Cold Weather Floater In Paradise

Korea is cold.

How cold is it?

Well, all the potable water pipes on the ship froze. The burst pipes spilled water all over the deck, which then froze into sheets of ice, many of which are in hard-to-see places or invisible in the dark. We salted them, but walking still required care, and more than one of us has gone down.

The sewer pipes also froze - with little or no notice. For the last five days, we have just two working toilets on the ship, one in the engine room and one in the cargo office, both of which are more than 7 floors below and all the way aft.

I was awakened from deep sleep by engineers below the house with hammers pounding on frozen pipes on day one, a rude awakening that repeated randomly throughout our port stay as they tried, and failed, to alleviate our toilet-induced misery.

I called the trek to the only working toilets "the walk of shame" if the sailor was too preoccupied to make eye contact when enroute, or "walking penguin" due to the stiff-legged way the concerned ambled aftward if they answered nature's call without respectful haste.

I was also awakened by fire alarms on several occasions when diesel exhaust from cargo overloaded the smoke detection system and set off the general alarm. Yes, one of them was during my deepest sleep.

Standing an 8-hour watch when it's 11 below 0 is a special kind of tedium. Every motion requires effort due to the many layers. Gloves must be removed for anything requiring dexterity, then put back on to keep from freezing. Breathing too hard can give you an icecream headache.

The battery-powered vest Stu recommended to me has proven its worth. The chemical hand warmers have made life much more bearable, as well... There is no part of me that likes the cold, but at least I came fully prepared.

Sadly, I think I've developed some type of allergy to my expensive wool baselayers. Have I continued to wear them despite breaking out in a rash?  Of course. It was 9 degrees Fahrenheit out there... I'm no fool.

I know there are some cold weather dwellers out there saying that this is not that cold - but add force 10 winds into the mix (that's 55 mile an hour, you filthy, bloodless landlubber), and the inability to leave your post or do anything besides observe, demand ID, and perform the occasional search will make even the frostiest of snowmen bitch in abject discomfort.

At one point, the wind snatched a cargo strap out of the ordinary seaman's hands. The strap and the dumpster lid he was trying to secure with it simultaneously struck him in the face, landing him in the dubious care of the chief medical officer, aka the second mate. He's a great navigator, but he is the medical officer by necessity and default, not because he's any good at it.

Thankfully, the ordinary's teeth survived unharmed despite being busted in the kisser, and he took it without complaint.

The tide at this port is almost 30 feet, so cargo ops can only take place when the tide is high enough for our stern ramp to reach the dock- if it's too low the ramp gets damaged, if it's too high then the ramp is too steep. The window of opportunity is two four-hour blocks of time per day.

Because the mooring lines need constant adjustment due to the tides, the chief mate made all sailors watch standers. My 8-hour gangway watch (as in Tacoma) was split up between me and one of the day workers - and the task of tending lines and moving lashing gear all over the ship for the longshoremen was divided up between us. 

I stood the first 4 hours as security watch and the second 4 hours doing cargo and lines. I also made new heaving lines because the Korean line-handlers stole our heaving line when we tied up.

I also was on standby from noon to 1600, but never got called out to do anything. I listened to the handheld radio as the sailors on watch worked while I drafted house designs in AutoCAD - designs I'll hand over to a professional (Paul) at some point.

After 5 long, hard, miserable days in port, we departed at 0500 for the anchorage where I am writing this.

We expect to be here for only 2 days, then return to the dock to take on cargo to replace that which we just offloaded.

How long should that take? I'm told 2 weeks. 

Sometimes it's easy to disparage the people out here doing this job. For the most part, they're misfits. In large part, they're unemployable in standard shoreside workplaces. 

But if just anybody could do this job, then I want to see them try, because the one thing all these people have in common is a psychological toughness and resiliency that can handle pipes clogged with turdcicles. When working long, uncomfortable, and dangerous hours. While locked inside a cage with other maladjusts. For extended and protracted periods of time.

And laugh about it.

I guess we'll see how much we're laughing after two more weeks of this kind of cargo op... Just 5 days of it definitely kicked the shit out of us. 

Between A Flat Rock And A Weird Place

I arrived on the bridge the other night for my watch.

The helmsman I relieve was in an animated discussion with the third mate, so I didn't interrupt to assume the watch, but instead settled down with my coffee over on the bridge wing.

