It's Like Deja Vu - All Over Again

Every day is Groundhog Day.

Midnight watch. 0400 sleep. 0715 breakfast. 0800 turn-to for overtime. 1100 knock off for lunch. 1200 watch. 1600 sleep #2 (I skip dinner for that extra half hour of dream-time). Wake up at 2315. Midnight watch.

Repeat.

Each day clocks are advanced 20 minutes at 1800, 2200, and then 0200. The ship’s physical clocks are advanced at midnight. The net result is 40 minutes less sleep for my second sleep and a nagging anxiety about whether or not I have advanced my phone and my analogue wristwatch before falling asleep.

The Meridian Day was our only break from these advances- the old man bought a bunch of beer for the crew and the steward’s department made a sushi spread up in the officer’s lounge in lieu of a normal dinner (it was the only dinner I ate while crossing). The drinkers get hammered. The watch goes to bed as soon as can be politely done without offending the Steward.

Warning: Korean wasabi is the hottest, most inconsolable, breath-stealing, lung-searing pain imaginable. It is fantastic. End of Warning.

The actual “Meridian Day” is the repeat of the day that we cross the Prime Meridian… in this case, Wednesday the 4th. Because we don’t advance clocks on the meridian day, it means that Wednesday the 4th nets 47 hours of hump-day goodness.

The mood follows the great circle of the ship’s navigational track… it starts as a seeming flatline, due east at 090; but the course begins to drop down southward - first 091, then 2… 3… and soon we’re diving into the 100’s - until the circle (and the mood) are heading more southward than not. The further we go, the farther we fall.

The needle of this skipping record, repeating that awful note over and over again, suddenly pops over the hangup and we hear “turn to for port prep.”  I don’t know if it’s something different to the routine or the knowledge that tomorrow morning we are going to have cellular service that breaks the crews’ despondency, but broken it is, and a general mania takes over.

Almost half the crew will be going home, too… that might play some small part in the overall good mood.

Change!  Nothing feels better after a long, hard slog!

As if to underscore the shift, the stainless steel seas turned emerald and jade. The sun came out from behind fast moving cumuluous clouds- the stratus claustrophobia? Gone.  

Off the bow this morning as I did my OT were Pacific white-side dolphins, racing through the 8 meter swells, big grins on their faces proving that not only good, good dogs let off off their leashes to run and play know pure, unfettered joy.  

Then, on watch this afternoon, I saw dozens of Bryde’s whales, even among the endless white horses that usually make whales impossible to see. It is hard to tell a Bryde’s, a blue, a sei, or a fin whale apart- but this ship has the same identification book I mourned leaving at home in an earlier post, and a positive identification I did make: Bryde’s. You can tell by the pronounced hook to the dorsal.

Boobies, shearwater, and albatross skimmed the seas as we roll, roll, rolled along.

0400 I will leave the bridge after my watch and become the back-watch as we pick up the pilot and bring this lumbering and laden girl into LA. Crane lifts. Bunker barges. Lifeboat tests.  

Looking out instead of looking in.  

Moving onward. After this port - Oakland; and the beach, for this sailor.