Saturday, November 30, 2013

Because photos are easier....

We're sitting at the dock in Cape Canaveral getting ready to go out for "box maneuvers," the only type of sailoring I'm gonna see on this boat.... as I've described before, box maneuvers consist of going out into the ocean and going round and round, back and forth, as directed, for little to no apparent reason.  So below are some pictures of life on a ship when said ship sits most of her time made fast to the land, because there just isn't a lot to say.

My chariot- after my 12 hours of work I often escape
the ship and pretend I'm a normal person. 

This is the unlicensed crew mess hall.

Cape Canaveral pelicans at night.

An endless stream of gigantic passenger vessels passes
within 1/4 mile of our bow as they arrive and depart the port.

A "polka-dotted wasp moth," or an "uncle sam bug," a
harmless moth that did not look harmless when it confronted
me on my chariot.

The ship's gym.

This is the inside of the gangway's guard shack, the place
I spend 8 hours a day, from midnight to 0800.

"Sea Smoke" on the warm water when the temperature
dropped all the way down to 47! one night this past week.

I had to.

A ghost crab of the Space Coast variety...

A sunrise off the port bow- not visible from my guard shack,
so I have stopped posting sunrise photos each morning
to facebook as I did when we were at the shipyard in
Charleston and my view of the rising sun was unimpeded. 

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Cast off!

Sea trials in 40 knot winds and nasty seas... No word on the swells, but they've had all night to build up... The smoother this goes the happier it'll make me. 

Thursday, November 7, 2013

A Mullet? Really!?

Being in the shipyard is dull.  Yeah, there is plenty of activity and there is an endless stream of stuff to do, but we're not underway so the time I would be doing my navigation watch is spent in a guard shack, instead (per earlier post).  One of the oddities you might encounter should you be able to board my ship at midnight is the Ordinary, the Chief Cook, and the GVA hanging out on the stern.

The Chief Cook is half Filipino and looks Hawaiian; he's as wide- muscle, not fat- as he is tall.  The GVA is Arabic and always wears a derby hat with suspenders and sings decidedly Arabic vocals in quarter steps.  The Ordinary is Filipino.  They gather around the Ordinary's 4 foot tall hookah and pass the pipe around while the Cook plays a tiny ukulele, and I imagine if he were to spontaneously burst into song he'd probably sound like Don Ho.

And just about every time I go to the port stern, directly over the furthest aft deckspace on her quarter, a two foot mullet-looking fish slowly swims out from under the dock, does a loop, and disappears back into the shadows and doesn't reappear again until the next day.  The first few times I was like, "huh, would you look at that."  The first dozen times it started to be remarkable.  Now, 6 weeks into our shipyard stint, it's just friggin' creepy.

If we have spirit animals I sure hope mine isn't a giant mullet.