Brooke Plank Buccola: Merchant Marine to Mom

Most of us who live here in the Lowcountry have been out on the water in a boat of some sort. It was the custom here, years ago, for young boys to take a boat to a fish camp on an island, without any adult supervision. Much of Beaufort parties on a sandbar in the summer. Boats are practically synonymous with Beaufort.

Ask Brooke Plank Buccola what a real boat is. Or better yet, ask her about ships, which are a bit bigger than boats, by hundreds of feet. She is pretty and feminine, but appearances are deceiving; this brave woman has stood at the helm of a thousand foot ship. Let’s start at the beginning.

A New Jersey girl by birth, Brooke’s family moved to Vermont for a bit while maintaining a place on Marco Island in Florida. That Gulf of Mexico is an enchanting body of water, and Brooke fell under its spell early on. She loved not only being on the water, she loved being in the water and became an avid and proficient scuba diver. When Brooke realized she wanted to pursue a career in the marine industry, the family moved to Marco Island. While there, Brooke decided that, as a member of the JROTC and the Coast Guard Auxiliary, a career in the Coast Guard was what she wanted to pursue. She was convinced to broaden her search and was accepted to the Coast Guard Academy, the Citadel, and the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point in New York, among others. She chose the latter where she had a choice of studying engineering or marine transportation. “I chose marine transportation because I wanted to see where I was going!”

An interesting feature of the educational process at Kings Point is “Sea Year” when the students spend a part of both their sophomore and junior years on merchant vessels traveling the world. Her first assignment was on the Horizon Consumer, a 720 foot container ship that went on what is known as the pineapple run from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Oahu. On the next assignment she was also on a container ship, the APL President Adams, (which had a gross weight tonnage of 61,926, or 123,852,000 pounds) that went: Los Angeles – Alaska – Taiwan – Thailand – Singapore – China. After that she was on the 920 foot Norwegian Cruise Line Pride of America, which sailed around the Hawaiian Islands and had a capacity of 2186 guests and a crew of 917. On that trip she was fortunate enough to have some leisure time in which she could indulge her passion for scuba diving.

The most fateful trip was her forth, on the Maersk Maine, again a container ship, 595 feet in length, that went to ports in Italy, Egypt, Israel and Turkey. “Going into port in Egypt, the harbor pilot came in too fast and collided with the ship and punctured a diesel fuel tank causing an oil spill that had to be cleaned up.” So there Brooke was, the only female on the ship, topside and using the available equipment to assist in cleaning up the spill; quite the introduction to Egypt!  “Then,” she said, “two days after we left Israel, every place we had been was bombed.”

While aboard, her duties included, but were not limited to, four hour bridge watches, navigation, four hours on deck overseeing the cargo handling, making sure the containers were locked down and that all the refrigerated containers were working, and handling lines. Usually she was the only female on the ship. “I was lucky; each time someone would take me under their wing and watch out for me, have dinner with me, and generally keep an eye out for me. I also found that the experience of being an American in all those third world countries makes you very humble.” All of this, before she was even twenty-one.

After graduation in 2008, Brooke needed some time to decide in which direction she wanted to pursue her career. She was offered a job to be a harbor pilot in New York, but that wasn’t where her family was or where she wanted to live. She was thinking about tug boats, when her friend from the Academy, Chris Buccola, called and asked if she would like to come to Louisiana and have a look at the offshore supply vessels firm, Otto Candies, for whom he was working. Brooke looked, liked it, hired on and went to work on ships that supplied drill rigs with water, fuel, cargo, and other supplies. It was then that the romance between Brooke and Chris began to blossom.

Those offshore supply vessels are 280 feet long and propelled and steered by two bow thrusters, and two azimuth thrusters in the stern, which allow for enhanced maneuverability and dynamic positioning; Brooke was required to get a dynamic positioning license for this vessel. So imagine this, here she is, out in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Louisiana, in all sorts of weather on a ship that comes right up next to an oil rig. Huge cranes on the rig take the cargo off of the ship while the ship is being held in place by the thrusters. This is quite a change from maneuvering a container ship that has all the grace of a giant manatee and needs tugs and pilots to get into port.

What happens when a crew change needs to take place on the ship? The crew gets helicoptered onto the rig and then is lowered to the ship by the cranes. Brooke explains, “You have to take a course that simulates a helicopter crash. The simulator turns you upside down in a swimming pool and you have to go from seat to seat underwater to release yourself from four different seat belts.” When asked if this should lead you to believe that helicopters crash more often than one realizes, she replies, “Yes.”

After about a year of living in Louisiana, Brooke and Chris moved to Beaufort in 2010 and commuted to work. Since their work schedules rarely coincided, at one point they were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work together on a ship in Egypt for two months. Reminiscent of her last experience in that part of the world, Brooke remembers “We flew out of Egypt right before the 2011 revolution took over the country and airlines. We had wanted to stay and see the pyramids, but it was a good thing we didn’t; our friends who did, literally got the last flight out.”

The next step up in their careers was to leave the offshore supply vessels for drillships and they both made the job transition at the same time, going to work for the drilling company, Noble. Brooke travelled to China to see the Noble Globetrotter I while it was being built; the ship then went to Rotterdam to be outfitted with the drilling equipment. Brooke flew to Rotterdam and, as the Dynamic Positioning Officer, helped to bring the 620 foot ship back to the Gulf of Mexico. A drillship is much the same as a drill rig except that it can move under its own power; however they travel at an average speed of ten knots, as opposed to a container ship which can attain a speed of eighteen to twenty-four knots.

“After the ship got to the Gulf of Mexico, we decided it was time to look to the future and start a family, so I left the industry. Chris has his unlimited captain’s license and continues on drillships.”

In 2011 Brooke and Chris got engaged, and Brooke’s parents, Nancy and Larry Plank, moved to Beaufort. The Planks had a restaurant on Marco Island, Planks Quarter Deck, so it was a logical decision when they moved up here to be closer to their only child, that another restaurant would be in their sights.

The following year was momentous in that Brooke and Chris got married at Old Sheldon Church on May 19, 2012. And a few months later the Planks opened the restaurant, Smokin’ Planks, in Port Royal. All three of them work in the restaurant together these days; Brooke works in the front, greeting, seating people and also filling in wherever necessary. She says, “The restaurant business is the hardest job I’ve ever had! But the fun part is meeting the people and I really enjoy catering weddings, family reunions and business events.”

Between Brooke’s work schedule at the restaurant and Chris’ schedule on the ships, she can be found tending to their eighteen month old toddler, Bobby; planning the Soft Shell Crab Festival and OktoPRfest for the town of Port Royal; and trying to find time for her new passion, underwater photography. “I grew up loving scuba diving; Chris grew up loving offshore fishing. When I introduced him to scuba diving he went ahead and got his advanced certificate before I even got mine! We go offshore here to dive; there is a sunken helicopter, Coast Guard cutter, and train car between Fripp and Hilton Head Islands. I’m just learning about underwater photography and I love it!”

Kind and gracious, Brooke has a talent for not only making people feel at ease, but also welcome. She loves the color pink, even has pink headlights on her car, and has a quirky collection of nutcrackers. Her eyes light up when she smiles and she laughs easily. When you meet her, you can chat about any old thing; you might want her to explain dynamic positioning or the function of an azimuth, or have her tell you the story of the nutcrackers.