Weather patterns

After spending the first 10 days of my time back on the boat

at the dock,

I was nice to finally get underway again.

The positives for being at the dock are

TV

Internet

and 

calls home.

The negatives are

endless emails from the office

endless calls from the office,

did I mention endless emails from the office?

So it was nice to get out of town

if only for 48 hrs or so.

Once we got to the entrance of Freeport, Texas

which was our destination

the seas turned a bit nasty,

just nasty enough to prevent us from getting off the tow wire

and into pushing mode.

Which meant,

"weather patterns."

Basically what that is,

is we just run really slow, just barely moving

and we do circles out in the Gulf

but we stay within 10 miles or so of the entrance

in case the weather improved enough for us to do

what we have to do

to start pushing, instead of towing, the barge safely.

Doing circles, going nowhere works on your head.

I overheard the captain explaining what its like, to do weather patterns, to his wife.

"Honey, get in the car and go to the mall parking lot.

Put the care in first gear

and drive around the outside of the parking lot.

Go no faster than 5 MPH.

You can not go into the mall,

just keep driving around the parking lot in a circle,

for 24 hours.

That's what it's like to do "weather patterns."