I took my “homeport day off” in Honolulu to visit the chief mate from one of my earlier ships. He and his wife live aboard a Bruce Roberts-designed steel sailboat in a marina right off a good surf beach. They check the waves on the other side of the breakwater from atop their pilot house- if the surf is good they paddle out of the marina, ride for awhile, then paddle back to the boat. That day was good surf but we went to the market for take-away spicy ahi poke and coconut water instead, then lounged on deck gossiping about other sailors we know, looking at boat plans, or talking about their upcoming trip to the Marianas Islands. They've done the ICW, the Greater and Lesser Antilles, the Panama Canal, the Sea of Cortez, and all points in between.
My Hono shore time came to an abrupt end, of course… but a day before the actual day of departure. The schedule was filled by moving the ship between berths (a “shift”) at 0345 until 0730, turning-to at 0800 until 1000, tying up and letting go a bunker barge, another shift at 1600 until 1915, and departure at 2230 until 0130. My watch was at 0400. When did I sleep, you ask? Well, between 1000 and 1600 I tried and failed due to my damnable circadian rhythm, but between 0130 and my watch at 0400 I managed to get an hour-and-a-half nap. Thankfully, I wasn’t turned-to later that day; I slept soundly for two six-hour stretches- a luxury by any standard.
By day four of our transit I had seen a few far-off red-footed boobies (boobies!), but nothing else- no whales, dolphin, flying fish, sea turtles, or the numerous other seabirds that own these waters. But we did BBQ, we did wash-down, and we did do numerous drills… Drill, baby! Drill!
And hours of Game of Thrones was watched… I have found myself in a race with one of the cadets and I am barely, barely ahead at this point. Only time will tell if my winning status prevails…
And then, as if someone had thrown a powerful switch (a “booby-switch,” if you will), all the red-footed boobies became brown boobies. They began glutting on flying fish chased up by our bow-bulb and then puking them onto the weather deck, much to the chagrin of the sailor I call “Muppet,” who was given the task of cleaning up the aforementioned puked fish. I saw no white or red tailed tropicbirds, though I was alert for them.
I went to the “Mermaid Tavern” after we docked in Guam. The meal wasn’t very good so I declined to buy a tee-shirt- take that, you bastards! Now I regret not buying one, of course. I had the two cadets with me and I taught them the hierarchical shore tradition of taking care of the impoverished, student-sailors by picking up the tab, as was done for me when I was The Extra-Ordinary Seaman… for the taxi, for the meal, etc. “Your money is no good!” I was told, so I passed it on in similar fashion… with luck they will pass it on in their time, too.
My snorkel spot was better than I remembered. I saw a sea turtle grazing on reef grass; many instances of two types of giant slugs measuring up to two feet in length- one with leopard spots and another with black spines; countless angel fish, clown fish, reef fish, trillions of neons that fell in with me and followed my every move to wherever I led; a 3-foot pike of an unknown species; and at one point, two small terns took interest in my bobbing body and hovered in the wind, yelling at the back of my head as I hung face down in the water and fried under the tropical sun.
We departed Guam bound for China and the heat became overbearing. I burned-through my minerals and water at a brisk rate, and moved slower and slower as time went on. On deck I am pretty much covered by work gear, but at one point I had to go full-Filipino and make a dew-rag from a surplus tee-shirt to cover the back of my already burnt neck.
The big dipper set on our bow each morning during watch, the waxing moon sets to port while Cassiopea rose on our starboard. It all got scattered to nothing by the sun rising on our starboard quarter, and by 0645 of the first two days I turned all the lights on the bridge instrumentation up to full, opened the black-out curtains, changed the radar settings to daylight, and put on my sunglasses. It is my daily ritual.
Our course took us directly northwest and we retarded clocks several times, so by the third day out of Guam the sun was up by 0430, playing hell with my already malfunctioning circadian time-piece and destroying the flow of my daily ritual. The blazing cobalt and indigo seas morphed into a dark, olive seawater of chlorophyllic richness that churned a creamy jade and fed the bajillions of fish the untold thousands of fishing vessels actively sought… fishing vessels that seemed oblivious to us as they put themselves directly in our path.
“Only New Rods Catch Fish” is the shorthand used to remember the order of burden for vessels: Overtaken vessels “stand on” in any circumstance when encountering other traffic, followed by those “Not Under Command,” vessels “Restricted in their Maneuverability” or “Constrained by their draft,” and finally by vessels actively engaged in “Fishing,” which excludes sport fishermen but not the fleets that move about the East China Sea confounding merchant navigators.
My watches became an endless changing of positions from hunched radar observer to that rigid posture required for stabilizing the long-eyes. I prefer the busy watches when I’m in the middle of the Pacific, my eyes glazed over by boredom, but- true to human nature- when I am busy from start to finish with heavy traffic conditions, I long for the luxury of boredom.
We dropped anchor next to the shipping channel at the mouth of the Yangtze River and my sea watches became anchor watches: On the hour I report the chain’s strain (tension) and lead (direction) to the bridge by radio; on the half-hour I do a circuit of the ship’s decks and look for security risks, which also gets reported to the bridge. In practice it is the easiest watch possible- rivaled only by pirate watches, but superior because pirate watches don’t allow for watching movies in your quarters for the 50 minutes between “walks forward.”
At daybreak we called anchors aweigh at 0600 and I proceeded to drive us upriver through estuaries of marsh surprisingly similar to that of southeast Georgia. The haze and pollution was thick, however, so beyond the line of ships we followed (like rush hour traffic up I-5), there was little to look at. The river was dead set against me so my boat would run left or right without any warning and it required a surprising amount of helm to make her behave, but by noon we dropped anchor again in the middle of the river while Chinese Quarantine agents took their bribes and gave us the OK to make way to our berth a few miles distance.
Tie-up was followed by a gangway watch, and now I am sitting in my bed, exhausted, typing without proofing and calling this "done." Rereading, proofing, etc. is for someone with the luxury of time, I'm afraid, so this will find you as flawed as ever. In four hours we leave. Those are the four hours I get to sleep. I'm taking 'em and making 'em mine.
Mega interesting. Found no flaws. Momster
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