EP 415. High Seas Adventures

 

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where today I have got John Dunaway, the pilot, in the studio. John, how the heck are you?

John Dunaway: I’m doing pretty good, Ramsay. How about yourself?

Ramsey Russell: I’m doing good. You’ve lived, an adventurous life on the high seas, it sounds like, and I know you to be a pilot from our mutual friend Gene Campbell. I know, I know. We just hadn’t quite crossed paths at his camp yet, but I know we both hunt down there with him. And I’ve heard you got some pretty incredible stories now. I just cannot imagine being, when I go to foreign countries. I’m flying over the ocean. And it’s kind of weird sometimes when you look down and you see that map and it’s like for, for just thousands of miles underneath you is just water. I’ve always imagined, who are the people that are on those boats and commanding those ships and just going all over the high seas? That’s always captured my imagination. What’s it really like, John?

John Dunaway: Well, it can be as much of a dream as you want it to be, or then sometimes it’s just the reality of this is your day to day life. And I can’t believe I got to go back out there and hump chain or do whatever. So, I mean, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I know at the beginning I had some struggles with it internally, being just, a young guy and thinking that I was missing out on all kinds of stuff ashore, and I would let that weigh on me until I finally accepted that was where I wanted to be. And then it truly became an adventure. And maybe I just let it be that in my own head, but it was always an adventure. I look forward to it.

Ramsey Russell: I think that life on a boat traveling around like that should be an adventure or could be an adventure. That’s what I’ve always grown up seeing in television and in real life and everything else. I just cannot imagine shoving off port down in Houston and however many days later showing up in a foreign country way across the ocean. I just can’t even imagine that I’ve been out on saltwater. We don’t go out very far, John. I can’t imagine being out smack in the middle of the ocean. Let’s start off like this. Where are you from, and where’d you grow up and what was growing up like?

John Dunaway: Yeah, so I was actually born in Brazil. My mom’s brazilian, and my parents were married and living down there. I was born in Niterói, which is right across the bay from Rio, Rio de Janeiro that most people know of, and lived down there just a little bit. When I was younger, my dad was still going to sea, and then we came back here to Houston, where his side of the family is from, and I’ve been there ever since.

Piloting a Big Boat

And then we do, we start on what I call little baby ships and they move you up through tonnage every few months.

Ramsey Russell: Well, see, was he also in the business of being a pilot of shipping?

John Dunaway: He was. I mean, my great grandparents owned a dredging fleet, some tugboats and shell yards, and they were in the tug and barge business, and then got into dredges, and my grandfather did it, and then my dad did it, and then here I am, in the same place pretty much, except I didn’t ever work on tugging barges, so working on ships and being playing around in the water is truly in my blood.

Ramsey Russell: How big a ship are we talking about, John? How big a ship have you driven across? I’m just trying to put this in scale of, how big a boat we’re talking about.

John Dunaway: Yeah. So when I was going to sea, so I went to sea for ten years before I got into the pilot stuff and back then, the biggest ship I was on just shy of 600ft. So just kind of a standard Panamax size. And then these days in the port of Houston, we’re moving a little over 100,000 gross tons and a little bit over 1100ft in length.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, that’s a pretty big boat, isn’t it?

John Dunaway: Yeah, they’re. It’s funny that when I pull up alongside them, right, because we climb on and off, usually from a smaller boat that, the little pilot boat that takes us out to the ship, when you come up on them, like, man, that thing is huge, right? And then you get up there and it doesn’t look that big, probably because I do it all the time and once I get up there, I have a hard time telling difference between like, like an 800 footer and a 1100 footer. I’m just like, man, it just looks kind of little from up here.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. I mean, that’s several football fields long. I mean, yeah, that’s massive. How wide? Yeah, that’s a massive ship. When was when you’re becoming a pilot, when you’re becoming a boat captain like you’ve been doing, do you, do they start you off small? Do they just, once you get through some kind of training, they put you into a big daddy.

John Dunaway: Yeah. So, I mean, every port is different the way they train. But here in Houston we have a three year apprenticeship. We call it a deputy program. And you ride for several months with people, senior pilots that look over everything and check you off. And then we do, we start on what I call little baby ships and they move you up through tonnage every few months. And so you build, right, you build your confidence, but also your ability, right? Because a big ship, at the end of the day, they all kind of maneuver the same, they do the same things, but there’s a lot more force, a lot more momentum involved and so you can’t wing it near as much on a big one as you can like these little baby ships. So, yeah, it’s a three years of stair stepping along with additional training and going to simulators and going to manned models. And then eventually, at the end of three years, rock and roll, you know.

Ramsey Russell: You start coming up to a port or you’re out in the middle of the ocean. How long does it take to stop a ship that size or to accelerate a ship that size or to turn a ship that size?

John Dunaway: Yeah. So every ship’s a little bit different, obviously, depending on the size and the draft. But I mean, if you go from full ahead to stop engines, it’s going to take you at least 2 miles, I mean, a little bit more, even though they’ll just keep going unless you go. You go astern and all that to try to slow it down. But you can’t do that from those high speeds. It’s not an outboard, right? You can’t just throw it neutral, throw it in reverse, bang on it, and all of a sudden you just come to a screeching halt. You better think of stuff early and prepare accordingly.

Ramsey Russell: Is there a lot of tedium involved with on those overnight halls?

John Dunaway: Say that again.

Ramsey Russell: Is there a lot of tedium? You just set your compass, Baron, to go from here to there, and. And that’s what you do. What is it to drive in a boat like that? I’m going to imagine, I’m just sitting behind the wheel, drinking a cup of coffee, looking out over the horizon, following the compass Baron, hoping for the best.

John Dunaway: I mean, when you’re at sea, long periods of times, like you leave Houston, and say we go to, like, Buenos Aires, Argentina or something. It’s about 18 days to get there. Yeah, I left Virginia one time and we went down to Cape Town to take bunkers and then we were going to Durban to drop off some locomotives, that was 24 days. Wow, there’s a lot of ocean or going to the Middle East, you leave Houston, go over the Atlantic, go through the med transit, the Suez canal, and all the way down hook around to get into the Persian Gulf, and there’s like 33 days. So it’s a lot of doing what you said, getting up, drinking lots of coffee, staring out into the oblivion, making sure that the compass is still pointed in the right direction and contemplating a lot of life.

Ramsey Russell: I bet you do. In between break, when you take a break from driving, do you just, like, go jog around the boat or something to stay active? What’s that like? What is life on a ship for 24 days or 18 days going to Argentina? I go to Argentina, it takes 8 hours out of Dallas, 9 hours, you know. Yeah, but, but 18 days.

John Dunaway: 18 days, yeah. Coming back from one time.

Ramsey Russell: What is life on the ship like.

John Dunaway: Man, life on the ship becomes fairly routine. It’s always funny that, like, everybody thinks, oh, the captain, but I think one of the most pivotal people on the ship is actually the Steward department, who does all the cooking. Because if you have a terrible Stewart department, like, you can watch the morale of the ship go down in a heartbeat. You start to look forward. Like the excitement of my day used to be, say, when I was not captain, right there, you got a third mate, a second mate and a chief mate, and they stand watches. And so you’re going to stay and watch for 8 hours a day. You’re generally going to do 4 hours overtime. But let’s say, like when I was a chief man, right, I’d go to get up to 3:45AM to be at work, then go to the bridge. This is at where at sea. And I would look forward to getting relieved for breakfast, to run down there and look at the menu, like, what’s on the menu for today?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, the meal, the supper and the lunch is always a highlight.

