Distraction has been my special companion for the last several months. First there was the holiday season; then in January several time-consuming extracurricular activities kicked in. It's been five weeks since I've posted on this blog, for instance, and I can't tell you where the time has gone.
Many of you may know that although I spent my life at sea and on tugs, about eight years ago, at the age of 59, I swallowed the anchor and came ashore to a job in the office. A lifetime of living one particular way can get under a man's skin - it becomes part of his view of the world. So coming ashore full time, later in life as I did, was a serious adjustment. It's one I'm still making.
Early in the transition, I began to think of working life ashore as "life through the windshield" - another name for the constant distraction. Shore folk spend a lot of time in their cars, and most of it's not quality time, either. While driving you worry about the day's issues, take calls (in defiance of the law), and intermittently mumble curses at other drivers. When you arrive at your destination, focus is similarly difficult to achieve; your omnipresent smartphone peppers you with emails and messages, along with the occasional phone call.
Now, at your office, when outside influences invade to interrupt your chain of thought, that's to be expected. The disconcerting thing about shore life is that you never escape from that. Work pursues you home, phones ring at night, and email must be responded to at all hours, or you risk being judged careless. Don't drop the ball!
And even worthy "spare time" and charitable activities exert their own stress, though they certainly deliver rewards, too.
This isn't a litany of complaint - I'm richly blessed, and very grateful. I guess it's just a description of my less-than-complete adjustment to shore life here in the United States, where life is a little crazy and distracted anyhow. I do sometimes miss the orderliness of being at sea. (And maybe I also miss my youth - but not much can be done about that.)
But is life at sea today still the cloistered, orderly existence I remember?
When I would report aboard a ship back in the '70s and '80s, I used to put my mind in a work groove, and zero in on that - I'd write letters home of course, and call home when I had a chance, but my main focus was my job. When on watch, I did my job - period. No other activity was supposed to interfere with watchkeeping on the bridge in my day - we were even prohibited from sitting down. When I wasn't on watch I ate, slept, exercised, studied and read. In that monkish life, my world ended at the horizon.
The horizon expanded sometimes at night, via sessions on the shortwave (do seamen still do that?) My radio would range the night sky searching for scratchy news of the unending human scrum, and the things they talked about seemed very far away indeed from our bubble of racket and light, our little human island in the immensity of the sea.
I read things I could never muster the time or discipline to read ashore; the only Tolstoy and Dostoevsky I ever read were at sea. I lived in those books - I regretted each book's end. I read, and when I got done had to sit down and write about what I'd read. Letters to friends, or to girls - foolish things, but keenly felt.
Tugs were different. I was older and married by then, and separations were shorter. When I first joined, "20 and 10" - 20 days on, 10 days off - was the norm. We worked in the harbor mainly, so we got to the phone on the pier quite a lot (no cell phones then), and once in a while I even made a quick trip home for a few hours. But the fundamental work time vs. home time division still held sway; on the boat, work was serious and took most of my attention.
Nowadays I read a lot about distraction invading shipboard life. Distraction, fatigue, and the paperwork overload have been mentioned as factors in many accidents and groundings - including instances where the mate on watch, probably overworked and short of rest, simply fell asleep. Crews are smaller, too. In the 30,000-some GT tankers I sailed in, a typical crew was 32 persons; today, I hear of crews for much larger ships numbering half that.
A Master is now expected to be a "manager" - and that distinction also seems to involve an erosion of his authority, as the office takes advantage of 24/7 connectivity to intrude more than ever into the Master's affairs. On the modern ship, does a day go by without colloquy with the office - how different is the Master's job from mine ashore, today?
Well, there's one big difference between distraction ashore and distraction at sea, certainly: ashore, distraction may be irritating, or result in my failing to return a phone call. But at sea, a tired or distracted watch officer can be the cause of accidents or even deaths. Distraction - like many other things in our seagoing environment - carries more serious consequences at sea than it might in other settings. Do the folks who create these demands - many of whom don't work in our environment - understand that?
We don't know the cause of the collision caught on video below (or click the link just above), but it would seem likely that inattention - whether caused by distraction or not - might have played a role:
Certainly, people are complicated. But many of those problems are actually caused by distraction and work overload - like having to do paperwork on watch. Surely some of those problems could be mitigated by things like treating crews with respect for their professional skill; providing adequate manpower for the work that needs to be done; and fostering company loyalty with fair treatment.
And here's one very good use for that 24/7 connectivity - how about moving some of that paperwork burden back to the office?
I think most "crew" problems aren't just problems with the crew. Many of them sound more like problems with crew management; they begin at the top, not at the bottom.
How do you view the problems of distraction and fatigue? Are you with a company that has dealt with them successfully - or do you have personal strategies that have helped you to cope? Share your wisdom and experience in the Comments section!