally don't wear the hats with scrambled eggs on them. In uniform I do wear my scrambled eggs but only on what we call a "high pressure hat" in the maritime (combination cover in the navy). These are the hats I do wear. My HASS hat for obvious braggin' rights. The Bamboola Maritime hat is a joke based on the book 'Steaming to Bamboola" by Chris Buckley (William F's black sheep son who went to sea). See if you can find the book. It's a hoot. You don't know whether to laugh or cry, it's so close to home about the industry. Bamboola was what a Filipino Chief Steward mispronounced Bermuda as. I loaned it out to one of my crew on NODAWAY and it made the rounds of the ship. Later he went back to fishing in Alaska and working part time on Alaska Ferries.. He got it started there and it became almost a cult book. A friend of his had hats made up and he sent me a couple and the only one with scrambled eggs on it. Go to Commanders Page MODELING MORNING LIGHT 1:300 SCALE NODAWAY and Fleet Tug HASSAYAMPA The Jeremiah O'Brien (J O'B to the crew) will be making memorial cruises on May 17 & 18. Underway at 0900, out the Golden Gate to Bonita Cove for memorial services and casting of wreaths, then back into the Bay for a steaming tour. Usually we go up to Richmond one day and up the Oakland estuary the other. I do an education program on the 1MC, alternating with a swing band on #3 hatch. Coffee/donuts on boarding and a BBQ lunch mid-day. Return to berth at about 1530-1600. We do the same thing during Fleet Week in early Oct. That's a three day gig. I've got a spot where we go for the Blue Angels demonstration that they fly right over the ship. I like to claim we've got skid marks on the stack. We are also doing a cruise to Stockton over the 4th of July weekend and a run to Sacramento over Labor Day, (right past the Kawishiwi). Those are one way runs with a bus back to San Francisco included.On this cruise, we don't have time to get close to the mothball fleet were the J O'B languished for decades and make a presentation. I do talk it up the fleet as best I can. Anytime I have to go to Sac'to from SFo and back, I have a pair of 10X glasses with me and I stop at the overlook in Benicia at the intersection of I-680 and Lake Herman road and commune with my old girls. All three of them, but the Hass gets most of my heart. Aside
from
that she's
moored at Pier 45 in SF near Fisherman's Wharf. Every third
weekend
of the month is steaming weekend with the boilers lit off and the
engine
rolling on a slow bell. |
