Best Summer Job - Sailing the High Seas at 16 - Part II

Thirty years down the road I can still taste the adventure. Looking out from monkey’s island, the most elevated deck on the icebreaker immediately above the bridge, I can feel the gusting wind working itself into a gale and storming waves are gyrating the vessel propelling us like a corkscrew. Even 60 feet above the water’s surface, salt spray soaks through permeating the air each time the bow crashes into the grey Atlantic steel.

Although the Louis dwarfed other ships in the Coast Guard fleet her mass was as nothing in the open ocean. In the couple of storms I experienced we were tossed about like so much jetsam. There was always a quiet undertone of vulnerability, of risk. In this expansive environment where sea kisses sky there was ample opportunity to experience, or at least reflect on humility.

Not that there was a lot of humility in this all male, testosterone charged world. For the younger members of the crew the basic life philosophy could be summed up as work hard, play harder. For some there was a slight variation, work hard at avoiding work to stay fresh for some real serious play. Our engine room oiler friend really pushed the envelope on this approach.

In early August, the Cornwallis was docked in Dartmouth prior to another run to repair, paint and replace buoys off the coast of Nova Scotia. I was called into the personnel office one morning and told that I’d have to pack my bags and head for home as the person that I’d been relieving was returning from leave. To soften the blow, I was advised that I might get a call to join another ship over the next couple of weeks.

The call came much sooner than expected. I was summoned to the personnel office that same afternoon before I had even fully packed up or said goodbye to my Pictou buddies and friends that I had made on board.

Asked if I would consider working on an icebreaker and being flown to Montreal where it was in drydock at Vickers Shipyard, I nearly catapulted out of my chair in my eagerness to accept. Personnel guy who had metamorphosed in a few short hours from Mr. Prick to Mr. Congeniality told me to take a week to get “my personal affairs in order” and then join the Louis.

I had only just turned 17 and my last year of high school was to get underway in a couple of weeks. A six-week voyage in the arctic would not get me back until mid-October. My father, worried about the possibility of my never resuming school, did not support my decision. I left for Montréal in defiance.

Vickers was in the eastern part of the city only steps away from some fine working class brasseries on Ste. Catherine East. The crew had made themselves at home in these beer and pool emporiums over the many weeks they had spent in drydock. You could say that for many of us sobriety during off work hours was a highly suspect state of mind.

And let’s not forget the times, alcohol was not the only mind altering substance in vogue. Some enterprising lads found a connection downtown in the Disco Araignée. The one time I visited this labyrinthine nightspot it was bursting at the sequins, pulsating dance on every square foot of floor space, bodies jammed and jostling, strobing lights careening, voices no competition for the volume, volume, volume.

It was really a paean to debauch, a bacchanal workout, a homage to peacocks everywhere. Dilated pupils and perma-press smiles were the norm and so was the absence of women. None of us heterosexuals were going to get lucky there except of course to score some of those happy substances, those instant laughter smoky remedies.

Our circus life in Montréal finally came to an end. We were a bit the worse for wear having succumbed night after night to a variety of liquid grains and those soporific natural herbs and spices. On board we lazed in the netting back aft suspended above the stern deck and cooled by the river’s eddying breezes. Sorel, Québec City, Rivière-du-loup, Tadoussac, Matane all bid us adieu as we made our way out into the Gulf homeward bound to Nova Scotia.

There were a few beer soaked nights of stagger, dancing in Dartmouth’s finest watering places as final preparations were made for the six-week north trip. The alpha males took the opportunity to stoke up on some lovin’ and the occasional fisticuffs. Those with families headed home for a last cuddle with kids and the missus.

The third and final installment of the Best Summer Job will be posted later this month.