The next step.

I Have never really been much of a religious person.  I think I can count on my fingers the number of times I have actually set foot in a church.  But ill admit that there have been times in the last 18 months where I have begged someone or something to intervene and make all these things happening to me go away.  The one that springs to mind the most was the morning after the overnight I had in Singapore before flying back to NZ. I had been very heavily out on the juice the night before ( a celebration of sorts for surviving my first trip away that got out of hand ) and made it to bed with about 3 hours to sleep before getting up for the flight in the morning.  Waking up still drunk with the first licks of a hangover brewing in my head and knowing what that was going to do to me in regards to anxiety was a very very shitty feeling.  For the first time in my life I actually managed to get down on my knees and pray.  I prayed like a devout christian that had been going to church daily for his whole life.  I prayed through teary eyes with shaking hands that whoever was up there would listen and see what an idiot I had been by knowingly getting myself into that state.  To somehow fix me and make sure that I would be able to get home.
I stumbled out of my hotel room and made my way through cloudy eyes to the shuttle.  One of the guys was looking in a much worse state than I felt. turns out he decided to do a cliff hanger impression from the balcony of the 15th floor of the hotel.  The hotel security apparently tried to kick him out at 4 am. which just had the rest of us in hysterics for the rest of the trip to the airport.  This did much to improve my spirits and helped me put the first positive step towards learning that my attitude towards my fears could make them far worse.

I'm by no means convinced that falling on my knees made any real difference that day, or at all.  But I do know that one way or another, I have been very very fortunate with both the vessels I have ended up on and the people I have worked with since I made it back to sea.

Work dried up in Auzzie temporarily, which saw me working for the first time since qualifying back in NZ on a drill ship, the very same drill ship in fact that Lucy Lawless recently made a brief appearance on.  http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/lucy-lawless-and-greenpeace-activists-plead-guilty-4928581 (which incidentally ran aground the other day in Dutch harbor en route to the Arctic circle to drill some holes)
That swing was the thing that really gave me confidence that I would be able to get back to work consistently.

This trip was a full swing, 5 weeks long, and for me was quite a daunting task.  To work on this type of vessel it is required to have a HUET (helicopter under water escape training) certificate.  Which is basically a certificate that says we are trained in how to survive a helicopter crash.  Part of the course involves being put in a makeshift helicopter being submerged upside down and having to escape from it once under water.  A great way to face your anxiety.  If you don't pass the course, you cant have the job!

The Noble Discoverer tied up in New Plymouth

The ship its self ended up being tied up to the wharf for most of the swing. So I was able to get back into the hot engine room and confront a lot of the demons I had left down in the pit.  The atmosphere was structured and I was basically able to learn to deal with being back on a ship, while still being tied to the wharf.  This had Two major benefits, the first being that i had phone reception the whole time and could call home if i got really scared.  The second benefit to this is I was able to realise that I felt the same way being on the ship alongside the wharf as I did when it was in the middle of the ocean.  From this realisation I was able to make good in my head that if I could survive alongside the wharf, then I could survive while I was at sea.
Just to really prove the point to myself, the weather got up and we were forced to leave the port in case we were blown off the wharf and broke something.  So in some not particularly nice conditions we put to sea for a few days to wait out the storm.  It was a great time for me because it just cemented to me that I would be ok.  That I could handle this job and these conditions.