John Dunaway: Yeah, exactly. So I mean, look, a ship is made out of steel and saltwater is always trying to destroy steel. It’s a never ending battle. And literally every day is about maintenance. I mean, there’s always something break in and if it’s not broken, it’s because you’re doing PM, preventative maintenance on it. So, man, I got, you just get up and you come up with a game plan. You got to have long term plan what you want to do, especially if you got 18 days, like you can tear up a lot of stuff.

Merchant Marine Academy

I mean, you just make it happen. It was like prison in a way. It was like a good prison.

Ramsey Russell: And do you pack a bunch of books and I mean, I’m thinking, okay, the work shift, you’re here, but you’ve still got some me time. What do you do? What do you do when you’re stuck at Ocean like that? Read a book, go to the gym. What do you do?

John Dunaway: Yeah, so when I started, I mean, when I was a cadet, I went to the Merchant Marine Academy, which is in New York. And a lot of people don’t even know it’s one of the five federal academies. But we spent a whole year going to sea and there was no Internet on the ship back then. And so, yeah, books and journals and for me, working out was a big thing. And then even at the end of my career, right, I got out of school and I went to sea for ten years, we just got the Internet the last probably like three years of it, and it was spotty, you couldn’t do a lot in the beginning. I would get, we could get emails two days a week and we would write them on the computer, on a thumb drive, drop them off, and the captain would send out emails two times a week. my wife would write something back, and God forbid, if something was actually going wrong, you had to go use the sat phone. He’s always cringe, like, oh, my gosh, this thing is so expensive. I’m like, this better be really important. We’re burning up serious dollars. So you learned to find stuff to do, right? So you. You got to carry your luggage to get to the ship, and half the time, you got to carry it up there, so you start minimizing it. Having an iPad was incredible. When those started coming out, I could put so many books on it.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

John Dunaway: But it was a big thing. Everybody always had external hard drives loaded with TV shows and movies. You’d be trading with everybody. So lots of movies, TV, books. And I found that working out was huge. And I mean, I had junk, like, the first ship I worked on for long periods of time did not have a gym. There wasn’t enough space on it. And so we were in Norfolk, Virginia, and I got this stuff on my Craigslist guy came to the gate, and I got a bunch of Olympic bar and a curl bar and a bunch of steel plates. And then I ended up. And I throw that out on the stern. It was back on the port quarter, actually, and it lived outside all the time. So as the voyage went on, the bar would be more rustier and rustier by the day, living out there. And I would take sand and I wrapped sand in bags, like trash bags, and then covered in duct tape and all kinds of stuff. And I made my own medicine balls. And we’d always have lumber around for. We use it for dunnage, like stack under stuff or shore up pieces of cargo so they don’t move around. I mean, everything from a, like a GHD kind of tool to boxes to jump on. I mean, you just make it happen. It was like prison in a way. It was like a good prison.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what I’d imagine. But I think, I do a lot of these road trips and stuff, drive a lot and just getting out and doing squats or walking or stopping at a gym or something. Just to move a little bit, just to do something different, make your body move a little bit. It makes all the difference in the world.

John Dunaway: Absolutely. I mean, look, I see it these days, right? So I’m a harbor pilot, and I work for two weeks moving ships up and down the channel. It’s always like, the engineering. You see, people come up with, like, the ingenuity of what tools they found to weld together to make something to work out with. And, like, 75% of them have a pull up bar on the bridge. And so that’s another great one. You’re trying to pass 4 hours of time staring out in the middle of the ocean. You can only drink so much coffee until you get tired of it. But you just walk outside, hop out a couple pull ups, or drop down on the deck, like you said, do push ups. I used to get my watch partners into it. Like you’re talking about, man. We would do little workouts, like push ups, pull ups, air squats on watch. Because, I mean, when you’re in the middle of the ocean, you could see for a long ways. Yeah, nothing’s really popping up in a hurry. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: you mentioned earlier about the meals being the highlight. What are examples of really good meals, and meals you’re like, oh, gosh, I can’t wait to get on another ship.

John Dunaway: Man, every now and then they’d have this vegetable lasagna that was. Must have been made by Cisco or something. And I think that was probably the most foul thing. It looked like it was drenched in Alfredo sauce. And almost every ship in the US fleet has it some point when they break that out, they’re like, man, I’m going to stop. I’m eating peanut butter and jelly today. Like, I’m going to. That’s a hard pass. And then, man, I had this incredible steward. He was the chief cook. My last captain job, he was from the Middle East. And this guy would cook from scratch. I mean, he would just lay loaded with flavor. I remember he asked me, we were in Fort Lauderdale. We had brought all these yachts that we loaded in Canada, and we’d come around and discharged them. And we knew we were going to go load ammo in sunny point, and we had to go to the Middle East with it, take it over to the Persian Gulf. So it was a long trip, and he came to me, he’s like, listen, normally we order stuff through a chandler and all kinds of people. He’s like, could I go, to a market? I know that there’s a Middle Eastern market here and get all kinds of spices and stuff. Like, here’s masters cash. I went to the safe and got out. The money is like, here’s a couple hundred bucks. Run wild with it, keep it worth every penny.

Ramsey Russell: We’re just talking about killing the hours on. And for a guy to just pop a Cisco frozen lasagna in the oven, he must have been bored out of his skull. I mean, it seems like if I were a cook, I’d want to cook from scratch. I got all the time in the world and nothing else to do. Why not, man?

John Dunaway: That’s the reality. If you were idle, like, I’d watch people that didn’t do anything, that just would watch movies in their off time, and they were typically the most unhappy because they just laid around by themselves. They weren’t socializing, they weren’t active. Right. Endorphins from working out. We’re just engaging your mind. Like, 30 days with 24 hours is a lot of time to just lay and do nothing.

Modern Era Shipping

I mean, we moved bulk pipe, we moved windmill blades, we moved locomotives and generators. 

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. What kind of stuff are y’all moving? Everything. I mean, what kind of stuff do you move on ships like this? When you’re transporting the modern era around the world? Were you the guy that had all those shipping containers on the deck or down below? Is that what y’all were moving and what-

John Dunaway: We moved a little bit of that. But I spent the bulk of my career on these heavy lift ships, and so they had. We started out with two 200 ton cranes, and then at the end of my career, we had twin 450s and a single 175. It actually had three cranes on that ship. And so we specialized in. We call it heavy lift, especially things that are odd sizes or going to places that don’t have their own infrastructure, anything from old cars to wooden crates with everything. I mean, we moved bulk pipe, we moved windmill blades, we moved locomotives and generators. One time we had to load all this stuff, and, yeah, we loaded in Houston and took it to Papua New guinea for Exxon. And it was actually two of the largest oil rigs at the time, and they had chopped it up into pieces, and they had figured out how they could ship it down there. They had a massive project going on in Papua New guinea. They had found, I think, is like LNG or LPG, some kind of gas. Loaded up a portion of this oil rig, and as many pieces as they could, filled the whole ship up and hauled it down there. And there were a couple of shipments it took to do it, so if it’ll fit, they find a way to get it on there.

