Here We Go Again!

Last Thursday at 1030 I threw down for a job that wasn’t expected aboard the SS Matsonia (yeah, a steam ship).  One other person threw their card down, but I had over a month seniority on him and the job was mine.  I was told to be there at 1300, after getting my “fit-for-duty.”  Um… Not possible.  Turns out it was no big deal- I got there at 1500 and the ship was a ghost town… which is a good sign- It means the Chief Mate likes to hit the beach.  I signed on with the old man, left my documentation with him, then went back ashore for some organic, non-ship groceries and one last shoreside dinner.

Underway, Making Way

Smallest wheelhouse ever!  It is positively tiny!

My quarters for the next unknown period of time.

The see-no, speak-no, hear-no hula monkeys are weirdly appropriate on the bridge.

We cast off at 0600 the next morning and I drove her out of Honolulu.  Now, my first day aboard, I am already tired of one guy’s stories and since I didn't sleep last night I’m also in a foul and nasty mood.  

On this ship I am the 4x8 watchstander, which means I am on the “work til you drop watch” and the “steer the ship in and out of port” watch.  It is also the watch with the Chief Mate- which can be a crap shoot, and luckily, I won the jackpot (so far)… he’s sharp, mild mannered, and we share a lot of the same musical, literary, culinary, and waterborne sporting interests.

Additionally, the 4x8 Watch is the Sunrise and Sunset Cruise, because I see both every day, and as we approach Oakland I have already seen at least one good one and some pretty spectacular crepuscular rays- those backstays of the sun that rain down from the clouds like golden downpours on the horizon.

Sunset over the Pacific.

Torrential crepuscular rays.

The bosun is a micromanager who has already “lost the gang” and irritates the crap out of me.  The delegate (since he is so much of a character I will henceforth refer to him as “Muppet”) doesn't like him, which is a good thing for me, and here’s how:  If I don’t decline any overtime, the bosun can’t deny me the opportunity to work; if one sailor gets to work overtime, I get to as well, a lesson I learned vividly aboard the Polk (told in posts sometime around April and May of 2013).

There is a term known as “slow-belling,” which alludes to the telegraph used by the bridge to tell the engine room how many turns (RPM) to make; it also refers to the speed of the bosun’s requests being fulfilled, and right now Muppet is slow-belling the bosun.  Everyone knows what’s going on in this feud, but the sincerity of the looks of confusion on Muppet's face when the bosun begins to fray, and the convincing manner with which he pretends to be “wounded” by the bosun’s barbs further feeds his anger and I have already had several of those “I can’t believe I get paid to be here” moments of suppressed laughter and quick, furtively shared looks amongst all the other sailors; they can’t believe they are getting paid to be here, either.

I’ve seen two humpbacks a day out of Hawaii, a school of common dolphin, a frigate bird, several red footed boobies (yay! boobies!), and countless wedge-tail shearwaters.  We’ve rolled quite a bit, but this old ship rides nice and doesn’t have all the rattles the newer ships seem to develop at their “particular” RPM’s.  The President Polk used to get this hammering vibration at 78 RPM that would wake the dead.  The Manukai just rattles.  The Waters is diesel electric and uncannily silent, as the CIA wanted when they commissioned her, which is bad for us sailors because the constant roar of a ship hides a lot of irritating noises. This old girl I'm on now makes just the right amount of noise... with earplugs and the fan on high nothing will wake me.

As it looks now, we’ll be in Oakland for 8 days; then back to Hono and back here, again; we’ll be laid up for two weeks (trip home!) then we’ll pick up the China run, but whether it’s for one or two runs is anyone’s guess… whatever is the plan now is subject to change utterly and means nothing, but it sounds like a great schedule so far (note: since I wrote this it has changed twice)!

So this morning, a week after driving out of Hono, I drove us into Oakland.  Per Muppet's 43-years-at-sea-instructions I needed to have change in my pocket when going under the great span of the bridge for luck, so I fetched a silver dollar from my quarters (it isn’t the quantity, it’s the quality, right?) and we sat on the deck bitching about the bosun as we sailed in to the Bay, as sailors have always done. That bridge is quite a sight from the water, that’s for sure.

An exhaustive aside: Sailors in my union drive the ship for an hour before their relief takes over for an hour... so it becomes hour on, hour off when quarter-mastering (driving the ship out of it!). The only tedium of driving a ship is numb feet and a sore lower back from hunching over the console, chasing the compass 'round and 'round... so I snapped the photo of the bridge on my hour on standby between the two hours I was driving...

As it happens, Muppet is my relief. "How is it," you may ask, "that you were sitting with your relief bitching about the bosun?" After all, if I'm not on the wheel, he should be- the opportunity to sit and bitch with him shouldn't have been possible.

Let me clarify (see if you can follow these machinations)- the bosun decided to inextricably use the "backwatch" (those most recently off the watch) to relieve me. This man came up a half-hour early, per the bosun's instructions; HE shouldn't have been relieving me, and the correct person shouldn't be relieving me for another half hour, in any case.

As I have explained, exhaustively I'm afraid, sailors play stupid games... this game was a timing game that results in the person on the wheel (me) finding himself on the stern with a mooring line in his hand instead of the wheel in his hand- a total drag if you're dressed for the wheelhouse, not the deck. By sending the wrong man up when he did, the bosun was trying to kick me off the bridge while simultaneously punishing Muppet (he got denied time on standby).

THAT is how it came to be that instead of Muppet standing a watch on the wheel and me on standby in my room reading my kindle that we were, instead, plotting, scheming, bitching on the deck aft of the house as we went under the bridge. Another aside: I was at the wheel when we came alongside the dock, so he partially failed. Additionally, now the comptroller knows the score and suggested we "fix the problem."

Let the games begin!

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And now I sit in a coffee shop in the heart of Oakland, in Jack London Square, resisting the urge to draw a forced parallel between me and Buck, and my own The Call of The Wild;  I’m sure every blogger who has ever sat behind their laptop in this coffeeshop has- tragically- done something exactly like this.  

Instead I’ll mention the Jack London story (the name of which I cannot remember) of the two miners with a fortune of gold who threw the food off their dogsled to make room for their wealth, but overloaded it, killing the dogs through their over-exertion; eventually both men succumbed to starvation, madness, and their mutual greed-induced, lonely and cold demises. Like sailors, trading vast expanses of their life for gold. I'm just sayin'...

OK! Time to get groceries! I am on shore and I have a rental car- Woo Hoo!