The Sulfur Mine

Prior to the Deepwater rig disaster, even a good day offshore in the Gulf of Mexico could be mildly disturbing. Amidst tumbling dolphins and meandering sea turtles, a pervasive despair has always lingered somewhere among the oil & gas rigs that dot the cerulean plain. Today nothing lingers any longer in long stretches of Lousianna's marshlands, more than 100 miles covered in sludge and eerie in the silence of death.

Passed 09:00, our engineer Alex and I start sanding cap-rails beneath a cloudless sky, hoping to finish painting them by noon. At nearly 14:00 with the temp around 100, we're done, relaxing on the bridge when a radio call sends us back into action. It takes little time to crank engines and toss lines, a little more to wait on traffic--your chance to make a break. This time, we're only pulling forward toward the back of slip one, but there's a tug and barge on the west end and I'm forced to "top around", pivot 180, to get the boat under the crane. At 165-ft long, our boat has 10 to 12 feet of clearance broadside in the slip--but only with clear dock space on both sides. The boat pivots quickly and on a dime without current.

We secure under the crane; it looks like we'll wait, I cut the engines. It takes hours some days for all the trucks to come and go, a giant red crane, maybe 5 stories tall, swapping lifts from truck to boat. Alex hitches a ride to the store for cigarettes; he's met an out-of-work drifter living out of his car in the dusty parking lot, waiting for weather to clear and for his job to start on the clean up. Enough work done for the day, I chill on the bridge and watch the shuffling boats, listen to the local radio news that consumes my life. I check lifts as they arrive for destination: Ensco 87, a jack-up drilling rig, a mobile, three-legged monster. It's not a typical run for us, and I've got two prior locations charted. I call another boat for verification.

"It's in Main Pass 296, you'll see it just passed the sulfur mine."
I look at Alex, did he say "sulfur mine?" Apparently.

The sea floor of the Gulf has been divided into a grid and sold off to the oil companies. These boxes are designated on nautical charts with magenta lines and take up nine square nautical miles, each block with an area name and number. The seabed off Virginia was destined for sale before the recent disaster, but plans are delayed. I find MP 296 on the chart and plot a course. It'll be the furthest east I've been in the Gulf, having run the boat from Galveston, TX to the Mississippi and back multiple times. For someone who used to watch whales in the Sea of Cortez, drive ice tours in Alaska, I accept small victories at work in the Gulf, and going someplace I've never been is a good day. The oil slick will be out there; it's taken over the waters east of Baptiste Collette. It's now one, giant slick. But taking the boat offshore for sunset is preferable to sitting at the dock, and I'll be relieved of the watch at 18:00.

When dock workers go for chains and binders to secure the deck load, it's time to roll. I sign paperwork and bring the boat off the dock, trying to be patient, letting fishing boats get settled. It's also easy to get worked up and tense if someone is threatening a collision. I once gave a wide berth to a shrimp boat in the Cameron jetties on the Calcasieu River, where he's not supposed to be fishing. "Thank you, Cap," he said. "We'll pay our child support this month."

When I'm relieved of the watch at 18:00, we're barreling east toward the sulfur mine, making 23 knots with a deck load, consuming about 300 gallons of diesel per hour with throttles on the dash. I'm free to observe from deck, to watch the Gulf go by with Alex and Chris, the younger guys, engineers. They smoke cigarettes, appreciate the adventure of travel at sea. We watch the sun spill into western clouds, and there's the sulfur mine, a rusty, orange behemoth, three platforms connected by cat-walk, all of it ablaze in the amber of sunset.