Ramsey Russell: What are some of the most interesting places you’ve taken? I mean, Papa New guinea, that’s pretty, pretty remote, pretty interesting. What are some of the other interesting places you’ve been to, whether remote or not? And, yeah, when you get there, do you, like, get off the boat and go into Papua New guinea? Do you go into some of these places?

John Dunaway: it all depends on what cargo we had and how long we were going to be there. But I made every effort possible. I mean, go a couple days out, sleep if I needed to go ashore, because I loved it, right. It was an adventure to me. I was like, yeah. And so, yeah, if we had time, we’d go. And as I moved up, became, like, a chief mate. There were times where I didn’t get to because I was responsible for cargo, and I just couldn’t. I didn’t stand a watch. I couldn’t break away. I hadn’t be there the whole time. So, I mean, it run ashore for, like, 2 hours just to go have a little meal, a local meal or something. Papua New guinea was a trip, actually. Did not get to go ashore because we got there and there. There’s, like, raging fire going on outside of the gates. I’m like, what is going on? And they were having a little civil war.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, my gosh.

John Dunaway: Yeah. So they’re still very tribal, and the guys working at the port called themselves the coastals, the coasties, and the guy, the highlanders were who lived up in the mountains, and they had had some, like, little. I don’t know what happened, why somebody killed the other one. And so it turned into, like, a little mini civil war, so they started burning stuff in the city, and I was only the second mate at the time, and so the chief mate was like, look, I need you to drive this crane. I don’t trust the other guys. I will keep you on the clock 24 hours OT just if you stay here. I was like, man, I really want to go ashore. But it was hard to pass up 24 hours of OT straight for, like, three days. I’m like, but a bunch of the guys did get to go ashore, and in the midst of it, man, the. The bus they were on, they started attacking with rocks and breaking out the windows and everything, and, like, they ended up jumping off the bus and running through town and ran back to the gate, and then the port closed. They closed these giant gates on it, literally. Exxon showed up like a convoy, like these armored Mercedes picked up all their personnel. Everybody was working there, and they’re like, listen, they’re secure in the port or closed down for tomorrow. Like, get the cranes back on board. Let me, when I say back on board, just because they pivot out over the dock and remember we were on standby to where the chief mate actually put axes out. It’s like, what is this about? Like, if this turns south, we have to be ready to cut the lines and literally get off the dock. It’s like, oh, this is serious. All right. And, man, these guys showed up one day. I’m like, where were all yesterday? Because they didn’t work. like, we were fighting. They had a Nokia phone, and over him showing a picture of this guy that they killed with a machete, I’m like, dude, this is wild. I love reading old books, but, like, reminds me of people showing scalps, like, when the natives and the, all the Anglos were fighting each other and killing each other and showing proof of it. I’m like, man, this is pretty brutal that you’re showing this off, like, with pride.

Gaining Perspective

It’s pretty wild. it definitely. I grew up so much, and I gained so much perspective from that ten years.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I think. I think Papua New guinea is where they used to bowl skulls and stuff. I think that’s right. you hear about those tribes that used to shrink the heads?

John Dunaway: Oh, yeah, that’s where, um. Was it Roosevelt? No. Whose kid was it? They went missing over there. They claimed he was cannibalized, but he actually probably. They think he drank. Yeah, it was quite a trip. That was definitely, seeing those places, it’s a different walk of life. I got to go to about 35 countries in that ten years, and from Papua New guinea to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I mean, west coast of Africa. That’s a trip in and of itself. go to the Middle East, India, Singapore, Philippines, South Korea, China, Japan. I mean, Yemen. Or not Yemen. Sorry. Oman. It’s pretty wild. it definitely. I grew up so much, and I gained so much perspective from that ten years.

Ramsey Russell: I guess you did.

John Dunaway: Yeah. And it’s like, you’re not going to curated, manicured places, like, they don’t clean up the port, so it has a nice facelift. Like, you get ashore or you deal with the locals, you deal with the working class, and you see what it’s really like. And I always appreciate that.

Ramsey Russell: Have you ever been out in any storms? I mean, how do you travel across the, the oceans and not go through a storm? And what is, what’s the worst storms you’ve been through? And what’s that like? I’ve just, I’ve seen these videos where massive walls of water, and the boats are just plowing for. The ships are just plowing through them, and I just can’t imagine.

John Dunaway: Yeah, I remember the first one. It was the first ship I ever got on. It was a container ship out of LA, and we were going over to Japan. Everyone, they’re like writing on the board. The cabin’s secure for sea, right? We’re going to have to run into the storm. There’s no way to get out of it. There was a typhoon over there, like a hurricane in this side of the globe. I was pumped. I was like, this is going to be awesome. I remember turning to me, he says, that is going to be the last time you’re ever going to say, you just wait till you get through this, and then you tell me if you’re still excited about a storm, because that was my first time at sea. The whole allure of it, like, this would be awesome. It was terrible. I got, I literally got ejected out of my bed onto the deck. My computer, I had not put all the stuff in the drawers and truly secured it like I should have because I was a dumb young cadet. It ejected my computer, literally all the books because I had all my stuff for school I had to do. Threw it on the deck. I mean, when they say they toss your room, it literally was like a washing machine. Everything was thrown all over the creation, and if it wasn’t closed and locked or cured, it was scattered about. It was not fun at all. I mean, in other times, I can recall we were coming back from the Middle East. We had loaded a ton of military rolling stock, and we had just come out of the Suez and we were headed home and we got into this storm. And remember, the captain came. I was the chief, man. The captain came up in the morning and it had been dark, right? I was like, man, captain, I’m pretty sure those tanks, we had a couple, bunch of abrams out on deck. Like, I’m pretty sure those tanks are moving. I think they’re loose. He’s like, well, as soon as we get daylight, confirm it, I’ll relieve you. So he relieved me early, and I went out there, and sure enough, I mean, you got to think. And Abrams tanks, like, 65 tons, and can you imagine the suspension that they have, like, the shocks to make for that thing to be able to run around in the desert and do everything it does? So when you secure it with chain. We had about 80 tons worth of chain on it, so more than the thing weighs. But the seas were so bad, we were pounding into them head on that they were actually compressing with the shocks, and it would make that tank compress the shocks, and when it did, it would make the chain loose. Yeah. And then they started moving. They were actually. They had found enough slack, and they were rolling within their own track. Now, the track hadn’t moved from where it was on the deck, but the tank itself was able to roll around inside of its own tracks, trying to go forward and after. I mean, he slowed that ship down to bare steerage, put it up. I remember I had this bosun from New Orleans with me, and he went out there, and we went out on deck. I mean, we’re blowing water across the deck, right? We’re getting soaked. It’s freezing cold. Nobody else. We had the whole, like, the deck was secured for sea where nobody else could go out on deck because we’re taking water over. it’s just rushing down the deck. If you’re not careful, off you’ll go, or it’ll pin you up against the rail or something, and it’s going to do a lot of damage. And I remember we walked up there. His name was Darryl, and he goes, God damn, those mother effing tanks have going to mother effing break loose. And I turned to him, was like, they are not going to break loose. We’re going to secure these things. And, man, just the way he said it, I’ll never forget it. Like, they are not going to break.

Ramsey Russell: Well, how big were the waves? I mean, what are we talking about? If I were standing flat footed, how far am I looking up? How big are these waves in land terms or whatever? How big a wave are we talking about?

