A Few Good Days

Friday, March 26:

We threw off the lines at noon today and got underway. I managed to get my personal sundries and a haircut while in Oakland this time, but the stay was short and I’m glad we’re moving again. Next time we hit the mainland we’ll be in Long Beach, CA, a town that reminds me of Oakland for its layout, its look, and its being filled to capacity with Californians- but first we have a pit-stop to make in Hono. Aloha, y’all.

We took a left at Alcatraz, went under the bridge, and headed out into the Pacific. The cold waters around the Farallon Islands were the color of flint that churned the green and white of key lime pie in a freezer, and because of a book - “The Devil’s Teeth” - recommended to me by Laura (by way of Fleetwood), I know these waters teem with one of the world’s greatest concentrations of notably large great white sharks.  

The author’s description of the Farallones is pretty much spot on- it looks like one seriously god-forsaken gulag if ever there was one, much like the teeth of the sharks who congregate beneath the 57 degree churning mirk, and probably equally as comfortable. Alcatraz was clearly misplaced- these rocks would be inescapable, no walls necessary.  

So maybe our wake churned less like key lime pie and more like the pale, sterile green and white of glacial runoff pooling at the foot of a jumbled moraine, freezing the barren till into bits sharp, hard, and brittle. Cold and inhospitable. Forlorn and forsaken. Farallon, the adjective. Et Cetera.
 

40 miles further out I began to see humpbacks blowing. I was pretty sure, based on the shape of the blow they were humpback, but when one began an impressive display of lobtailing (slapping the water with its fluke) there could be no mistaking that tail for anything else. I went from mammal-blasted geyser to mammal-blasted geyser with the long-eyes afterward hoping to see another display of some sort, but the rest of them were pretty laid back- no dorsals, no heads, no breaches.

Saturday, March 27th:

Today we cleared decks and began wash-down, per the Agreement.  On this ship there are boxes up forward of the house and 8 decks of cars abaft it; the “parking garage” catches the wind, swinging the stern to leeward and the bow to windward and makes steering her in a blow… interesting.  Thankfully, she isn’t the first ship I’ve driven that swings into the wind underway.

The lashing gear missed by the longshoremen gets stowed in the gear boxes, all trash gets taken to the trash-tainer (a container full of trash, if you must), the chain, chain-binders, ratchets, ratchet straps, pallets, dunnage, and other assorted cargo gear gets put away and stowed for sea.  Then we string the ship with cords and hoses and begin wash-down.

One crew starts on the bow and works their way aft washing down the main deck with salt-water from the fire mains while the other strings hoses up the house from a pressure washer and begins washing down the house with pressurized fresh water.  Forward Aft.  Top to Bottom.  Rain gear, rubber boots, safety glasses, All Hands Mandatory Overtime, Go!  

Instead of eating lunch I took an hour-and-a-half nap, as I do most days at sea while on the 4x8.  

Sunday, March 28 - BBQ Day

The morning sky was interrupted by partial cloud cover, cutting and dissecting the constellations into mostly unrecognizable starry pieces, morphing as our positions changed relative to one another- the dipper handle, a headless crow, the “z” part of the big “w” that is cassiopea… if it weren't for my active attempts to commit their locations to memory I’d have had no idea what sky I was looking at; if I find one I then know where the others are supposed to be… mostly.  Thank god for my star chart!

Washdown continued.  Rain gear, rubber boots, gloves, eye protection… I used the high setting to descale rust from the lower port ladder we’ll be painting in port.  Pretty interesting stuff; as a matter of fact, interesting enough to write home about.  It did quite the good job, come to think about it, but I’d have rather used a chipping hammer.

Curious point of note- putting an eye splice in 3 strand line and one in 4 strand line is NOT the same process.  How is it that I have never put an eye splice into 4 strand line?  And the Sampson splicing book I brought with me has 3 strand info, but no 4 strand… it skips straight to 8, 8x3, 12, and 16 strand line.  In the parlance of the kids, “wtf?”  I guess I brought the wrong splicing book with me (do I really need to bring 2?).

The BBQ is held on the officer’s deck every Sunday at sea, just below the bridge aft of the house.  The cook sets up in front of the grill to burn the meat as the kitchen utilities bring up the prepared sides.  At exactly 1645 (not one minute earlier) the watchstanders (myself, the chief mate, a junior, and one of the engineers) can begin loading our plates.  After we are loaded, the rest of the ship can begin loading their plates.

Some guys drink beer, the old man hangs out and mingles with the unlicensed crew and drinks beer, and we watchstanders eat as fast as possible, keeping a close eye on our time-pieces.  Even if I did drink beer I would/could not.  Those of us on watch get just far enough into conversations with crew members we never see that we are forced to peel ourselves away, begrudgingly and often mid-sentence, to return to our watch no later than 1715.

