Gene Pelland said fellow skippers warned him not to accept a job as captain of musician Billy Joel's fleet of pleasure craft. The Rhode Island native pointed out that professional yacht captains live by a simple credo: "Don't mow the owner's lawn." That means captains who work for a private owner want to limit their work to the boats they…

Jay Martin, a tug dispatcher for Crowley, gazed at his computer monitor, tracking the movement of vessels in the nation's busiest port complex, Los Angeles/Long Beach in Southern California. Martin's job is to make sure the four tugboats operated by his company in Los Angeles/Long Beach are at the right place at the right time. His computer displays in real…