Staying Safe During Rough Weather

So, we’re dealing 20, 25 feet, little shot of 30 and dip down. And then if it’s not timed right, I mean, they’re not perfectly spaced.

John Dunaway: Yeah, I’m thinking back, they had to been in the 7 to 8 meter range. So, we’re dealing 20, 25 feet, little shot of 30 and dip down. And then if it’s not timed right, I mean, they’re not perfectly spaced. Every now and then, sure enough, the bow goes up and the bow comes down into it, and just the loudest thud that you can hear just boom. Water goes everywhere. It blows across the deck. Yeah. And we’ll be walking up there, but here come, like, climb up on the ladder real quick and get up because this ship had you walk on deck, but the center of it’s kind of elevated where the cargo hold was, and you jump up on the rail, get your feet up off the deck as it comes, blue water comes rushing down. That’s close.

Ramsey Russell: But right now, the song Edmund Fitzgerald’s going through the back of my head. Did you ever have those moments where you’re like, well, boys, the cook says, been good to know you. I mean, did you? That sounds like it to me. Going through 30 foot ways and a tank getting loose, and if it gets lopsided on my deck, it could make my boat lean a certain way. I just feel vulnerable hearing about that story.

John Dunaway: Yeah, I never got to the point where I was like, we’re going to abandon ship. Like, I don’t know if we’re going to come out of it, but there were definitely pucker moments where, like, how much stuff is going to get destroyed in this one, we were, we were bringing back rolling stock, or another time, actually, you know what? It was that same trip, and so we had some humvees up front of these tanks, and it was so rough that it. And they hadn’t secured those doors. Like, I guess they were closed, but somehow it came off. It was on the port side of the ship, and it was the driver’s side door. The waves were so bad that it literally ripped door off the Humvee that the door got loose and we couldn’t get up there because we were taking on so much water over the deck. And the cap said, look, we’re not even messing with that thing. They didn’t secure it. Not our responsibility at this point. It’s not safe for you to go up there. These are, you got to remember, these aren’t just like, your pleasure Humvee. This is fully armored Humvees from the army we’re bringing home. And it through that door forward and aft. So many times did it sheared clear off the hinges.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

John Dunaway: And that thing, that thing laid on the deck, we ended up having to lash it down and secure it for the remainder of the trip till we got home. Because it was so heavy, we couldn’t pick it up and take it anywhere. There’s just a massive weight laying down there. Like, look, just secure this thing up against the bulkhead as much as we can so it doesn’t slide around, destroy anything. There were definitely those kind of moments. You’re like, what else is going to get torn up? You know?

Ramsey Russell: What about changing the subject just a little bit? I’m thinking of a calm sea now. I’m in the middle of the ocean. How far out have you seen? I’m kind of asking several questions right now. Some of the interesting is thing you’ve seen some of the surprises, like. Like how far away from how far in between land out in the middle of the ocean, have you seen bird life? I mean, do they follow y’all ships and hang around?

John Dunaway: Literally? I mean, I’ve had them the entire crossing, the entire crossing of the Pacific, the Atlantic, you name it. There’s all kinds of different bird species. A lot of the, like the Boobies. Yeah, Ganets, and they will. I don’t know if they’ve always adapted over time or what, but they know to follow ships. And then the more, like, remote that you are, it seems like the more you gather, they get up on the bow and that wind current, right? Because you’re doing anywhere from ten to, like 18 knots. And so it generates ten to 18 knots of wind plus whatever is actually blowing in real life. And that wind hits the bow and climbs up vertical, and those birds get in that current, and they fly that wind current so they don’t have to flap, so they can cover mileage all day long. And what does the ship do going through the water? Well, it knocks flying fish literally out of the water, knocking fish out of water and they ride that current and they watch those flying fish and they dive off and they catch them. You just watch them. That’s a good way to pass 4 hours to. Yeah, watch them hunt down these flying fish, and then at night, they fly back. They all land all over the mast, and they’ve been eating food all day, and they crap all over the deck and make a huge mess. And then that leaves you stuff to go clean the next day. So, yeah, there’s all kinds of life out there.

Ramsey Russell: I guess you’ve seen whales and all that kind of stuff out in the middle of nowhere.

John Dunaway: Certainly. We used to carry this book when I was a cadet. They had it on the ship, and so later in life, I would keep. I would keep it with me and take it and we would mark off, like what different species you see. See all kinds of stuff. I had no idea what it was that time. You flip through the book. That’s what it was. Oh, cool. Check this out. you got to find stuff to do. Like you said, making an adventure.

Ramsey Russell: Any icebergs?

John Dunaway: No icebergs.

Ramsey Russell: No icebergs.

John Dunaway: Yeah, no Titanic for me.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I don’t know. Just very recently in my lifetime, I became aware that the Titanic sunk, I guess, out in the middle of the ocean. Who came to rescue? I just always assumed it was Europeans that came off the European side and formed the rescue mission, but it wasn’t. It was Nova Scotia. Matter of fact, all the cemeteries from the Titanic are in Nova Scotia. So we’re just talking about, right up the eastern seaboard into Canada is where. Where they went off to rescue. So that’s where the icebergs were floating. So it just makes sense that it could be some icebergs out there somewhere. To this day, you know? in my imagination, when I think of icebergs, I think of the Arctic, but it’s not necessarily that far north.

John Dunaway: No, not at all. it’s because ships do great sailing, so the globe is round. Some people think it’s flat, maybe, but a chart is, is flat piece of paper. But at the poles, right? So your lot, your lines of longitude come together at the pole. So a straight line isn’t always the fastest. So, like, that’s why a plane, like, flies an arc, and ships do the same thing. So when they left Europe going to, to New York, they actually go higher in, in the latitude because it’s less distance to cover versus a straight line point A to point B-

Ramsey Russell: That’s crazy, isn’t it?

John Dunaway: Further up.

Ramsey Russell: That’s just crazy. When you start thinking about those lines bending like that, right? like one of the craziest things I’m talking about flying is when you fly to somewhere like Australia, you leave on the 8th and fly for, let’s say, 24 hours and you land on the 10th, and then you come home on the 12th and you fly for 24 hours and you land on the 12th at about the same time you left. So it’s just like this black hole in time.

John Dunaway: Yeah, it’s weird, right?

Ramsey Russell: And no matter. No matter how you try to work it out, you can’t work it out. And I can’t work it out. In my head, it’s just gone. That day’s gone, right? Flight, flying distances like this. And I never really thought about it going. Those lines, you’re talking about those bent lines, but because of the curvature of the earth. I never really thought about it that way.

John Dunaway: Yes. If you see a route and people are like, why in the world the plane fly that way? Well, that’s why. Same reason the ship does. Because at the end of the day, we’re trying to go cover less distance to get to the same place. It’s better for fuel economy.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, sure. What about pirates? Have you ever had any dealings with pirates over in that part of the world?

John Dunaway: Yeah, in the heyday of the famous Maersk Alabama and Captain Phillips story?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah –

John Dunaway: We were over there a lot, going to the Persian Gulf, taking all kinds of stuff, military equipment, but also, like, a lot of projects for Saudi Arabia. They bought a ton of stuff in the US and, yeah, they were hot and heavy there in the. We used to call it Pirate Alley. So you’d come out of the Suez and go through the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. Got into them there. We used to have an armed security.

