The Operative Factor

WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, YOU MAY HAVE ONLY YOURSELF TO FALL BACK ON

- Capt. Bill Pike

I seldom tell sea stories these days, but this one makes a worthwhile point. It opens on a dark night, long ago, in the Gulf of Mexico, some 120 nautical miles south of Cameron, Louisiana. The oil company I worked for at the time had done some procrastinating. As a result, a hurricane had gotten so close to one of its semisubmersibles that helicop ters could no longer land. Winds were too strong.

So now, it was the M/V Point Liberty’s job to finish evacuating the rig—whisk the remaining employees safely back to Cameron—and, so far, we’d done okay. We’d gotten everyone safely aboard, although each time the big personnel basket had come down from the rig with four more roustabouts, slamming the Liberty