ROGER ROSS is a man with a plan and is living it.
I sat down recently with Roger at the Fisherman’s Wharf Cafe on Boat Haven Drive in Port Angeles.
Roger lives in Port Angeles with his wife and two children, and is well-regarded along the waterfront.
He’s a committed family man who cherishes his growing family — and when he can find the time, a fishing pole is firmly within his grasp.
Roger is also one of the lucky few who as a very young man had an epiphany about the direction he wanted his life to take, and with a single-minded focus, he pursued his dream until he reached the pinnacle of his vision: that of a ship’s captain.
Roger was born in Panama to a Guatemalan mother and an American father, Gary Ross, a Port Angeles native who worked abroad in the telecom industry.
In 1982, when Roger was 10 years old, the family returned to the U.S. and settled on the North Olympic Peninsula, where he attended Queen of Angels School and Port Angeles High School.
During high school, he worked for Ron Shepherd in the same restaurant where we sat for our conversation, and he also painted lures that were used in Ron’s sport-fishing venture.
After high school graduation in 1990, Roger attended Peninsula College and received an Associate of Arts degree.
During his time at Peninsula College, he worked for Jack Harmon as a deck hand aboard the Victoria Express passenger ferry to Victoria as well as on board Harmon’s Arrow Launch boats that transport personnel, stores and equipment to and from the ships anchored in Port Angeles Harbor.
When Roger worked aboard the launches, the security requirements were far less stringent than they are in a post-9/11 world.
The launch crews frequently tied off their boat to the ship and went aboard to meet the personnel and share meals with them.
His forays aboard ship offered glimpses into a world Roger wanted to become a part of, so in his second year at Peninsula College, he applied to the California Maritime Academy (Cal Maritime) in Vallejo, Calif.
The school is part of the California State University system and is one of only seven degree-granting maritime academies in the United States — and the only one on the West Coast.
Roger completed the four-year course at Cal Maritime in three years and received a degree in marine transportation.
As part of the curriculum, students are required to complete three commercial tours, each with a minimum duration of 60 days aboard ship during the summer months.
Two of the tours — typically the first and last — are aboard the school’s own training ship, T S Golden Bear, and the second summer tour is spent onboard a ship belonging to one of the 20 or so U.S. shipping companies that offer cadet programs to students aspiring to the maritime industry.
Typically the shipping companies offer one slot for a deck cadet and one slot for an engineering cadet.
According to Roger, the ships available on the program range from those of the Alaska State Ferry system to tankers, container ships, general cargo ships and roll on/roll off vessels.
Students with the best grades have earned the opportunity to be the first to select the billet they want to fill.
Roger explained that the sponsoring shipping companies fly the cadets to and from their shipping assignment and provide berthing, food and on-the-job training.
Roger’s second summer tour was spent aboard a T-2 tanker operated by Sabine Transportation, SS Concho.
She was a petroleum products carrier that operated out of Corpus Christi, Texas, and is known in the industry as a “valve turner.” That means all the loading and unloading functions were mechanical and performed by hand, which entailed the constant opening and closing of valves until the ship was loaded with product or her cargo was offloaded.
That is in sharp contrast to the tankers of today where automation is the norm and most of the mechanical functions are guided by computer.
The summer was spent loading and unloading product from the Gulf of Mexico to Quincy, Mass., and a lot of busy ports in-between.
Roger said he never spent a bored moment aboard the ship and made great progress working as an able-bodied seaman (AB).
By the end of his tour he was standing supervised bridge watch as a third mate.
According to Roger, these tours were also an eye-opener for some of the students whose time aboard ship caused them to decide on another career path.
By the time Roger graduated from Cal Maritime in June 1996, he already was in possession of his third-mate’s license because he had taken the test, which is administered by the Coast Guard, in the springtime.
In August that year, he accepted a position as an able seaman aboard the 810-foot tanker ARCO Sag River that ran from Long Beach to Houston.
He had begun his maritime career in earnest.
For the next year, he had three different tours aboard ARCO ships that served to enhance his skill level as an AB, and he felt he was well-prepared when offered the opportunity to become a third mate.
Roger told me that he is aware of graduates of the school who were offered jobs as an AB and turned them down because they felt their minimum entry-level position should be as a third mate.
He explained that in his opinion, his time as an AB was a career enhancement because he learned details from a perspective that others lack.
Roger has progressed through the ranks as quickly as the time qualifications have allowed and openings have become available.
One year of sea time is required to qualify for advancement as well as to qualify to take the required Coast Guard test. Because he works two months on and two months off, that one-year requirement in actuality becomes two years.
Roger joined the ConocoPhillips family and went aboard the Polar Endeavour in 2001, the year she was put in service.
Since then, Roger steadily progressed until one day in December 2008, he got the call he had been waiting for:
He was sent to Benicia, Calif., and went aboard the Polar Discovery for his first captain’s job — as he said, “his first shot solo.”
As he paused to scan his surroundings going aboard, he glanced across the bay from where the ship was moored. There was Cal Maritime, the college he had graduated from 12 years earlier.
He said it was one of those déjà vu moments he’ll never forget.
Roger has been going solo as a relief captain on the Polar tankers for the past three years, transporting crude oil from Valdez, Alaska, to the ConocoPhillips refineries in Washington and California.
He holds an “unlimited tonnage, any ocean masters” license with a “first-class pilot upon the waters” endorsement from Bligh Reef to Seal Rocks in Prince William Sound.
He works for a company with very little crew turnover — he cannot say enough good things about the crew — and his work-day consists of driving a “pretty blue boat.”
Best of all, he is living his dream. We should all be so lucky.
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David G. Sellars is a Port Angeles resident and former Navy boatswain’s mate who enjoys boats and strolling the waterfronts.
Items involving boating, port activities and the North Olympic Peninsula waterfronts are always welcome.
Email dgsellars@hotmail.com or phone him at 360-808-3202.
His column, On the Waterfront, appears every Sunday.