Ramsey Russell: When you say got into them, what do you mean? Did they came up in little boats firing on you or telling you to stop?

John Dunaway: Well, they didn’t say to stop and they didn’t start firing, but they came up off the port side. I was just a young third mate on watch. And the middle of the day too, like, man, they are way off the coast to be fishing right here. Like, this doesn’t make sense. And they all kind of got together and they got a little bit closer, and I made a course change. They got a little bit closer again, and they. I’m like, all right. Called the captain and called the security guys we had on board. There were. There was a sniper up top, and there was a guy roving on deck with a small arm carbine of some sort, and he called the other four guys, they had six guys total, they were hot. Detroit, they were locked and loaded out on deck. And those guys came in close enough where the sniper was. Like, I remember him calling on the radio to the captain. But Kevin, I’ve got about eight guys in each boat. I can see ladders and weapons. Do I have a green light to shoot? I was like, shoot them. You don’t get any say on this. Like, this is BS, Like, we’re going to let them, like, just get to us. And if we don’t, somebody else is about to get smoked. And we did not engage them. They got close enough and they probed that ship, and I think they decided those five guys on deck with all those weapons that’d be a pain in the rear for us, they’re probably going to take us out. And they bailed. And later that evening, there was a car carrier that taken was boarded by pirates in that same position. Those people did get taken, and I don’t know what happened to them.

Ramsey Russell: How do you. So a boat comes up, there’s waves bouncing around. These little boats come up. These crafts holding eight people. How the heck do they board a big old ship like that?

John Dunaway: It’s pretty, right? It’s actually a lot easier than you would think. Ship’s not really that maneuverable, and it’s not that fast. It’s only doing, 10 to 18. Big container ship might do like 24. They come running alongside in these skiffs and literally just smash into the side lay. And they lay alongside. The ship has a suction, right, because it’s pulling water as it’s moving. It’ll almost hold that thing alongside. And they throw up some hooks and a little bit of rope, right? And they lash off to a rail up top. They’re long for the ride, and they just got to shimmy up and hope that shit doesn’t have guys with guns. They’re going to shoot them off the side.

Ramsey Russell: Before they get, ah, late, man.

John Dunaway: Yes. It’s wild for sure. hearing people on the radio screaming because they’re getting boarded. Like, it was a wild time back then to be there. And, all the coalition warships were patrolling around and hilos were flying. it’s like a daily thing to be watching these warships just smoking it back and forth, chasing different reports and helicopters being launched. But one time, actually it was my last time to go to sea. We had loaded a ton of ammo at Sunny Point. Sunny Point, North Carolina, is a big ammo base for the military. It’s not secret. And we were taking it to the Middle East. And because of some of the stuff that we had on board the military, we were fully contracted by the military, and they took it upon themselves. We had diplomatic community when we transited the Suez and everything. And when we got into the Gulf of Suez, we were going to have a rendezvous because those guys in Yemen were in one of their little civil wars at the time, and they were concerned that they may this with a rocket because they knew what we had on board. And we got a guided missile cruiser was our escort was pretty sweet. I was on watch. We had a position in the time we were supposed to rendezvous, right. Code words, contact each other and all of a sudden I got a call my cabin, who’s like, watch that. Hey, Kevin, I can’t get a hold of anybody, but there’s somebody coming up over the horizon, like 35 knots. Like, well, it’s on a small target and no commercial ship does it must be our escort. Sure enough here they came out of the haze, foggy haze down there in the all that. It’s really dust and desert, but this badass horseshit pulls up, spins around, comes alongside. We make some communications, and they’re like, we’re going to run up ahead of you. We got to launch our helos. They ran up ahead of us, turned broadside into the wind, lobbed two helos in the air, and they just flew around us for, the next 12,18 hours while we got through. And like, this is pretty freaking cool, this guided missile cruiser right here rolling next to the side just in case somebody shoots it, they’re going to. That was definitely the best defense we ever had. Those two helos just flying around, keeping tabs on us all day.

Pirate Encounters on the High Seas

They still consider them pirates, but they’re just thieves at that point.

Ramsey Russell: I guess that’s exciting, traveling around with a bullseye on you. It feels like.

John Dunaway: Yeah, like, man. I mean, if we do get contacted, you’re like, it’s going to blow us out of the water. There won’t be much left of us. So it’d be a show. We had, those kind of pirate encounters to we were anchored in Batam, Indonesia, one time, and we got boarded by. They still consider them pirates, but they’re just thieves at that point. They weren’t trying to ransom the ship or any other, and they actually did get on board, try to steal a bunch of tools and nonsense. But, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What do you do in a situation like that? Do you catch them and make them walk the plank?

John Dunaway: Well, I was a young testosterone field chief mate at the time, and I was furious because it was like, 2:30 in the morning. Like, calm. The alarm goes off, and I got a hold of the boasting. I got everybody down below, and we did, took muster, make sure everybody on the ship is accounted for. I remember I got that bosons, like, who’s coming out on deck with me? We got to go rove this deck, make sure they’re gone, and let’s go take care of it. And we got two baseball bats, and nobody else would pipe up. I mean, they sat there silent as could be, like, no, we’re good. We’re like, we’re secure. Down here, like, let them do whatever they want. Like, no way I’m going out there. Like looking back and like, this is stupid. Like bringing a knife to a gunfight kind of deal. I didn’t know what they had, but I was jazzed up, ready to do some damage. But we popped out there and they had jumped over the side. They got into a little boat and hauled ass.

Ramsey Russell: So what they steal.

John Dunaway: They ended up not stealing anything because we locked everything down at night. Yeah, I mean, we put locks on every door out on deck. They got on board, they tried to stay a steal a bunch of the line. They had thrown a bunch of line over the side, but they didn’t get it. It’s too long. Couple hundred feet worth. So. Yeah, wasted effort.

Ramsey Russell: Hate that something.

John Dunaway: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Any sunken ships, any danger that.

John Dunaway: No, I’ve managed to stay away. Well, I’ll tell you another story. I was duck hunting one time and was in my young twenties, young and dumb, and my dad had an airboat and there was a big blue norther was blowing through and my buddy, two buddies and I decided we should go. We want to hunt the backside of the front. This is perfect. And blow all the water out of the other marsh. Those ducks will be stuck in the bay and they’ll come up on these points. We’re going to run out there with the airboat. Well, we didn’t watch the news, of course. The northern slowed down and we took off early in the dark and it had not finished blowing through. And we sunk an airboat. That’s the only ship that I’ve ever sunk. Yeah. So I put one on the bottom. We got it back, but we put it on the bottom.

Ramsey Russell: That’s just, that’s some crazy stuff when you get out there in the middle of those oceans. Have you ever been up in those parts of the world where all that plastic, those islands, those plastic islands of mass, you ever heard of that? Where there’s all this plastic particle out there just, they say there’s four or five places on earth. It’s just acres and acres of it. Have you ever heard of that?

