A Bridge Over Monkey Waters

Barracuda gather in slow turbulent schools in the wash of the deck lights
each night, some of them almost 4 feet long. I caught the Old Man out there
with a fishing pole at midnight, and I've heard others planning different
ways of catching them. The Wrestler asked me if I could make a cast net...
which, of course I can, but the amount of time it would take makes the
entire proposition absurd. A ring net, similar to a crab net, would be the
easiest and best way to catch them- in my humble opinion, and it is backed
up by the Fisherman. Well... actually, it was the Fisherman's idea- but it
is the best idea of the lot, and since no one is actually going to do
anything with these ideas I might as well own the good ones. Well... the
captain actually threw a hook in the water, so he's actually doing
something... but whatever. Interestingly, we've had divers cleaning the
bottom of the ship all day and not one of them have been devoured within
seconds by the bloodthirsty fish like they would have been in a bad movie.

There was a ship anchored near us, one of the Wisdom Lines, named "Genius
Star." Really?! Then I noticed the large container ship swinging in the
breeze right next to us is named "Humen Bridge," which should bring an image
to mind of people working together to help one another by... like... forming
a human bridge over troubled waters (or something), but instead conjures up
a barrel of hooting monkeys flinging... stuff - which actually says more
about this crew I'm at sea with than I care to dwell on.

We're supposed to finally go in and load cargo at 0900... by tomorrow
night/early morning we should be underway again. With 26 days to go. Back
up the strait and across the sea to Sri Lanka, then through the pirate
waters and up into Egypt again. After loading our cargo of flies in
Damietta we'll kill them all the way across the Med, hit the stormy Atlantic
(where I'll get rocked to sleep each night) and then booyah! G the F out of
D. In NYC. Fly this farmer's tan that has a human attached to it back to
sunny Seattle.

At the latest safety meeting the Wrestler publicly threw the Boatswain under
the bus, which prompted our entire department to spontaneously start singing
"The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round..." in the stairwell afterward.

Right now I am on anchor watch. Each hour I check the anchor chain and
report to the bridge its direction and the amount of its pressure. The
direction is done, not by points, but by simple clock positions. The
pressure is a little more subjective, but I consider everything from 1 to
22.5 degrees to be "light strain," and everything from 22.5 to 45 degrees to
be "moderate strain." More than that is "heavy strain." So on the hour I
might say "Bridge... Bow... Anchor chain is up-and-down," meaning no strain
at all. Or I might say "Bridge... Bow... Anchor chain is at 10 O'clock,
moderate strain." Additionally, I feel the chain between the hawsepipe and
the pawl and if there is vibration then we're either slipping (underway) or
the chain is laying out from where it piles up when dropped.

Also, I am on Gangway Watch, which is to say that I raise and lower the
gangway for launches. We have a gangway that telescopes in and out while it
rises and lowers- which makes some sense, but it is so unbearably slow that
no matter what the benefits the shorter length might give, they become
completely lost to the tedium that is holding the up or down button and
watching it creep up or down. It is so slow that the launch pilots get
pissed and their "down" hand signals become increasingly frantic as it moves
downward at a comparable speed to that of lichens accumulating on a rotten
stump. More often than not they hit their horns continually and shout what
must be Singaporean obscenities.

And that's all I got. A day in the life of. Gotta go make my rounds.