The ordinary seaman was on the bridge for some reason, and he migrated over to where I was nursing my life-giving nectar and began talking at the side of my head.

Through the haze of freshly cast-off sleep and the bouquet of steam from that bean-juice cradled under my nose, I became aware of three distinct things at once:

First, the strange lights in the sky were back, and they were - once again - operating relative to Saturn; they were visible 5-degrees above the horizon, 2 points to port. 

Next, the ordinary seaman was on the bridge to see these UFO's for himself (everyone aboard has heard about them), and he began explaining his understanding of them in relationship to the Simulation Theory.

An finally, to my other side, the helmsman was arguing with the third mate - attempting to convince him that the world was, in fact, flat.

I must ardently defend myself from the people who know me best - I had not prodded, poked, nor precipitated in any way the discussion about the Simulation Theory with the ordinary. It was entirely unprovoked.

I share Taco Tuesday dinners with many of these people, dinners which typically conclude at about the time I bring up the Simulation Theory.

But the flat-earther?

Not height-of-eye calculations, great circles in navigation, nor the observable phenomenon of a ship visibly coming up over the horizon were sufficiently persuasive arguments from the third mate to sway the mind of the guy who is paid to watch ships actually come over the horizon, while transiting the globe on a great circle, from a perch granting him a vantage point 138 meters up in the air.

It was a moment of sheer madness in all directions all at once, the least mad of which were the UFO’s tracing strange patterns in the dark sky.

Lights and Boobies in Blue Skies

Welp. Saw more UFO's... Or, as the kids call them, "UAPs," or "unidentified aerial phenomena."

We were an hour or two to homeward of the IDL and the night was as clear as they come... If not for the curvature of the earth, we could've seen the lights of Japan.

Instead, we saw weird lights moving erratically in the sky about 5 degrees above the horizon. It is difficult to say how far away they were because it was so unbelievably clear, but by our best guess (my watch partner and I discussed it at length afterward), they might have been 40-60 miles away.

I could see starlink constellations moving in the sky alongside these UAP so no... It was definitely not satellites... They were about half to a third as bright as squid boats, and they had the variety of colors that some blue giant stars have (i.e., Sirius).

The light show continued for almost an hour, and we decided not to call the captain... It's just too easy to imagine "WTF!? You're waking me up for WHAT!?"

He wasn't pleased that the Third Mate and I didn't call him, though, so, should we see them again, we will most certainly call him. I mean... 

When we did tell him the next day, a conversation about the Ununaki and the Younger Dryas broke out (Lizzid People!) so... Yeah. Call the old man to see the funny lights in the sky! Roger that!

I've had a string of really upbeat and positive days, and my previous angst toward the captain and mate for working us watch standers on watch has slowly subsided. In some ways, it has alleviated the slowdown of time caused by taking two sleeps a day, and so I am forced to appreciate the requirement.

That was not the case two weeks ago, but now I begrudgingly must concede - busy busy busy is being much gooder.

I have studied management styles since I first "went to sea," and I've seen some of the worst bullshit imaginable. Demeaning, demoralizing, and deadly. I know exactly what not to do, and I know why not to do it.

But I've also seen very good management, and this company's captains and mates continue to impress me. Even when the unlicensed crew text the crewing guy shoreside, they get cordial responses... I have never heard of that before. Never.

So kudos to them. I've bitched long and loudly about bad management before, so I feel it's important to acknowledge when it's done right.

We have retarded our clocks several more times since the last blog post, and crossed the IDL into the future. I am one day ahead of y'all.

Maybe I've crossed back into my original timeline, and maybe I haven't, but so far the future is warm and sunny.

A 5-meter swell rolled us all night long, and at one point, we hit a few 12-degree rolls and things went everywhere, but nothing like the 30-degree rolls on our way into Tacoma several weeks ago.

We continue to have safety drills, inspections, and the horrific firefighting equipment in the EGL (emergency gear locker, the new moniker for the damage control locker these days) has been completely replaced with brand new gear. 

I was just awarded a $50 Amazon gift card for having the cleanest room aboard during our latest sanitary inspection.  Go me!

Anyway, that's all I got. There isn't much traffic out here; the client has sent us completely around the low-pressure system, so the weather has been perfect, and there are many boobies for me to enjoy while on watch!  As well as pilot whales and dolphin, and one lone albatross... But I do love the boobies.