John Dunaway: Yeah. The Pacific gyre is a huge one, just about the middle Pacific, where the currents kind of converge together. And it’s not an island like you don’t see a physical mound of plastic, but I can recall it was crystal clear, afternoon water, beautiful blue. And we got into it and you, for the whole 4 hour watch, I just watched what looked like confetti, but larger confetti for four straight hours. I’ve been about 15 knots. So you got to think there’s about 60 miles covered of just as far as I could see. Everywhere I looked in the water of plastic, I was like, this is. This is humanity at its worst. that’s. There’s the realities of seeing that. Or, like, being off of Sri Lanka one time and going through a massive oil slick, you’re like, some scumbags have pumped their oil, their dirty oil over the side instead of having to pay to discharge it ashore, somewhere. And seeing stuff like that and going through oil slick for two plus hours, you’re like, there’s a downside of that, of seeing what people are capable of and don’t respect.

Where Can You Hunt Around the World?

I mean, you’ve been down to, like, Nicaragua. You don’t hunt in Honduras, do you?

Ramsey Russell: A lot of these other countries you’ve traveled to, they don’t have environmental ethos, do they?

John Dunaway: Not so much. I mean, you’ve been down to, like, Nicaragua. You don’t hunt in Honduras, do you?

Ramsey Russell: No, I haven’t been through there yet.

John Dunaway: I was there one time loading cargo on a ship, and I had to fly in, and just the amount of trash, like, just the way people. Everything’s plastic, they just kind of dump it in the street. And you see that a lot of those countries where the shoreline and just the plastic is just piled up, it’s not the same standard we have.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Red Beard told me to ask you about getting stuck, stuck in other countries due to crazy circumstances. What are some of those stories, John?

John Dunaway: Well, one time we were in Venezuela, and we had to go to Maracaibo. We just come from Columbia. These guys showed up. And I’ll make this story short, but these guys showed up looking like they were out of the matrix. Black trench coats. I’m like, man, it’s freaking. It was August. Anyways, the black trench coats, and they came on, and they claimed that they got tips that we were smuggling drugs. We brought them from Columbia, like, well, that’d be news to me. So we take them down, we go look at it. These certain containers they were looking for, but then they didn’t have a number on these containers they were looking for. I was like, these guys are hunting for something else. They’re not.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

John Dunaway: Sure enough, they found three weapons that we had on board we kept for piracy issues, because when we hire these teams, we already had the guns on board. And they were locked up where they’re supposed to be. And the bolts were in the safe in the captain’s office set, and the ammo was separate, and everything was documented. It was a political move. They claimed that we didn’t tell them about the weapons, although 5 of the 6 people had the paperwork, the one guy didn’t and they took us. Well, they took the captain ashore to jail. They showed up with a warrant for our arrest that I still have a photo of, and they claim that we were arms trafficking. And they held the ship for two and a half weeks in Maracaibo. It was pretty wild, because at night, I had come down, I just finished working out, and the guy was at the gangway. I was just BSing with them. This is before they officially came to arrest us, right? They just had us held at the time. Freaking jeep with commandos pulls up and Paddy wagon pulls up, and these guys start getting that blacked out. DEA and in fatigue. This ain’t good. Whatever’s about to happen. Call the captain. They immediately called the office. The lawyers called, like, listen, we’ve got a high dollar lawyer. He’s coming to the ship. Raise the gangway. Do not let anybody on board. And they were on the dock yelling and screaming. at this point, it’s funny, I’m like, we’re not letting you on right now. This is my country. You cannot do this. Like, this is sovereign territory still. This is an American flag vessel. This is our sovereign territory until I put the gangway down. You can’t just come up and, man, they were mad as could be. And that lawyer finally showed up, and we put it down. They came on board, and that’s when they tried to take everybody to jail. Really sketchy. Yeah. But that captain, man, he was a, he stood by being a real captain. He took responsibility for the ship. Remember, standing there, he said, listen, the vessel, I’m responsible for the vessel solely. The rest of this crew is not responsible for it. They are just labor. Therefore, you can take me to jail, but you cannot take my crew. And that lawyer worked with them, and they agreed to it. And they took him to jail for several days. And I remember he walked over to me with keys, literally, like the keys of the ship, the special safe. he gave me the code to the safe, told me how much money was in there and everything. Said, here’s your first captain job. You’ve got control until I get back. Or so you hear further notice. It’s like, oh, all right, well, best of luck to, see you when you’re back. And they hauled him off, they kept him in jail for, several days. It was big enough. That’s when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and she was notified. I mean, we had the consulate coming down every day to give us updates. It was interesting. But let us go though.

International Laws 

But while I’m in that, while I’m in that airport haul, before I cross out into the airport proper, while I’m down in customs, there’s a real weird law where I’m on American soil, I’m American citizen, but my American rights aren’t intact. 

Ramsey Russell: That’s pretty crazy, John. I mean, you brought up an interesting subject. What, what are the international laws like, like you’re this big ship. I mean, is that ship that you’re piloting, is that American? Is it like you saw, you’re not allowed to come on here like drop a gangplank? I mean, do you have like some form of, that’s America that another country has to recognize? It’d be like, I mean, you still saying.

John Dunaway: Yeah, I mean, there’s some technical, there’s different technical aspects of it, right. But it is still technically a sovereign territory of the US. Like that is that ship was American flag, right. You have to obey their laws. Winter in port, but they’ll take me on board. Like we are governed by us law. Right. I don’t get to say, well, because we’re in Venezuela, we can do whatever we want. Do as Venezuelan law says. Now you still live under that flag, convenience or wherever it’s registered.

Ramsey Russell: It’s just, it’s interesting to me because like I became aware and this, this just blows my mind to that. I’m a US citizen. I go to Argentina, I come home, I fly home and I land on American soil in Atlanta or Dallas or wherever airport. But while I’m in that, while I’m in that airport haul, before I cross out into the airport proper, while I’m down in customs, there’s a real weird law where I’m on American soil, I’m American citizen, but my American rights aren’t intact. And that happens, that happens worldwide anytime. That from the time that plane lands until I exit customs, immigrations on into the country I’m at, it’s a real nebulous, a real black hole of rights as we think of it. Does that make sense? It’s a real catch. All your rights that you have, that I have right now sitting in my office that you have right now sitting where you are, cease to exist in that void between me clearing immigrations and customs. And that’s, that’s weird, isn’t it?

John Dunaway: Yeah, that is like because you haven’t been technically cleared into the country.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. You’re in like a limbo. You don’t, you don’t have the rights that you do outside of that.

John Dunaway: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And a lot of crazy things you hear about can and will happen going into foreign countries like that, especially if there’s some kind of conflict or something going on, you don’t have your rights that until you cross out of there, then all the rules apply. That’s interesting to think about that on a ship.

John Dunaway: Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t even think about it like that either or we moved that ammo one time, and we were under full military charter. And like that. Here’s an American flagship. When we go to countries, like, anytime we enter anybody’s territorial waters into the report, you got to give them all kinds of documents, right? Like, you’re giving them all their passports and shot cards and what, all inventory you have on board and everything. And we’re under military charter. You get diplomatic immunity. I mean, we didn’t have to tell them, Jack, these countries, like, no, no, you get. You have to send me all these documents, like, blah, blah, blah, and had this, like, little thing typed out from the government. They’d sent, like, nope, we actually don’t. I don’t tell you anything. I got to tell you how many people are on board and their names and the rest of it, you don’t get to know anything. And it was wild how, political powers all over the globe have these diplomatic communities of different standards of. They’re literally in there under their own law. they don’t even have to abide by anybody else’s rule. And they’ve all come to, have this happy agreement about it. It’s pretty wild.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. That is wild. Have you ever. Have you ever traveled somewhere overseas? Maybe you got to get offshore, maybe you didn’t, but. But you just. Something about it. You decided to come back on your own time just to visit.

