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Ken Johns ⚓️

@deckape.bsky.social
598 followers 1.1K following 425 posts

Landlocked sailor hoping to get back to sea. I grew up in Albuquerque and I consider it my hometown. I really miss the Pacific Northwest though. Big hearted fella.

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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
From personal experience being a union mariner means you can throw a cup of water in your bosses face over a dispute about your deckhands having a break in hot weather and not getting fired and still having an amiable relationship with the boss. Working on ships is an entire different world
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I was bosun on a ship and the chief mate called an hour before work started to me to ask if me and my deckhands were going to be at the morning meeting on time. I charged him an hour of overtime because he called me before work. The captain signed off on it. Sets boundaries
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I remember a chief mate wanting to take away our chair on the bridge of our ship and my very over torqued union brother yelled at him with veins popping and eyes ablaze “our union fought and bled so we could have a chair!” We kept our chair
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Passed a wedding on the Columbia River while working on a chevron tanker. We gave them a toot on the whistle and everyone waved, we waved back. It was nice.
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Im doing the same thing right now except with rum
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Me, a coast guard veteran and merchant mariner, reading posts about rust on a ship and struggling not to reply. But really though, it’s a ship and it’s at sea.
White guy wearing black watch cap, black jacket and blue paint covered coveralls on red bow of ship sailing into Elizabeth l, NJ
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
I was in a firefighting class with a former crew member of a fishing boat and he said all they had was a garden hose
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
I got to watch him eat a burger at a Seattle Sounders game
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Fourth picture. I’m a sailor, I get it
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Third picture is a record I bought in Seattle after my wife died and I sold our house. I spent $100. Lydia Lunch, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. I had to have it
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Second picture is a giant pickup truck with a giant illuminated sign on the grill that says call on Jesus. That’s outside a Walmart in 2012. Some people just have too much money to spend on stupid shit i guess
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Forgot to alt text. First picture is an m14 rifle that has Jesus written on tape on the stock. It’s actually haysoos, guys from Mexico. The guy sitting next to it is Muhammad a black Muslim. Military sealift command training in San Diego
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
The times I have had Jesus in my life
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Annie vs the turkeys at puget sound goat rescue. Annie had never defeated the turkeys
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Full moon with cranes on the USNS Gilliland. Jacksonville 2012. Top 10 favorite picture I’ve taken.
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Large crane hooks painted yellow for “safety” surrounded by rusty cloverleaf lashing points on the grey deck of the USNS Gilliland in Jacksonville Florida in 2012.
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
I really need Cronenberg to do this guys biopic
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Sorry it’s Cannon Point
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
There’s still a cannon on Diego Garcia from that era on the appropriately named cannon beach. It’s also where the working dogs cemetery is
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
In hindsight a slow bell would have been more appropriate as opposed to my normal let’s haul ass mode
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
This reminds me of when I was in the US Coast Guard and worked at an aids to navigation team. I ran a boat aground in the Navesink river in New Jersey because we removed all the seasonal buoys. That wasn’t a great day.
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
In 1996 I was at a grocery store in Albuquerque late at night and Never Say Never by Romeo Void came on. The cashier and I looked at each other then looked at the speaker in silence like it was the weirdest thing that ever happened to us
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
I had a lot of cocktails and some extra money a few years ago in Seattle and I bought this. I can’t say I regret it.
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
The museum of anthropology is pretty great moa.ubc.ca
moa.ubc.ca
Home - Museum of Anthropology at UBC
Welcome to the Museum of Anthropology, a place of world arts and cultures with a special emphasis on the First Nations peoples and other cultural communities of British Columbia, Canada.
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Sounds like a Marc Bolan song
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
Wait until you find out where the Seattle Thunderbirds play
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Imagine being a guy (me) having to steer a car carrier past the golden ray. Food for thought
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Congrats!
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Good luck!🤞
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
When I was in the coast guard in the 80s I could be standing around with my buddies smoking and bullshitting and the boatswains mate would tell the non smokers to get back to work and the smokers to go ahead and finish your cigarette even if the BM didn’t smoke.
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
Keep it up man. I’ve had my struggles with alcohol and somehow became addicted to ice water 🤷🏻‍♂️. I’m rooting for you
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
My elementary school had a cop come in to talk about winter safety. He said never put a rock in a snowball because someone could get injured. It never occurred to us to do that until that moment. Kids got injured.
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Alpha flag
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Divers
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
I love him, and he’s not technically an object, but it’s this fuckin guy
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Flat bottomed oof that’s going to be unpleasant
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Sorry to be a bummer, just an old sailor jumping in with nautical disasters
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
The thing about it is there’s land right there and over there and more there and over 1,200 people died. It happened right by Rikers Island not out at sea. “The panic was horrific among the passengers as they faced death by drowning or being burned alive on the ship.” www.nypl.org/blog/2011/06...
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
When I was in the us coast guard in the late eighties we took some people to the General Slocum disaster site to put wreaths in the water. It happened in 1904 but knowing about how awful it was and how it basically destroyed an entire community is something I still think about every so often
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
John Fetterman stars in Oaf Cop coming this fall on CBS
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
I met an Australian in San Diego with a Jeff Lynne tattoo. He said I was like one of three people that knew who it was
Tattoo on forearm depicting Jeff Lynne of ELO, black ink
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
I need this, love the mummies
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Bellevue where my condo with less than 900 square feet sold for $452,000 three years ago
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
I went to coast guard boot camp in Cape May NJ and spent one hour on the water in eight weeks. What we did could be done on a small lake. I am not defending Noem, who I despise and think has been a stain on the coast guard but the new tracen doesn’t need to be on the water.
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
Wait until they see a convoy of Strykers driving down 405 through Bellevue
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
I liberated an allen wrench from the coast guard in 1990 and finally found a use for it in 2012. I even commemorated the event.
Allen wrench on piece of white paper surrounded by memorabilia from my coast guard service including unit patches and ribbon bar.
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
He also knew the same people as I did but I just do not remember him from that time.
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Ken Johns ⚓️ @deckape.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Marc Maron, he was a senior when I was a freshman. I must have met him since he hung out at some of the same places I did besides school. He worked at a bagel shop I frequented but I don’t remember him.
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