I must note that I have many videos I'd prefer to embed on this blog, but Blogger has seemingly stopped supporting video in recent years, so I've been trying to take more relevant photos... I'm actually not a Luddite. Promise. 

To Home And Back Again

After picking up the pilot from the Port Angeles pilot station, I drove us south through Puget Sound to Yukon Anchorage - a little triangle of water behind Blake Island (a marine park), north of Vashon Island, and south of Bainbridge Island.

We shifted the next day to the Tacoma dock and began cargo watches (8-hour watches), so I was able to, for the first time in my maritime career, go home and sleep in my own bed while working on a ship.

Cargo was a slow and tedious process, so our departure was delayed several times, which was fine by me.

While I wasn't able to truly relax, it was relaxing. What I found was that even a short time at home felt like a full reset to my energy level by the time I drove the ship out to sea, 6 days after the gangway hit the dock.

Another car carrier was moored at the Port of Tacoma when we left. And a third RoRo had replaced us at anchor in Yukon Anchorage.

As we passed yet another inbound car carrier, I commented to the pilot that it seemed like there were more RoRo's than I'm used to seeing. I didn't know if it was because my awareness was suddenly greater, since I was on one of them, or if my observations were correct; he confirmed it was the latter.

Laura grabbed some spectacular photos when I passed by Shilshole. If you zoom in all the way, you can see me waving from the wheel. 

I turned over the helm at a quarter ‘til four PM north of Point No Point. When I went back on the wheel at 1945 hours, we were almost to Neah Bay. We exited the vessel traffic system on that same watch and travelled south 1000 miles before taking a right turn and beginning the transit across the Pacific.

The next day, I was sad to learn that this new captain and mate had tasked us watchstanders with maintenance work – chipping, painting, etc., during ocean crossings, instead of standing our customary watch. I signed on as a watchstander, not as a day worker, so now I feel like I'm getting the worst of both gigs -- dirty-ass, physically demanding deck work, lack of sleep, and a destroyed circadian rhythm -- all for less money.

It has become both a mental and physical slog, and keeping my morale positive is now the focus of all my attention.

I have witnessed without exception that shipping companies hire permanent captains for their vessels in pairs -- one is crew-friendly and focused on improving the crew's quality of life aboard, while the other is a die-hard company man, only concerned with checking boxes and adhering to budgetary constraints to the point of foolishness. 

The captain who left - the Hungarian guy - is very much missed.

This captain takes the standard approach to clock changes - we retard the clocks 20 minutes at 1800, 2200, and 0200 each. The net result sets the clocks back an hour as we cross each time zone. 

I gain 20 minutes of sleep on my first short sleep of the day, I stand an extra twenty minutes on my watch, and then I gain 20 more minutes of sleep on my second long sleep of the day.

A "good" captain (one who isn't sucking up to the company, anyway) will then advance clocks during the day on the way back over so that nobody is deprived of sleep, but apparently, this guy advances clocks at the same times that we retard them. So, I expect my return trip across the Pacific after the insanity awaiting us in Korea will be a grueling one, indeed - sleep being the most valuable commodity.

When we cross the International Date Line (IDL), we advance into the future and skip a day, so all my correspondence will be from Future-Me... Future-Me, who knows things from the future.

When we make the return trip from the "Far East," we’ll repeat a day, which reminds me of a previous IDL crossing I made on a holiday. I wrote in holiday pay for both the holiday and the repeated day as a joke (I had a correct timesheet ready to turn in), and the chief mate lost his mind.

Imagine having no sense of humor at all. 

Korea will be cold, cold, cold... Well below freezing, even at the high temperature of the day. At this port, there’s a 25-foot tide, which means the mooring lines are adjusted hourly, and with the ramp only able to handle cargo 2 hours at a time, twice a day... it could take up to two weeks to unload the ship.

But right now, we’re at the 30th parallel near Hawaii, the arctic air far, far away. It's warm and sunny, and the water has that magical shade of sky blue I named "Aloha Blue" years ago. I don't know why or what about it is so distinct, but you could drop me anywhere in the world and I'd know I was in the Hawaiian waters by the color alone.