John Dunaway: Actually, no, I have never been back to any of those places because.

Ramsey Russell: Papua New guinea, short of a civil war going on, sounds like a pretty cool place to visit.

John Dunaway: Yeah. I mean, it looked beautiful. These guys literally, I remember we pulled up there. We anchored at. In the morning. It’s like, this is like a dream. This water is this beautiful turquoise. We’re in this lagoon. There’s palm trees on the beach. It’s like a picture, right? And these, you can see these little huts all along the beach. Like, what a dream. These guys paddle. These two kids paddled out in, like, little outriggers with wooden paddles they had clearly carved by hand. Like, this is amazing, you know? And I remember I asked the captains, like, hey, can we all go swimming? I was like, no, you cannot go swimming. Like, what if you get hurt like people and always concerned with liabilities. So one night I got off watch, and I told the guy that was coming on watch, like, hey, rig the pilot ladder over the side and put the light over. When we get off watch, we’re going to go swim. And we got off watching, went down there, went swimming at like 3:45 in the morning. Jumped off the side. Yeah, it was a, like I said, make it an adventure. But, I guess one of the reasons I didn’t go back, a lot of the places we went were just, it’s incredible to see great experiences but not necessarily inviting to go for a trip. And in other times, I would see things like, one of my favorite ports was Buenos Aires. Like, I just love the culture. My mom would be disgusted because she’s Brazilian and they have their own little, spat with Argentina. But I would go there for sure. I just haven’t because I end up going other places that I want to see so many things.

Ramsey Russell: I think Buenos Aires is a cool city. I mean, I don’t, I don’t come from a city background, so to go somewhere and spend time in a city is a nice place to visit. Buenos Aires is nice. It’s a, big gritty city, but it’s nice. I like a lot of aspects of it.

John Dunaway: Because you go once a year, twice a year down there.

Ramsey Russell: I go once a year, but I stay a long time, and sometimes I go back twice, but rarely I just. I’ll go down and stay for an extended period. And the way my schedule is, Buenos Aires is kind of the hub. And so I’ll head one direction for a few weeks, come back, head to another direction for a period of time. And I’m always coming back to Buenos Aires. And sometimes if I’ve got a weekend or some time off, I’ll spend time in Buenos Aires. I’ve got a friend’s apartment to stay in and it’s centrally located. Once I’ve walked around the block a few times, I’m reoriented, so I know where everything is and everything I could possibly want exists there, right? One thing, there’s so much great thing to be say about America as compared to anywhere else in the world you travel. I’m always glad to be home to America and the conveniences and everything else we’ve got going on. But one thing I do appreciate about some of these other countries around the world, and I’m thinking of Buenos Aires cities. What reminded me of this is the. The local economy of it. It’s just you walk a block or two or five or ten, and it’s like all these little mom and pop businesses are trading with their neighbors. I’ll trade you fruit for meat and meat for bread and bread for batteries, and batteries for electronics, and electronics for a appliances. And it’s just this whole system of local economy that, you walk for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 blocks and you don’t see big box anything. And I kind of like that.

John Dunaway: I’m with you on that. It’s a definitely a community.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a community and it just. And you get off of some of these small towns and the same thing persist. And I just. I think a lot of that kind of occurred. I think, make America great again. Look, man, everybody, everybody in little communities like that has a job. Everybody has a job. Everybody has an income. You walk by some of these little stores that aren’t the size of a walk in closet and they’ve got 50 pair of slippers. You’re like, how in the world does somebody make a living doing this? Well, you got to get your slipper somewhere, right? and your house shoes. And so he’s got everybody’s business for house use in the local economy. And he trades that and swaps that money, takes $5 here and spends $5 there. And I just think it’s pretty cool, you know?

John Dunaway: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: There are a few places I have been I’d like to go back even not to hunt if the world ever slows down enough to do it. And there’s just a lot of places I’d like to go see. Some of the places you’ve been probably like over in Thailand, I think. I think it’d be pretty cool just to go and spend some time there.

John Dunaway: Yeah. I’ve only had some friends that loved it so much they went back several times when they were on vacation and would hang there.

Ramsey Russell: That whole, I’ve never been to Antarctica and I’m not so sure I’ll ever go because there’s really not much to do there. I take a boat ride out to go see the penguins, but I might get bored with that after a little bit.

John Dunaway: Yeah, exactly.

Duck Hunting in Mexico

We shoot quite a few doves, and I give it to the people. They throw a heck of a fiesta, that’s for sure.

Ramsey Russell: I might get bored. Talk about, talk about a hunting. Because I know personally. Not so much as a pilot and a captain, but mostly as a duck hunter and a bird hunter from south Texas. Talk about. When did you get into duck hunting when you’re growing up young there?

John Dunaway: Yeah. For me, I was right around 12, 13. My dad started taking me and we would get my great grandmother, we would go to her house almost every other Sunday, right? And I have like Sunday supper kind of deal and family get together and remember in the back room she had a gun case and it was my grandfather’s. And those shotguns were in there and I’d always just look at them as a little kid, and then they would start telling me these stories. I was just hunting in the area and all that. I just love the allure of it, what they talked about. So when I got about twelve, my dad finally, he was hardcore. We fished all the time. And so I finally started hunting and I got the bug and I haven’t stopped since I’m 38 now, so I have not near as hard as you have, but I’ve hunted quite a bit over those 20 plus

Ramsey Russell: You have. I know you go to Mexico quite a bit. I know you do a lot of hunting down in Texas. I know you organize a big dove hunt. Can you talk a little bit about your big dove hunt?

John Dunaway: Yeah. Oh, I started this little dove hunt with a couple buddies. My dad and his friends actually took me to this place when I was 13, 1st time, and we still hunt at the same family farms, right, not my family farm. And it turned into, like six guys going and hanging out and cooking and having some drinks to this annual event that has about 75 to 80 people now. And we throw this big pachanga in south Padre and hunt in Brownsville, right, literally on the border with Mexico. We shoot quite a few doves, and I give it to the people. They throw a heck of a fiesta, that’s for sure. We have mariachi band in the field. We’ve got a chef. Every night, different friends whip up all kinds of stuff in the field, over open fires, go to the beach, and it’s turned into something. I don’t even know how it got here, to be honest, like, how it is morphed into this, what it is. Then last year, we started raising money, decided, this thing was gaining some weird popularity, and people were asking if they could come. It’s an invite only event. I throw it once a year in September. We dove hunt. It’s a weekend long, and some people were kind of getting irritated, like, you keep telling us about it, showing everybody, but nobody can come. I thought, how do we keep the hype up and, like, do something for good? I mean, because we’re going to come down here and have a blast. If it’s just me and one other person, heck, I go do it by myself. So we decided to give away a golden ticket. We called it because I love Willy Wonka, and if they got a membership, Texas Parks and Wildlife foundation, which is a nonprofit arm of the wildlife, they would be entered into a drawing. And we raised about $13,000. And I was blown away, like, holy cow. Like, we actually did some good just by letting somebody come to this thing. And so this year, we managed to raise just over $35,000 for the golden ticket.

