TWO DAYS AGO

The sea coming back through the Straits of Malacca was like a sheet of slate out to the horizon, with an earthy, khaki-colored highlight to it in contrast to the overcast gray of the sky.  In its depths, the water was like obsidian (even in the glass-like cut of the waves), turning to an aquamarine cloud when churned. 

The sky had several layers of clouds- very high cirrus, alto-cumulous, and straight-up cumulous- with the occasional strato-nimbus towering up in the distance, its anvil lit by the sun we were denied far down below.  There was a dark stroke to the horizon, visibility was just-to-this-side of the curve of the earth, and the heat and humidity were bearable.

A vast fleet of aluminum hulled fishing boats was out and about making us work for clear maneuverability (we have to maintain a CPA, closest point of approach, of 1 nautical mile)… interestingly enough, if you stripped off everything above the deck on these exotic looking SE-Asian vessels you end up with the exact hull-form of the shrimp boats in the SE and fishing boats in the PNW.

TWO NIGHTS AGO

Uneventful.  The moon lit the light, high cloud cover and made the world glow a dull, fluorescent and unflattering ashen white.  Traffic was minimal, sleep was a blessed relief from the 4 hours of trying to stay awake.  Ugh. 

YESTERDAY

The southern Bay of Bengal saw seas a color I can only call “silver sky,” with the light of the blinding sun on the water like mithril chainmail (ahem… yes, that would be a random Tolkien reference… Dig it, yo).  I have decided that my favorite color of water so far is the “honeybucket blue” I’ve described in an earlier post, south of Thailand, which was what greeted me when looking down off the bridge wings during my watch today.  When churned, however, there appeared to be different colors on either side of the ship- a wedgewood blue to port, and a powder blue to starboard.  Take your pick.

There was a 1.5 – 2 meter swell at a period of 13 seconds from the south with no waves when watch started, but by the end of my 4 hours, small, 1 meter waves started out of the north, giving an optical illusion that we were traveling backwards.  I’m sure the sperm whale (I think that’s what it was- head and tail looked it) would disagree- at about an eighth of a mile it dove and avoided us, smartly, and I never got the chance to ask.

LAST NIGHT

We retarded clocks again, this time an hour and a half, to match the time zone of Columbo, Sri Lanka- our next port of call.  The 4x8 shift retards a half hour, the 8x12 retards and hour, and then we, the 12x4 shift, retard the last half hour and update the ship’s clocks- which translates as an extra hour of sleep, but an extra half hour on watch.  When there is no traffic, uninteresting skies, and an extra half hour of psychological torture, the name of the game is “Stay Awake.”  I do pushups (about 160 a night), I patrol the bridge-wings every 15 minutes, wash the coffee pot, pace, stare off into the darkness as if something is going to magically appear in my binoculars… but once you start yawning the clock stops.  Once the clock stops it takes a good scare (or St. Elmo’s Fire) to get it going again, and last night, neither was forthcoming.  It was straight-up, unadulterated, and concentrated torture.  When the pain was finally over I called Laura and merely the sound of her voice helped stop my twitching eye.  Sanity restores sanity, apparently- you heard it here, first.

TODAY

ETA to Columbo is 2230.  The silver sea was comprised of water which appeared made of concodially fractured obsidian, that when churned became merely a charcoal drawing of water… it was all shades of grey with only a hint of blue and teal, but not unpleasant.  The three whales I saw certainly were enjoying it- until we came along and scared them under and away.  The horizon was non-existent, with visibility ranging between 5 and 8 miles, and the sky was clouded with a veil of tissue-thin mist at altitudes more similar to space than atmosphere.

My two most-recent days of overtime were spent with a chipping hammer underneath one of our aft mooring winches and have left me a bit sore- thankfully I have a bucket of alleve (a drug that literally killed Bozie’s father- I had no idea such an innocuous thing was lethal to some people).  When you are physically threaded into and intertwined with the toothy, many-ton gears of a giant hydraulically-driven machine it is not recommended to think of how simple it would be for someone to “turn it on.”  It gets back to the colloquial idioms that fly around here that I’ve mentioned (ie. “Drop a crane load on him”)… before long I found myself double-checking the pumps and securing the watertight door down into the steering gear room where the pumps that drive the port side aft winches are located. 

To fully appreciate the chipping of steel (and further add discomfort to the image of paranoia already portrayed), you have to examine the clothing and safety gear requirements the chipper must wear.  First, the ear plugs.  Next, a painter’s hood, which leaves only the face exposed and tucks in around the collar of my coveralls.  Over this goes a dust mask and safety goggles.  Finally, over the earplugs, the over-the-ear hearing protection is added.  This is in addition to the ever-present bandana over the skull, gloves, coveralls, boots… the standards of the deck.

Once chipping commences, you do not stop.  It is hotter than crap and paint/iron oxide find a way into every seam, crack, crevice, orifice, node, follicle, duct, gland, cavity, and hole, where it becomes cemented by the tropically mass-produced sweat and genetically spliced into your being at the chromosomal level- to stop and remove/alter even one item of protection is to have the protective layer turn into a much more complex mess to clean up than if you just leave it the hell alone and suffer without protest.  Even with all this protection, and bearing this cross without complaint, after 4 hours belly crawling and contorting like a circus freak through the very refuse you’re creating, with violence, inches away from your face, at decibel levels that drown out the roar of the 2 dozen or so servos under the aft deck (think: jet engine), you peel off your sacrificial clothing and safety gear looking like a West Virginia coal miner on the cover of National Geographic, anyway.

  

Nothing could be more different than standing on the bridge with a pair of binoculars trying to stay awake between midnight and 0400.  Should you be weak and complain (no, I have not been that stupid) the retribution is merciless.  When the assignment is as foul as working under the winches I have taken to saying "this job is too good for the Ordinary," or other, more colorful things which would get me yelled at by Laura if I were to print them.