A milk-chocolate brown booby took up his symbiotic residence aboard. He's spent days hunting the flying fish kicked off by the bow wake, but there’s no cross arm on the fore mast where booby's love to sit, so I've wondered where he's sleeping. I found his perch by happenstance today while painting on the forward mooring station: On the anchor. 

The brown booby was then replaced by a red-footed booby, who spent her time flying in an infinity-shaped pattern across the bow, much as her predecessor had done. I have not yet found her perch.

And, that's the news from this RoRo upon which I ride. Somewhere between here and there is the portal into the timeline I came from - the one where current affairs do not look like a mashup of the 1880s, the 1930s, and the 1960s with added robots, AI, and evil billionaire villains for that extra spicy flavor.

Making Way Again At Last.

We are finally underway, making way, since we first started drifting 13 days ago.  

It's hard to shake off mental fog and awaken from the fugue state induced by going nowhere when each day is a repeat of the one before. The rumble of the engine making 14 knots at 78 RPM helps do exactly that. We'll take on a pilot and anchor in Puget Sound in just a few days.

Interestingly, we’ll drop anchor in the anchorage I transit through when I run to my boathouse in Port Orchard from Ballard. It's named "Yukon Anchorage" and I've never heard it referred to by that name, nor does the internet know it as such... But that's what it's called on the Admiralty charts in the ship's ECDIS (chartplotter).

I’ve used my Peter Harrison’s seabird identification guide – a new edition – to easily identify two different albatross I've seen in recent days - a waved albatross and a black-footed albatross. Oddly enough, the two birds appear on the same page.

The new guide is so much better than the older one I used to carry (which relied on photographs, not Peter's artwork). It's a wonder I could identify anything accurately!  

And I've seen a blackfish known as a "false killer whale" and at least three pods, 50-strong, of striped dolphin. The dolphin always make a beeline for the ship when they see us, I think because they love to play in the wave that forms around the bulbous bow.

They're probably horribly disappointed when they discover this ship doesn't have a bulbous bow.  It's the only ship I've ever seen without one, actually, and I wonder exactly why the designers omitted the efficiency and performance-enhancing structure from this boat.  

Now, we steam north toward Tacoma, where I hope to quickly say hello/goodbye to any and all my peeps available and grab some extra warmth-making items in preparation for the extreme cold of Korea.

My brother flies to Incheon regularly, so I hope to run into him while I'm there. I know that sounds weirdly casual, but it's actually more likely than any non-transportation-worker might expect.

Since we began heading north this morning, the swells have built considerably. They're massive, slow-rolling things that are hard to measure; after 4 hours of watching them on my first watch of the day, my best estimate is 6-7 meters from NNE with a 12-15 second period. The wind waves are minimal. It looks almost flat but feels anything but.

Bowditch (background here) says most mariners underestimate the height of seas, and the ship's log agrees with that - the swells were reported as only 3 meters.  

I visualize the geometry of peak and trough, then throw mental high-boy containers in that simplified triangle as my method of estimating seas. One high boy is roughly 3 meters high.

To be fair to my watch partners, unless you're staring at the ocean without distraction for several minutes, you might not even see the swells, especially when there are no wind waves.

They're focused on updating and upgrading firefighting equipment, prepping for cargo, new crew turnover, etc., and aren't staring at the sea with the same patience nor degree of leisure as me.

In these conditions, the ship pitches with a seven-second free-fall drop that gives way to a significant increase in weight as we climb out of the trough.  

It's amusing watching sailors on the stairs as they race up as much of a flight as they can during the drop, and then suddenly stop to wait out carrying the extra pounds they've acquired when climbing out of the valley.

Anyway... I’m supposed to be skipping dinner and sleeping so that I get enough rest, not writing this blog post on my phone... so with that, I dive back into the flatline of the routine and reenter the dream I was having before I woke up long enough to put this into words.

Onwards.  I'll see y'all in Tacoma.

Hove-to, Holidaze, UFOs Past and Present

5 days.  It's only been 5 days.

We left that little port outside of San Diego 6 days ago and steamed west for 300 miles, then turned the ignition to "off" and started drifting to wherever the waves and winds dictate.

To a watchstanders such as myself, however, that means it's been 10 sleeps, not 5 days.  

Time slows down.  The circadian rhythm gets tossed out the window.  I have my short sleep in the afternoon, and my long sleep in the morning like a crepuscular animal whose life-cycle follows a semi-diernal tide.

