Treacherous Day at Sea Captured in Stomach-Churning Photos

By Joe Eskenazi Tue., Dec. 8 2009 at 8:30 AM

Categories: Local News

All Photos | Gabor Gardonyi

Click on the photos for larger versions

For much of his life, Gabor Gardonyi worked as a chef up and down the Pacific coast. Now he's doing it a different way -- as a cook on a tugboat hauling loads from the Pacific Northwest all the way down to the southern tip of California.

He's also handy with a camera -- and friends always coo over his photos of porpoises, seals, and gorgeous California sunsets by invariably telling him "You've got the best job in the world!" Hey, Gardonyi's a happy guy -- but working on a tugboat isn't always so picturesque. Or at least not in the way people think.

Take the following series of recent shots captured by Gardonyi just south of San Francisco when his tugboat, the Sound Reliance, was rocked by massive waves while hauling a barge laden with 6 million gallons of fuel down to Long Beach:

Too close! Too close!

Waves like these, by the way, are par for the course. Though Gardonyi, as the ship's cook, has his own observation about the crew's behavior when this sort of weather hits: "The guys don't eat much."