The sun sets on my watch.  Something about over-eating, sitting with the setting sun in my face, and the rhythmic rolling and pitching of a ship under a full head of steam just sucks the life force right out of my machinery; my eyes get heavy, my shoulders sag, and my daydreams become less a laundry list of to-do’s and more a bucket-list of want-to’s.  I think of things fantastical to the smallest minutia, and how to bring these things into being.  Any intrusion by my watch partner (my favorite to date) is usually resented for a brief moment until I regain my focus and job responsibility reasserts itself.  That’s when I start pacing.

Monday, March 29-

Fire and boat drill day.  At 1300 the ship’s bell rings for 10 seconds, followed by the same 10 second ring on the ship’s whistle.  All engineers muster below while we “deckies” muster in the DC locker (damage control) up above.  We are instructed that there is a fire in the galley and there will be two fire teams (ours and the engineers) to respond.  I am one of the firefighters so I suit up.

Step into my boots.  Pull my pants up over my work clothes and secure the suspenders over my shoulders.  Put the fire-sock over my head and pull it down to gather at my neck until needed.  Put on my jacket and fasten the front.  Turn around and put on my SCBA (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus) like a backpack, leaning forward to pop it out of its cradle.  Put my SCBA mask on and then pull the fire sock up from my neck and cover all my exposed face.  Put on the hat and gloves while my partner hooks my mask up to the regulator.  Draw air.

Time to go fight fire.

Thankfully, a simulated fire.  I strip back down, as does the rest of the fire team, and we all trundle down to the galley to continue our drill- thankfully we weren't required to deploy hoses and charge the system this time.  Instead, we go over where the fire blankets are located, how to deploy the “gaylord” system, how to secure electrical for the space, and where the vents to be closed are located.

The chief medical officer- our illustrious mascot the second mate- misinforms everyone about how to respond to burn casualties while the first officer tries to correct him without inducing embarrassment (he soon gives up and lets the show go on, heeding the screed “do no harm”).  From there we go down to the lower DC locker and review how to fill the SCBA tanks from the “cascading system,” a series of pressurized air bottles.

Three rings secures us from the fire drill, but then seven short blasts on the ship’s bell followed by one long one (abandon ship) and the same repeated on the ship’s whistle sends us into the boat drill.  I man the sea painter on lifeboat #1, possibly the job requiring the most skill and sailorly know-how but mostly ignored by crews who have never actually towed a boat underway.

The Egyptian linemen who come aboard ships in the Suez Canal make up their own sea painter before the crane hoists them aboard, and I can assure you they take it very seriously.  If it’s too loose they capsize.  If it’s too taught they get tossed out.  In either scenario someone is likely to die.  The lifeboat painter is exactly the same as the linemen’s; our contract says we treat every drill as if it’s real, so I do.  Some guys don’t think it will ever happen… but it’s a boat.  A very big boat, yes… but still a boat.  Things can go wrong.  

We drop the lifeboats to the embarkation deck, then hoist the gravity davits back up into place.  Everyone has a job.  An engineer puts in the boat plug and releases the man-ropes.  Two sailors release the fraps from the MacClooney hooks.  Two sailors loosen the turnbuckles on the gripes.  One man releases the brake to send the boat down.  One man hoists it back up while the gripe tenders test the limiter switches.  It is clockwork done by baboons.  Repetition makes us stronger.  We are only as safe as our dumbest monkey allows.

Wednesday, March 30

Indigo is a word that utterly fails to capture the depth and breadth of the ocean’s gemlike brilliance.  To say “indigo” is to ignore the radiance that seems to emanate from it and denies the sun’s rays captured in the liquid medium, clear shafts of light pointing to the center of the earth captured fleetingly, a dancing refractory of light across its gyrating skin, as beckoning as it is inhospitable.  It is the color of the calm between upheavals, and as I stare at it from the bridge wing a halo encircles my view of the coriolis of water rolling down the ship's hull as the wake’s mist bends light and overlays the unnumbered fathoms below with the faint spectrum of the prism.

A pod of Blackfish greeted us as the Hawai'ian Islands emerged from the humidity and tropical rain, and Christmas shearwaters, brown boobies (Boobies!), and a little bird I failed to identify all fell in with us as escorts toward land.  

I drove the ship in, the pilot singing his commands, me singing them back curtly as I shifted our rudder left and right in response, and soon all 800 feet were safely docked at pier 52.  It was determined I could have a “day off” (a euphemism that means I can use my accrued “time-back”) and so I called a taxi, showered, and made my way off the dock as fast as humanly possible- I have learned that once you’ve been cut loose you must disappear as fast and thoroughly as possible or work will find you, unwilling as you may be, and stick to you like the patina of soot and grease that sweats from the steel of the ship, herself.  

There are no idle hands on a ship.