I saw a large pod of spinner dolphin on the way out to the waters where we're now drifting. They made directly for the bow of the ship where, if the past is any indicator, they played in the bow waves but were completely out of sight from my lofty seat up on the bridge.  

I did not see their departure.

The green glow lit the waves during the transit out here, too, and the white horses were clearly visible in the long eyes all the way to the horizon in the impenetrable night.

I watched the international space station pass overhead, from right to left, and then I saw other lights in the sky that didn't make any sense.

I watched them manoeuver in weird circles, then disappear for awhile before reappearing nearby.  They were amber in color.  They were far away.  They were fast.

I finally pointed them out to my watch partner.

We heard one side of a radio communication where a shoreside facility was asking another vessel if they saw any signaling lights, that they were getting reports of flares reported in that area, but because that vessel was too far away we never heard their response.

But I've seen flares on numerous occasions, and those were not flares.

I didn't see them again until last night, 5 nights into our drift.  The deck cadet was up on the bridge bored and lamenting missing out on celebrating New Year's Eve but the light show was brief.  I had just managed to dial in my binoculars from where the previous watch had ganked with the eyepieces before they disappeared, not to return.

Again- not flares.  Not even close.

We've been drifting for 5 days.  Only 5 days.  

We have 14 more to go... 28 sleeps until Tacoma.

I told my watch partner about a 4x8 watch I stood with the Chief Mate on the APL President Polk in 2013, when we saw an unidentified and unexplainable light we presumed at first to be Venus rising and then the ISS in flight.  We were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 1000 miles from the nearest land.  We were pretty sure it was either extremely high altitude or suborbital.

Then, this object performed a smooth, 90-degree port turn and went behind a cloud, something no satellite, weather balloon, or space station could do.

That CM refused to acknowledge what we'd both just seen. One minute we were puzzling through what it might be, then it defied physics; the next minute, the CM was gaslighting himself about what we saw and refused to talk about it.

I persisted the remainder of that voyage to get him to admit what we saw, but without success. I'm convinced that's why he started playing Pentecostal "rock" on watch every morning after that, much to my horror and chagrin.  

28 sleeps.  

The weather has been flat, warm, and mostly sunny, but that's about to change for the worse.  A north wind is coming and with it will come the ocean swells, wind waves, rain, cold, and an end to the calm, flat conditions.

Our mild drift southward will become more pronounced.  Rest will suffer.  Work will become even moreso.  

The only thing that will be the same will be the slow passing of the next 28 sleeps, and I am about to enjoy one of those right now, so on watch tonight, when I'm looking for the lights in the sky, I will be saying to myself "27 sleeps..."

This Is How We Tramp

Richmond, Ca, was a cluster.

The longshoremen wanted a gangway put down onto the dock in addition to the sidewalk up the giant loading ramp on the stern, so that meant we needed two gangway watchstanders at a time, which means I stood my watch, did my fire round, then went to bed at 0100, then I was called back out at 0330 and I worked until the following midnight.

Because the longshoremen.

They also filed a grievance against the ship b/c we did stores. Apparently taking perishable food aboard by crane forward the gangway, where we take on supplies, instead of waiting until midnight when they were done with cargo on the stern cargo ramp, violated their contract in some way.  

They refused to allow us to do it even during lunch when they were off work for an hour. Make it make sense.

I recall the Oakland longshoremen being equivalent in speed, competence, and attitude to the longshoremen in Pakistan.  Worse than the poor and starving Sri Lankans or annoying Egyptians.  And yet, just down the road in Long Beach they're pretty decent.  

_________________

After "burning on STCW," the maritime verbiage for "exceeding the legal recommendations for work without rest," it took me two sleeps to get caught back up.  Physically I was good after one sleep, but the cotton in my head took the second sleep to pick out.

_________________

Liners have a set route and the predictability of their fixed schedule is really nice.  A ship of the line runs like a clock and there are very few surprises.  There's a lot to be said for predictability.

While it's great to be bored at sea, it seems that I prefer tramps.

Tramp ships don't know where they're going, or when. It's never simple or straightforward. No one aboard is quite prepared for the weird situations that arise.  Currently we're pinned offshore near San Diego by weather, and we can't go into port until the wind abates.  

