Port Fourchon

We load after midnight, leave Venice at 0200, down river and offshore before dawn. This time we hang a right and head west toward the Texas border, bound for the Eugene Island block, the first of multiple stops that will have us crisscrossing the Gulf before day's end. It's still flat-ass calm and sometime after sunrise--for the first time in months--the water turns a beautiful blue. We're the furthest west we've been in some time, in 700 feet of water. Upon closer inspection at first location, it's still covered by a sheen, a thin, diesel-like skin, a diaphanous membrane. Tiny particles sweep by with the current, but no thick globules of orange goo. I guess that's what the Coast Guard, NOAA and BP mean by "no more oil offshore". It must be too thin to skim or burn, but it's most certainly there. Staring at it for long enough, some of the particles move against the current, then dart every which way. There are bugs on the surface.

At the end of the day, we've covered more than two hundred miles, nearly all of it veiled by the sheen. We're bound for Port Fourchon (pronounced Foo-Shon), the heart of oil field operations, the busiest port in the world in terms of boat traffic--not tonnage. Ports along the Gulf coast are largely a rag-tag affair of run-down and worn-out facilities. From Venice on the Mississippi to Port Aransas, TX, docks are eroding and collapsing, creating hazards for boat operators. I could hardly believe the condition of the docks when I first arrived. With all the money the oil field generates, it's baffling that facilities are this run-down. Apparently profits go into pockets, not upkeep. Port Aransas is the worst. It's a constant battle to place fenders, to keep jagged and rusty metal beams from tearing up the hull or random debris from getting sucked into a propeller. I've seen nicer docks in third-world countries.

But Port Fourchon is the exception, the jewel of the oil field. At the terminus of Bayou Lafourche (pronounced La-Foosh), an industrial metropolis reigns, and it's a city that never sleeps. Literally thousands of boats are loading, unloading, transiting in and out of Belle Pass at any given time. It's like rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles or Atlanta except with big boats--and no brakes. It's impossible to describe how frustrating and nerve-racking it can be to maneuver a 165-foot boat in dense traffic, the VHF radio a cacophony of transmissions all stepping on each other. But tonight, it's not so bad.

We're bound for C-Port One, a cavernous, open-air building, a modern megalith visible for 30 or 40 miles on a clear day. It contains nine slips of equal size, each fitting two crewboats or one larger supply vessel where the aft deck can be loaded or unloaded out of the rain. It's a nice facility really, the entire floor--acres and acres--all covered in brick, each slip with its own fuel and water station.

It can still be a bitch getting into the slip, depending on wind and current, and especially if it's already occupied. We're to pull into slip 5 and drifting into view, of course there's already a boat there. It's the Anna Mae, a well-run crewboat, friends of ours. The tide's flooding so I top around, crank the bow thruster, let it warm. I haven't done this in awhile, been in Venice for some time. With the slip occupied, it leaves me about two feet on either side of the boat, not much for a vessel this size. I spin the rudder to starboard and begin to bump the #1 and #4 engines into a pivot, moving slowly, tucking the port quarter just under the bow of the Anna Mae, letting the current bring our bow around. I don't need the thruster and soon we're secure. I make a head call, catch up the logs, take a sounding stick to the fuel tank. We've burned 3,500 gallons.