Firehoses and Floodlights

Today's watch I was off the coast of Tunesia's Isle de la Galite. The watch
was interrupted by drills- SCBA's, which are air tanks you wear while
fighting fires, Nozzleman and Hoseman practice with the streams shooting off
the stern- using the ubiquitous navy nozzle and the vary nozzle- and
lifeboat drills.

Tonight I could see the coast of Sicily to our north. There were a couple
of fishing vessels, unlit, that created an enormous amount of watchkeeping
work on the bridge... they were "embarrassing" us- which means shining a
floodlight right into our eyes- in order to compensate for the fact that
they did not have any proscribed lighting (an all around red over white,
plus their typical making way lights). And doing stupid shit like cutting
across our bow when only about 2 nautical miles away- it takes 3.5 nm for us
to stop. When our relief came up I handed off my watch with one vessel
safely astern, and the other moving away broad off our starboard bow.

Not for the first time since we first outran the hurricane I have been
dumbfounded by the stars. The lack of city lights, or shore lights of any
kind, brings a whole new sky into perspective. One of my favorite
constellations is Orion. Orion is the most easily recognized and it has
heralded my path out of harm's way on more than one occasion. Sirius is
nearby in the sky and looks as if it were shot out of Orion's bow. Sirius
strobes white, blue, and red and is so bright it has a halo of light, like
that cast by a floodlight. I can't help but think of Jacob's coat of many
colors, or Saruman's robe before Gandalf cast him down. Oh, I forgot, look
at it through a pair of high quality binoculars... just amazing.

And the heated, salt water pool at 0400 is just about the finest thing
imaginable. It is next to the stack behind the wheelhouse, with a tower of
containers on the third side. Very interesting location, for sure- but I
was looking at the coast of Africa underneath the stars while swimming this
morning and that ain't too shabby a way to end the first part of my work
day.

And I just became aware that I am not to transmit any data about our
whereabouts- for security reasons- so I am going to become more and more
vague... sorry. We do "Gulf of Aden" drills for a reason, and loose lips
sink ships, so to speak...