The port we're going into has a very narrow fairway in and the approach must be precise. With swells on the stern and 50 knot winds on the beam, this giant box is not exactly... Navigably precise.

So, we're either going to anchor somewhere or lay hove to and drift offshore.  TBD.

The schedule is turning out to be interesting.  After we manage to do what must be done in this port, we have to be back in Tacoma... In mid January.  I don't know what that means except that we're going to slow bell it north, go to anchor somewhere, drift aimlessly... That's a LOT of time to kill.

Then we're off to the great white Asian north... Korea.  The destination port has 25-ft tides and the cargo can only be run 2 hours at a time.  So cargo is going to take weeks.  

And the high there today was 26 degrees, the low 12 degrees.  And no... That's not Celsius.  

I am very glad I brought two sets of wool base layers!  And multiple sets of wool socks!

From there we make our way back to this tiny little, narrow-hipped port we're currently unable to enter because of the howling winds and heaving seas.

Only three ports in over a month!  That's kind of incredible... Even for a tramp.  

______________________

When I got up to the bridge to make coffee and assume the watch last night, the old man and the mate on watch were out on the bridge wing with binoculars looking down at our gangway area.

I made my coffee then came over to see what was going on.  I saw a launch alongside, but before I could fathom what the operation was, the mate exclaimed, "Holy shit!"

The departing captain - a man who spent 15 years on a Russian freighter in the Bering Sea before coming to the US and joining our merchant fleet - misjudged the swells while boarding the launch and fell 10 feet to its deck, breaking his leg.

I didn't see it, neither did the captain who was also looking at the launch in relationship to the boat, but the chief mate and sailors at the gangway were as dumbfounded as the mate on watch up on the bridge.  

So the departing captain had a breathalyzer and an ambulance waiting for him at the dock when the launch got him ashore.

Have I mentioned this is a dry ship? Night and day different than previous ships I’ve been on.  Being drunk will get you fired.  Having alcohol aboard will get you fired.  The energy is so different as to be a different job, altogether... Another point for my new union contract.

The chief mate had incident reports already underway before the launch determined it too dangerous to attempt to get the broken-legged Captain's luggage from the gangway.

I think the old man had at least a hundred phone calls since last night.

The third mate printed out a half dozen interweb photos of people jumping off boats and ships and had placed them in inconspicuous locations around the ship by the time I assumed the watch this morning.

He'd also requested a clarification (in post-it note form) for the logbook whether the log should refer to the incident as "a failed leap of faith" or a "gross miscalculation of judgement."

It's Christmas morning and my phone has been busy with texts and messages - a very different experience at sea for me.  Usually, I'm buried in busy-work or large projects... Anchor watch is 10 minutes of walking and 2 minutes of work at the top of every hour and then standing by with a radio for the rest of the time.  Spending it texting with friends and family is quite civilized.

We had cold cuts for lunch... Which would be cause for anger in other circumstances... Except the cook asked if I wanted 2 lobsters tonight for dinner, or 3... Apparently, we have too many of them.

Merry Christmas.

People in A Big Metal Box Carrying Little Metal Boxes That Carry People

All last night my dreams were gently nudged by the awareness that the seas were building. Internal background processors of my brain took note of the size and direction of the swells and the apparent wind speed, but I never woke up because the ride was so mild - a slight hurky-jerky with some rolling and heaving, but nothing more.

When my alarm went off at 0700, I found myself inside a coma dream, THE coma dream... Under way making way, a sailor out sailoring; it was as if I'd never been ashore.  All the real world, all of my real life, is actually the dream and this is all I've ever known.  

It is weirdly comforting and slightly terrifying and I think this deja vous only adds to the credibility of the Simulation Theory:  How can two parts of a single life be so distinctively separate and yet be contained on one single rock hurtling through time and space?

It's a hell of a thing.  Do I remain within the lane of this timeline or do I detour onto another? I guess we'll find out.

I'm aboard a 200 meter RORO (roll on, roll off) named the "Green Wave."  My sign on was smooth.  The company personnel agent was courteous and professional.  I came aboard and the familiar hostility of my former Union's culture was absent.  

Per the terms of this contract for my new union, I am a watchstander.

So my first day aboard (how was that only yesterday!?), I stood a gangway watch, then knocked off and sanitized my quarters... Even going so far as to sougee the walls- a term I've only heard at sea. On my evening watch I immediately took the wheel and for the next three hours I steered us out of the Salish Sea along the Puget Sound sea lanes.

