On And On We Go...

I got groceries the day of departure, stopped by Chinatown on the way back to the ship to “run out the clock” on my time ashore, then got back aboard and drove us out of Honolulu harbor bound for LA.  Every now and then I am struck by the fact that I drive a ship… but mostly it has become routine in every sense of the word.  At this point still an enjoyable routine- not the drudgery “routine” usually conjures up.

Only in Chinatown.

Chinatown, Honolulu.

Chinatown, Honolulu.

The schedule on the trip over was the same as it was last week (the same as it is every week on the Pineapple Run, actually):  Clear and washdown decks and house after leaving port; BBQ on Sunday; emergency drills on Monday; advance clocks 3 times so I, and 21 of my closest friends, can all repeatedly enjoy jet lag together; have our overtime and projected overtime written and double-checked because it’s due by the end of the week… it’s like “Groundhog Day” all over again.

The shortest lunar eclipse on record, however, wasn't on the schedule last week, and just after midnight of the day of departure the full shadow of the earth fell on that big ‘ol cheese wheel in the sky. It reminded me of the one I happened across in the middle of the ocean a couple of years ago (I can’t remember which ocean), but unlike this eclipse, that one came unannounced.

For a couple of minutes I was forced to wonder what was wrong with my eyes as the most noticeable thing in sight faded from the sky. Like a frog in water brought to boil it- was so gradual I didn't even know it was happening until the moon was almost entirely darkened. Understanding crept into my head as slowly as the sun rises and sets, I’m afraid to admit, but I understood at last why the medieval serfs in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court” were so easily fooled by its cousin, the solar eclipse- an unprepared for celestial event just might feed any number of bizarre superstitions.  Or I am simply dim.  Whatever.  Not too dim to pun, clearly.  

This eclipse was announced, however, and the fact we were so near to the zenith of the moon’s sun meant the moon was as bright as it could possibly get- there were no stars the entire trip over, just a floodlight in the face that burned into the rod and cone photoreceptors of my retinas and remained visible as an imprint on my sight even after I looked away.  It always makes me think of Wallace and Gromit, in “A Grand Day Out.”

"How 'bout some cheese, Gromit?"

And then we reached the waypoint that marked our slow-down.  We took on the Pilot soon thereafter and I drove us in to Long Beach’s container terminal, a port I became familiar with back on my last ship.  We turn around in Oakland to get us “head out to sea” for a “starboard-side-to” tie up, but here we back into the berth like we do in Honolulu- only for a much greater distance.  We're always starboard-side-to.

So I worked a full day as a dayman (8-5) yesterday and then was called out to shift (move the ship) at 2315.  We weren’t finished until 0400, and when the wakeup call came at 0700 I thought I’d weep.  I dressed and ate, instead, then loaded myself into a van (with about 10 of my closest friends) and was ferried to the Chinese Embassy by the International Seamen's Club to try for a Chinese visa.  Recall: I failed to secure one on my last ship.  Monday will tell whether or not I have been successful.

Freshly laundered work gloves... I dry them in my room- I go through about 1 a day. 

My sailoring desk- note my travel companions.

Pretty good stuff (scored in Oakland).

After encountering the efficiency of a Chinese bureaucracy perfected by thousands of years of relentless and incomprehensible hordes that need proper taxing and sorting, we raised the RO-RO ramp (roll on, roll off) and replaced tank-tops (manhole covers) with the exact opposite ethos- slow and steady, burn up the clock, and as-a-matter-of-fact-we-do-have-all-day.  Then we stowed the most heinous pilot ladder I have ever had the misfortune of wasting my life-force hoisting and lowering- it is like the world’s slowest and stupidest yo-yo that for each iteration comes at great cost to safety and of which the wear and tear on the vertebrae of my lower back cannot be understated. I hateses it... hateses it, I do!

And now here I sit, glaring at a sniveling, simpering and parentally unsupervised snot while swilling coffee in a cafe, forcing myself to think in complete (if somewhat disjointed) sentences. Sleep-deprivation is damnable.

Best quote of the day: “Stop calling me Roger.”

OK.  I got nuthin’ else.