Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Lifeboats and Thunderstorms

Lifeboat drills. Very straightforward things, really- safely deploy the
lifeboat, with crew, down to the water and retrieve it. If there is a
single-most dangerous item to be found (aside from improperly trained crew
and total dumbasses) it is the "releasing lever." The releasing lever is in
the lifeboat and it is what disconnects the boat, itself, from the cable
falls of the gravity davits (the part on the ship from which the lifeboat
hangs). Put into its simplest terms- pull it at the wrong time and a
boatload of people die.

The lifeboats on this ship are much simpler than the ones I trained with to
get my PSC/Lifeboatman endorsement. No frapping lines. No tricing
pennants. No McCluny hooks. No man-ropes. A single lever to release the
gripes. And I really wish I were making these terms up, but I'm not... on
many lifeboats there is a much longer sequential list of tasks involved in
launching the boat than the ones on this ship. On this ship you can throw
the harbor pins, pull one rope to release the gripes, board the vessel, and
from inside the lifeboat, release the cable brakes and safely lower the boat
to the water. I am the after gripe on boat no. 1, which really only comes
into play on putting the boat back into its proper stowage. Once the
lifeboat is in the water, and only then, do you pull the releasing lever and
you're then free to motor off to safety.

So when the Chief Mate and Captain decided to put the 3rd mate, referred to
by the deck as "the goofy bastard" and mentioned by officers with a slight
roll of the eyes, there was almost an open revolt from the deck department
(who had 2 crew going down with him). The AB who has been an invaluable
tutor for teaching me the "SUP bluewater sailor way-" a broad 6'-2" fellow
named like a wrestler, who is willing to fight anyone and anything,
anywhere, at any time- was one of the crew to go down with him. Also along
for the ride, The Great Dane- measuring in at only 6'-3" but a dangerous
looking disposition and a penchant for really bad, sophomoric and obvious
jokes. And as a matter of fact, at only 5'-9 1/2", I do feel like the
ships midget.

The Goofy Bastard (who I happen to like, but he really is kinda goofy)
cannot reliably tell you if he knows something, or not. He might know it,
but if he doesn't, he relays the information in the identical way that he
would relay it if he did. So when it was announced that he was going to
lead the drill (um... drop the boat, hopefully not literally) everyone, and
I mean everyone, started thinking "Holy shit! The releasing lever! Holy
shit! Holy shit! The Goofy Bastard is gonna kill somebody!" Previous
drills have been smooth, like a well oiled machine. This one was even
smoother- people were focused like diamond-cutting lasers. The anxiety
level was up pretty damned high, though, and as The Wrestler later told me,
"I was watching him like a hawk. If he'd as so much as looked at the
releasing lever I was gonna cold-cock him... beat him down like an etc. etc.
so forth and so on."

Today, as we steamed (turning for 18.5 knots) I watched the lightning from a
massive thunderstorm popping like paparazzi flash-bulbs over the hills of
Iran on the northeastern shore of the Gulf of Oman. The same storm overtook
us, dropped visibility to a literal Zero, and we recorded gusts of up to 90
knot winds- identical, in fact, to the leading edge of Hurricane Sandy...
Sandra... whatever her name was (the storm that hated NYC), which leads me
to question the accuracy of the anemometer, quite frankly (that wind is the
kind that sucks the breath out of you and it takes a few seconds and a
little bit of work to actually breath when up on the bridge wing and in its
full force).

One particular blast, memorable for its insane howling and actually
buffeting a 66 thousand ton ship, registered in at only 2 knots and from
every direction at once- I suspect it was a very dangerous type of thermal
down-draft I have been fortunate enough to have encountered only one other
time in my life- in a sailboat on the Wilmington River in GA. It pinned the
sail- mast, boat, and all- flat to the water for a full 25 seconds... while
I held on for dear life and peed myself a little bit. So the Indian Ocean
has proved to be calm. Mostly.

And today it was the color of used and burnt motor oil, until churned, when
it became the most brilliant shade of a creamed-jade... and the greenest
water this trip, so far. The Wrestler and I laughed about staring at the
colors, too... apparently I'm not the only one. A random point on every 3rd
wave of every 3rd set sent the most untamed and lonely white horses I've
ever seen- bold, frothing, spraying clumps of fast moving brilliant white in
an otherwise lumpy, dark but white-horse-free water, whose fine, misting
spray refracted sunlight into a sheet of gasoline on water, rainbowed colors
that played with my depth perception and caused vertigo. Like when you
cross your eyes on an escalator.

Gyros for lunch, fish for dinner.

1 comment:

  1. I love how you write about the different colors of the water, and how it looks when churned, etc. To notice so many nuances or distinctions... both impressive and fascinating. Thanks for this! And glad to know you alone are not responsible for onboard nicknames!

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