When I first laid eyes on this ship, I assumed two things: one, that she'd ride like a nightmare in heavy seas; and two, that she'd drive like she looked.

But here I am in 4-5 meter seas in Force 10 conditions (50 knot winds, or 58 mph) and it feels remarkably seaworthy and stable.

And handling? Very nice, indeed. The steering station is state of the art, clean, and the boat does what I ask her to do without complaint. The automatic steering, aka "steering by the mike," is much more adaptive and intelligent than the old rotary devices I've always used - no reverse rudder required.

Two helm commands into steering by hand and I had her ship handling nature... Responsive and compliant.  You'd never know it to look at her shape- she looks like the offspring of a puffer fish that mated with a shoebox, if it had a guppy’s belly.  I guess Phil Bolger (the boat designer who had a few designs derided as "Bolger's Boxes") would be proud.

We cross the Columbia bar tonight and my watch will be spent entirely in hand-steering.

We expect to make arrival in Vancouver, Washington, sometime around 0130 tomorrow morning.

Two things of note from today’s watch: First, I saw either the dorsal of a beaked whale or a fin whale as it breached dead ahead of us, passing from starboard to port. I know they're very different species of the same critter, but I saw a whale in gale-driven seas, which is very uncommon, and that I could make out its color and fin shape was even rarer.

And second, the third mate picked up what appeared to be a SART (search and rescue radar transponder) signal on the radar.  SARTs are only supposed to be used when a crew is in catastrophic duress.

I was doing mandatory training down below (helicopter and sexual harassment) and when I returned to the bridge the cadet was in hand-steering.  I relieved him and for the next little while we performed the remainder of a Williamson Turn and came back to the position of the SART radar sighting and it turned out to be abandoned fishing gear - somehow the transponder on that gear mimicked a SART. 

_________________

Remember how I said even in 5-meter-seas, the ride is nice?  Well, the other thing I'd noted about this boat is the bow is flat.  The designers basically cut off the flare above the waterline a ways up and she has a flat bow. 

To which I said, "I bet that sounds like a drum in heavy seas."

Turns out, heavy seas is anything above 5 meters.  

I had a powernap engaged in earnest when the pitching and heaving intensified into prolonged sensations of freefall.  Fair enough... I was merely being rocked in the cradle, no need to wake up.

Then the whole ship resounded with a big, wet, slapping, "baroom!" and shockwaves bounced back and forth between "stem" and stern like a physical, vibrational echo.

So, 6 meters and above with swells directly on the bow is where we find sleeplessness, and I know this for certain within my first 48 hours.

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Those >6-meter seas, it turns out, were the waves of the Columbia River bar as we transited into the river, proper.  It's known as the "Graveyard of The Pacific" b/c of the thousands of shipwrecks scattered in and around the river's mouth, but now I'll call it by another moniker, as well: "Sleep Robber of the PNW."

Robbed of sleep but still fresh from an idle life of sloth and indolence ashore, at 2000 I steered up the river for four hours until I was relieved at midnight. 

The pilot was one of the worst pilots I've encountered anywhere in the world and to describe why I think so would take too long and bore you far too much for it to be worth it for either of us, but suffice it to say, the Suez pilot who told me to "keep it in the middle" and then went to sleep in the pilot's chair after eating two lunches showed more ship handling confidence and people skills.

In my humble opinion, of course.

Tie up was interesting.  We moored alongside a small floating dock and ran our mooring lines to dolphins (multi-pilon piers) by way of a line boat, an arrangement that reminds me of tying up in the Marshall Islands or Puerto Rico.   

We were all fast by 0430, and I then went back on watch - a gangway watch, this time - at 0745, and I was tired, cold, and bored for the duration.

The floating dock is only there to accommodate our massive cargo door, and I spent the watch entertained by our cargo operations.

An endless stream of Subarus and work vans flowed out of the ship and down the ramp, while the same vans full of the same drivers returned aboard back up the ramp.  It looked like I-5 rush hour in Seattle if Seattle drivers knew how to merge. Or exceed the speed limit. Or simply drive, in general.

The sailing board is set for 0300 let go for Richmond.  I'm going to spend the next few hours sleeping before my next watch.