Homeward Bound

Let-go was uneventful.  I drove us down the Yangtze at 0400 in heavy traffic to begin our voyage back to the US.  The whole crew was exhausted by multiple anchorings, our short stay, and long transits in and out of Shanghai.  Unexpected call-outs for crane lifts of stores and a “shipboard oil incident response” meant many of us found ourselves in violation of the STCW rest period laws- not that they matter much outside of normal operations.  

Radar image of the anchorage at the mouth of the Yangtze.

Crazy forward house Chinese riverboat.

The East China Sea sees many different shades of murky green before the Strait of Korea dumps us into the Sea of Japan, which should rightly be called the “Green Sea,” because the water there has every shade of green represented by the China Sea and many more besides, both water laden with sediment, trash, and pollution, and that which is crystal clear.  The “squid-boats,” rigged with high powered lights, blinded us at night but the overall fishing traffic was much lighter than what we navigated through into port, down south.

The jade water gave way to that of olive, which next turned to a spinach green, deepening to a forest green, clarifying and darkening by shade and shadow until the strait between the Japanese islands of Nippon and Haikkado condensed the pure chlorophyll into a clarified kale so rich and dark it was like a stream of Indian ink that spit us out into that North Pacific Ocean current known as the Kuroshio Current (“Black River”) like an unwanted watermelon seed.

Sunrise over the Sea of Japan

Intermittent cell phone signal meant I could loan my phone to one of the cadets to call home for mother’s day- my own mother had been in bed a long time before the opportunity presented itself and that window closed as the coast of Japan fell off to port, sucking the cell signal with it.  Red-legged Kittiwakes accompanied us away from land.  Herds of white-sided Pacific dolphin sent rooster tails this way and that as they zigged and zagged to an unknown meter.  Several pods of humpbacks lobtailed and scattered as our rumbling steel drew near.

The next day broke clear and flat but cold- 40 degrees fahrenheit.  Out came the thermal gear I packed but hadn’t used, and away went the shorts.  Laysan albatross, a solitary black-footed boobie, and wave-valley-skimming Christmas shearwaters were everywhere south of Kamchatka, but further on they all disappeared as we moved into less favorable oceanography and climate further from the Russian peninsula.  I saw only a few pods of Dahl’s porpoise.

The crew began to show signs of fatigue from the daily clock advances, myself included- when I become content to stare into the empty through a window obscured by salt and resent people’s attempts at conversation I know I've been out here too long.  One guy is visibly avoiding me for reasons unfathomable- he ducks his head, doesn't say a word, or goes the other way altogether.  Another man casts sullen looks at me for chiding him about laundry etiquette ten days ago.  The deck cadet confided to me that several crewmates had mentioned that I was “antisocial” and that I “kept to myself.”  

From drunken sailors?

The old man and the cheif mate fatigued without becoming dreary, however.  Their face hair grew, they became quieter and a bit more unkempt, but they still smiled and managed to keep their humor about them even on the more difficult days.  I took my cues from them instead of the gang; I have felt very fortunate to be on their ship- they are the best officers I've encountered out here, to date.

A low pressure depression covering half the North Pacific broadsided us on the 11th, sending the wind into our teeth and piling up the water.  Fog set in so thick the foremast was barely visible, and torrential rain soon followed, flooding decks and making the 38 degree, 45 knot apparent wind cut through flesh.  My wool was warranted- while my unexposed portions roasted in the correct winter apparel, my crewmates mostly froze and complained bitterly.  I daydreamt longingly of snorkeling in Guam or plying the inland waters of the Georgia coast in some funky rig as eye-motes wandered across my sight while I stared into the marine layer like a dead thing.

The satellite radio antennae- a laughably
failure-prone and unsightly mess.

Then the fetch was boiled and the wind waves became swells and swung around to our beam, throwing the lazy sailors’ garbage all about their quarters as we began rolling 20 degrees to port, 20 degrees to starboard.  I spent my entire evening watch on the 12th throwing the helm hard-to to break the snap-rolling once the frequency of the ship’s natural righting moment became amplified by that of the 6 meter swells.  I resented being snatched away from my daydreams but the watch went by swiftly and I handed it off gladly to my relief.

We broke loose and ran before the weather, and while we successfully outran those dreadful swells, we didn’t quite break free from the occluded front until late on the 15th.  Fog ahead, astern, and to all sides.  Rain.  The gloom was Seattle-like and was thwarted off by 5000 international units of vitamin d3 per day, but I found no relief from the fog-induced claustrophobia until we finally crossed that moving front and saw real, live sun.

Underway

One day out of Long Beach I saw the most incredible display of baleen acrobatics I could ever hope to see- a pod of 30 ton whales, 45 - 50 feet in length, leaping completely out of the water. Instead of the typical humpback behavior, though, they did not land on their sides with their oversized pectorals pointed skyward: They breached like dolphin, arcing over the chop like charcoal flavored school buses, landing hard on their bellies and making angel wings out of water. It looked like they were imitating the Pacific Right Whale Dolphin I saw the day before.

This morning I drove my steamship into Long Beach at 0400. We were all fast by 0700, and by noon I was "cut loose." I am now in a coffee shop after failing to sleep- too exhausted to be sociable or coherent, but my circadian clock too mangled by ten 23 hour days in a row to sleep.

Seabird shadow art in Long Beach.