Ramsey Russell: What happens to that money? I mean, it goes towards conservation. It goes towards a specific charity.

John Dunaway: Yeah. So Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation takes all the money directly. So we didn’t even have to touch it, which is really nice, because I’m not a 501(C)(3) or anything like that, and I didn’t want to mess with taking money from people just for those reasons, and I would have never imagined it was going to be that much money. So they are the nonprofit arm of department parks and wildlife, and they use it to buy new property to start new state parks. They use it for gear up for game wardens. I mean, they just use it to better improve functionality of the department for the state and for the citizens, and not even citizens, anybody that comes to Texas that wants to utilize our state parks and all that it encompasses, that money goes back into that. So there’s, the hunter benefits, the angler benefits, the family that just wants to go camping and hiking benefits. So for the good of everyone, a lot like, we buy our ducks teams where all that money goes back to. Right. It benefits everybody.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. That’s exactly right. John, that was a, that was a heck of an adventure you live in. You live an adventurous life or you’ve lived an adventurous life on the high seas.

John Dunaway: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: That’s very interesting. I appreciate your time. I appreciate you coming on and talking about it and sharing your stories.

John Dunaway: And thanks so much for letting me chatter away.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve got an instagram account called abstract conformity. And you take a lot of creative work. You take a lot of creative pictures. Is your creativity something that developed on those long trips on the ocean?

John Dunaway: It was. I mean, I started playing around with the camera in high school, but I didn’t know what I was doing. And I look back on that stuff even through college, I’m like, this is trash. I don’t even know what I was trying to take a picture of. But it was that time at sea of not having the Internet being relegated to, 393ft up, sometime up to 600ft of steel to wander around. You got to find something to do with your time. And I found photography was an outlet of mine. I could only work out so much. That was the physical side, but mentally, yeah, I just started exploring these options, what I could do with a camera and documenting where I was going and who I was seeing. And it’s just morphed into this that I, I brought it ashore with me when I was hunting and thought, man, pile pics, that’s like, it’s like being on a ship and just taking a photo of a sunrise every day. Like, there’s only so many of them you can take and there’s only so much that is going to intrigue people. And it was never about intriguing people, was about intriguing myself. And so, yeah, I brought that kind of morphs while I was at sea of documenting that lifestyle and came ashore to documenting hunting, I just felt there was so much more of a story to tell about the people in both walks of life. we’re far more than a pile pick or a sunrise. So I’ve kind of gone with it. Just try to tell a little story. Each time I’m out there, the pieces that I feel often get overlooked. It’s the little details that build the whole thing.

Ramsey Russell: You lived an interesting life on the high seas, and now you’re back pushing boats around in the port of Houston instead of being gone all the time. And it just. It just reminds me, John, of something a recent guest was telling me. A milkman when he was a teenager had told him to find a job that interrupted the rest of his life. In other words, you don’t have to stack, the really fun things we love to do, like duck hunting and fishing around a job. Find a job that fits with your life and lets you do what you really love to do, because, like I say all the time, life short, get ducks. And, and I’ve been blessed to have created that life and that work, that just kind of sort of interrupts the rest of my life. But it sounds like you’ve kind of figured that out, too.

John Dunaway: I’m incredibly fortunate to have done that, you know? And like I said, I was a junior in high school, and my mom asked me what I wanted to do. And when she said, like, moving ships, would be something that I could pursue, I never looked back. That’s what I wanted to do. And I didn’t ever think it was a job because I grew up around the water. My several generations worked on and off ships, tugboats and all that. And when people would, as Instagram got popular and people started seeing these photos, and they. I wanted to do what you want to do or do what you do. And I always have to remind them, like, going to sea is not a job, going to sea is a lifestyle. You can go and make money do it, you’re going to be pretty miserable. You’re probably going to be that guy I talked about, sat in his cabin, watched movies, and wondered, scratching the days off the calendar when the end came, where you could be the person that absorbs it fully, when we would leave that Seabui and literally, like, the horizon would fall behind you, it’s just you, that ship, and the crew. And if you couldn’t absorb that, as that was your life, not your job, right? You work 8 hours a day, maybe 4 hours of OT, and call it good, it’s going to be a very long three to four months. But when you turned it into a lifestyle and you lived and breathed it, like, everything was just part of life, like, whether I was working on something or learning something else about the sea or about myself, something that consumed you. I mean, you didn’t even realize you were being consumed.

Early Hunting Season for Veterans: Texas

Ramsey Russell: When you were a little boy growing up and your family was in this business also. Were you going on the boats with them? Is that how you fell in love with this. This lifestyle?

John Dunaway: Looking back on it, I didn’t realize that at the time because we fished so much. I mean, I couldn’t even count how many times we’re on a little shallow sport boat run around the Bays of south Texas, fishing and doing all that. And I remember the first ship I ever climbed on, actually, before that, my dad worked on tugboats, and I can remember the smell of it. And anybody that’s ever worked on a ship or a tugboat will know, like, your clothes just absorb the diesels, the diesel fumes, and there’s, like, oil. And I think it’s because it’s stuck in the washing machines, like, in the water of the ship and tugboat and so forth, it has a distinct smell. And I can remember the first time going to a tugboat he was working on in those giant steel doors, right? And they’re called dogs. The big latches and. And the sound of it and the weight of it pulling it open. Maybe that’s when the whole adventure life was an adventure started. It always just seemed partially magical of being on around it and then getting to climb on ships with my dad pre 911 and everything. And this world that you only read about in books, like, off we go around the world, people are sailing on tall ships now. People are driving around the world. These giant tankers, you only see them on a movie or something. And I got to see it, and then I got to go do it. And now, to this day, I think I’m one of the most fortunate people out there, and I don’t ever forget it. Sometimes I have to remind myself in the middle of the night, I slept for quite a bit, and I’m exhausted that ships, I’m enthralled with ships. I truly am.

Ramsey Russell: You still love them.

John Dunaway: I still love them. I mean, I’ve got them tattooed all over my legs, and the stories about what I did at sea are tattooed all over me. For me, going to sea and being a part of a ship is who I am. It’s my lifestyle. And yeah, I am super fortunate to go to work for two weeks and drive ships at all hours of the night. And it excites me getting to a dock and leaving a dock. And when the tugboats show up that I get to move and maneuver the ship in ways that it doesn’t naturally want to go. And I get to put my own creative spin on something that’s very conformist, you could say, right? And yeah, I mean, look, I just got off yesterday. I’m off for two weeks. I’m going to go do some deer hunting. I think I’m going to convince Gene to let me do the veteran hunt. Texas started a veteran hunt thing, so we get to duck hunt like two weeks early. Yeah, because I was in, I was in the Navy reserve for 11 years, so I do have that. But anyways, just talking about it right now, like, no, I don’t want to go to work. I much rather go goof off and play. But if I had to go, I would be completely stoked to run down to the dock and go beyond the ship. I love the smell of it. I love the sight of it. I love the coffee and the talks you have with people and the dreaminess of where they may be going. And it’s not always dreamy. there are a lot of times going to sea was miserable, just exhausted, or you’re going somewhere crummy or whatever was going on in life, just not where you wanted to be. But I love it. I freaking love ships.

Ramsey Russell: Good way of putting it. John, thank you very much. And folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, we’ll see you next time.