Fun With Numbers

I carried an armload of gear from the forecastle back to the boatswain’s locker today and I tried to remember what, exactly, I was doing.

I passed the newly welded bracket where the fire hydrant spud was to mount, and it seemed distant, while the hue and quality of blue of a booby’s beak that flew alongside- over a hundred meters away- was so startlingly present and vivid that I jolted my shoulder on one of the brightly painted lashing bridges.

That’s when it became undeniable- I have entered that fugue state that afflicts sailors who have been at sea for too long where time means nothing, the inner dialogue seems as real as actual conversations, and all emotion flatlines- except your dominant emotional state.

Some guys get angry.  Some get depressed.  Some press for conflict while others retreat.  On my first ship I raged.  On my last ship I hibernated.  This time I am particularly fond of absurdity- even more so than usual.

I do the math a lot, too.  134 days at sea out of a projected total of 173 means I am 77% of the way there.  More than ¾.  Only 23% to go!  That’s 23/100ths!  Hell- that’s half-way between 1/4th and 1/5th!!!!  39 days to go!

I find myself on A deck when I want to be on the Upper Deck a lot, too.  Or standing in the passageway outside my quarters doing a version of my “keys, wallet, phone” mantra I do when at home that includes too many items I need while on ship:  Keys, radio, flashlight, knife, channel locks, electrical tape, notebook, pen, earplugs, gloves… wait… where was I?

Dammit!  Start over.

I forgot to go back to stand my anchor watch after securing the gangway leaving Singapore (not a small oversight).  The other bone-headed mistake I tried to remember… I can’t remember.  But it was not a small oversight.

We chipped and painted deck the next day.  The day after we payed out every mooring line on the ship for inspection, then spooled them back up on the winches.  Because these winches don’t have a “working side,” meaning a place to really heave on the line without burying it in the spooled line beneath, we have to take them up under tension.

Hell- have 3 days passed already?  Was it only 3 days!?

Hong Kong will kick-off the blur that is the China loop (yeah, yeah… Hong Kong ain’t China, blah, blah).  Today I roasted in the sun, but in less than a week we could allegedly hit freezing temperatures in Qingdao- the same place all the freshwater deck pipes got destroyed by freezing temperatures.

Then we start the advancing clocks.  Then the retarding clocks.  No wonder time doesn’t mean anything out here… just the unenviable ablitlity to withstand the punishment of one more voyage has any real meaning, and I just exceeded it.

________

When I awoke this morning visibility was at about a mile, stratus clouds hung heavily overhead and rain obscured my view as it ran down the dead lights.  Lively swells hammered us broadsides and shock waves ran back and forth between the bow and stern with each blow at a frequency of about .75 seconds.

We did port prep as best we could, which meant foregoing rigging the gangway out of safety concerns.  My god, though- those nicely wound mooring lines look good!  The temperature was 20 degrees less than yesterday and I was chilled by the rain on my bare arms.

Now I am standing-by in my quarters waiting for the call to rig the pilot ladder.  We are hove to.  I am all dressed up with nowhere to go!

And so my last voyage on this run kicks off.  It's now 38 days and a wake-up.