Mutiny, Whales, and UFO's

I saw how life was going to be my first day on here and I began this trip pissed off and angry, having suffered similar voyages with equally disagreeableness on all quarters; my first day working with the bosun I determined that I didn’t like his tone of voice and I let him know that “we're apparently having a communication problem,” and from that moment on he gave me much more latitude than he gave the rest of the gang.

But I still had to deal with his micromanagement, and watch with loathing as he belittled, confounded, and verbally abused the rest of the gang.

So what started as a whispering campaign and idle threats of collective action against him became much more when the bosun “laid hands upon” a sailor as we shifted docks (moved the ship) a few days ago.  So the gang mutinied against him and ran him off, whereby a new bosun- much more to our liking- took his place before setting off for Hawaii.  The mate and the old man seem much relieved, but not nearly as much as we sailors.

After a morning in which yelling filled our passage way, fists pounded on closed doors, verbal confrontations filled with threats of legal action flew thither and yon, and the rumor mill churned out excited whispers and stares more so than words, my ship’s dark cloud lifted, scattered by the glorious aroma of schadenfreude carried upon the piping hot steam that emanated from a deserved slice of humble pie.  The ship suddenly became a happy place.  My new campaign is to keep this bosun aboard until they lay the ship back up in May.

We set sail in good spirits.  The waters were squid-ink black that churned a color of green that defies classification- not olive, not jade, not forest, nor lime- it was the color of the primordial ooze that puked up us land creatures that now zig and zag across her surface like so many waterbugs on the still waters of a pond.

A day out of Oakland I saw a whale blowing.  The blow was symmetrical, wide, and low.  Then I saw the head- square and out of the water.  Finally, I saw a fluke with curved tips.  My first thought was “sperm whale” because the head was definitely that of a sperm whale.  But the fluke of the sperm whale doesn’t have curved tips.  And they have an asymmetrical head with a single blowhole on the side that produces a blow that is forward and to the right.

The only other contender, based on that distinctive head, was a blackfish (long finned pilot whale).  The head was similar- but not the same- and the blow and the fluke is more like what I saw.  It was in territory where I was most likely to see humpbacks, which I didn’t see.  

But that head was so unmistakable I have to go with sperm whale- the fluke could have been curled so as to create the appearance of curved tips, and the blow could have been into the wind or the aspect of the whale such that “forward and to the right” happened to be directly in my direction, making it appear symmetrical, wide, and low.  Plus, what I saw was substantially larger than a blackfish.

Two days later the mate happened to look out his cabin window and he saw me carrying lashing gear across a hatch cover as two humpback fully breached fifty feet from where I was obliviously working.  The bridge team saw it all, too.  At the time I was laughing at the gang for walking up the weather side of the ship in 40 knot winds, struggling, when they could have sauntered up the leeward side.  Now I know if they’d used their sailorly know-how they would have been rewarded with that wonderful spectacle I was denied- humpback acrobatics are wonderful to behold and never fail to awe.

On watch, yesterday, I kept imagining I peripherally saw the tell-tale splash of water that alerts me to the presence of Dahl’s porpoises.  But I saw nothing.  I kept starting from my chair, going for the binoculars, then shaking my head and sitting back down, convinced my imagination was conjuring things from the whitecaps of the surrounding seas.  The mate noticed my attention and actually spotted what I had failed to see: pacific white-sided dolphin.  They’re almost as fast as Dahl’s porpoises and equally as hard to spot.

I have exhaustively reported sightings of white tailed tropicbirds, magnificent frigate birds, various and assundry albatross and shearwater.  Also, it is no great secret that I love the red footed boobies and yell “boobies” on the bridge every time they are present.  But a strange little almost-raptor-like thing landed on the foremast yesterday that had me pouring through my seabird book, puzzled.  

It made me recall the night I transported that sleeping osprey from Cape Canaveral to Charleston on the foremast of the USNS Waters- it seemed that raptor-like to me (its behavior added to the effect).  What I finally decided it was, basically by eliminating everything in my identification book that it couldn’t be, was a pomarine skua- a critter I haven’t seen before (or if I did then I didn’t know I was seeing it).  The third mate (an avid bird watcher) told me with a perfectly straight face, as is the seafarer custom, that it was “a seagull.”

The weather has been OK- some lumpy seas and overcast skies, but pleasant, nonetheless.  I was lucky enough to notice the horizon blazing orange at sunset, yesterday, beneath a thick layer of cloud cover.  It was the color that heralds the green flash, so I set up with the binoculars and waited, and sure enough, I caught quite the extraordinary display.  The Practical Navigator says the weather has to be clear, but I think the only requirement is great visibility… because that’s what my own lying eyes have told me.

Today is my birthday, so when I turned-to for overtime the gang sang me happy birthday on the stern.  The bosun gave me a cush job (painting fresh work inside the lifeboat) and then after lunch we did fire and boat drills.  Tomorrow, due to international law (known as the Manila Amendments to the Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchstanding) I can only work 2 hours of overtime in the morning because we arrive in Hono at 2200, where I then become a dayman.  My sleep schedule will get dumped on its head.  Again.

I saw the theatrical performance I have described before- a flock of birds swarming a school of fish, circling and diving like mad, and off to the side a whale, perhaps the playwright directing the entire thing.   I couldn’t get a good enough look at it to identify… but it was barnacle encrusted and I hope it was one of the endangered whales (Right or Gray), although neither are listed as sailing those waters.

Jupiter has been blindingly bright all the way across.  I finally saw good stars last night- Cassiopea on the right beam, the union of vela and carina which I call the “pseudo-crux” on the left, and the three amigos (taurus, orion, canis major) overhead.  I usually don’t see “unidentified objects” which can’t be rationally explained, but this trip I saw two such objects which have left me puzzling.

That bright dot is Jupiter.

One object flew high and fast across the sky, similar to a satellite, but then turned and disappeared (satellites, artificial or otherwise, do NOT do that).  The other flew slow and low, brighter than everything else, then a cloud obscured the view for a few seconds, and when the cloud was passed… nothing.  It had vanished.

So we just finished docking in Hono.  Dock at 0200, shift (move the ship) at 0530, start work at 0800, get knocked off at 1000 for STCW compliance (sleep regulations) then be back at the ship by 1730 to shift again.  These are the continuing voyages of the steamship Matsonia.