March 23rd 2009, I lost a shipmate and friend. This today will be my way of saying good bye. T.A.P. was a person that was easy to like and very hard to be mad at, he teased me out of many a bad mood when I was working on the boat. He could see the funny side of life when I could not, but had a way of showing it to me even when I did not really want to see it. He laughed at my jokes when nobody else did.
One of the strange parts of this is I am not sure if he thought of me as a friend or not. We never got together off the boat. He lived in LA. and I in TX. He worked for Marine crew I for Seismic.
I see him working and laughing, sometimes joking about how easy it would be to get hurt doing what we do. We do our jobs knowing we could be hurt or worse but try not to think about it until something like this happens. What went wrong that day??? was it the hook, the line, rogue wave, or just bad timing??? We may never know the answers to why it happened. All I know at this time is that the small boat he was in capsized, everyone and everything was tossed out. People were caught under the boat, three came out and were picked up one was not.
Coast Guard searched for him for over 72 hours, covered over 800 sq miles, never recovered him.
So goodbye my friend goodbye..
