This transit has been through multiple low pressure storms with noteworthy, if not significant, characteristics- mainly those of a bad-tempered nature.
After my afternoon watch I went to sleep and was awakened into that territory of sleep where the conscious mind is aware of the world while dreams are eluded, even as the body is physically asleep; I was brought up from my dreams by a motion to the ship that was reminiscent of a train trip I took across America years ago, but with a twisting, heaving motion added to the side-to-side cycle.
It felt like the whole ship was being rhythmically slung to and fro, as if we were an unbalanced and heavy load of a washing machine on a slow spin, that was being bounced on a trampoline- just violent enough to throw my flashlight off the desk and to the floor and require a line thrown over the TV to stop the creaking of its worn-out pedestal base.
I have no idea what combination of cross swells and wind waves, nor which combination of swell directions and periods, would create such a motion, but it eventually subsided, or I slipped back into dream-sleep and became unaware of it. By the time my watch began at midnight the motion had subsided and she was back to rolling her hips seductively in the following seas.
The North Pacific has been one thing, without exception, this trip: Gray. Gray skies, gray water, gray energy levels. The sheets of wind and rain have come and gone, the swells have built, been overrun by other swells, and subsided, but the gray has remained constant. Wild, white horses and spin-drift painted with a two-color pallet of onyx and titanium dioxide.
One day in the transit it was calm enough to see a pod of indeterminate rorqual whales, several herds of Dahl's porpoises, and sightings of the red-footed boobies which I always greet with the exclamation, "Boobies!" Of course, I always do this tedium - much to my own delight - but the cadet had never heard of a bird called a "booby," so she laughed uncontrollably for a solid minute.
Sadly, she'd never heard of a flying fish, either, and thought I was joking when I explained boobies eat the flying fish that get scared up by the bow bulb; she can determine our ETA to the minute, plot our fix to two decimal places, but has never heard of a flying fish... I made her promise to search for it on the google machine.
Tonight we arrive in Yokohama. I am planning on eating sushi at a place a fellow cohort (from my brief stint as a ferryman) recommended named "The 105." It's apparently cheap and good.
And that's what I gots.
After my afternoon watch I went to sleep and was awakened into that territory of sleep where the conscious mind is aware of the world while dreams are eluded, even as the body is physically asleep; I was brought up from my dreams by a motion to the ship that was reminiscent of a train trip I took across America years ago, but with a twisting, heaving motion added to the side-to-side cycle.
It felt like the whole ship was being rhythmically slung to and fro, as if we were an unbalanced and heavy load of a washing machine on a slow spin, that was being bounced on a trampoline- just violent enough to throw my flashlight off the desk and to the floor and require a line thrown over the TV to stop the creaking of its worn-out pedestal base.
I have no idea what combination of cross swells and wind waves, nor which combination of swell directions and periods, would create such a motion, but it eventually subsided, or I slipped back into dream-sleep and became unaware of it. By the time my watch began at midnight the motion had subsided and she was back to rolling her hips seductively in the following seas.
The North Pacific has been one thing, without exception, this trip: Gray. Gray skies, gray water, gray energy levels. The sheets of wind and rain have come and gone, the swells have built, been overrun by other swells, and subsided, but the gray has remained constant. Wild, white horses and spin-drift painted with a two-color pallet of onyx and titanium dioxide.
One day in the transit it was calm enough to see a pod of indeterminate rorqual whales, several herds of Dahl's porpoises, and sightings of the red-footed boobies which I always greet with the exclamation, "Boobies!" Of course, I always do this tedium - much to my own delight - but the cadet had never heard of a bird called a "booby," so she laughed uncontrollably for a solid minute.
Sadly, she'd never heard of a flying fish, either, and thought I was joking when I explained boobies eat the flying fish that get scared up by the bow bulb; she can determine our ETA to the minute, plot our fix to two decimal places, but has never heard of a flying fish... I made her promise to search for it on the google machine.
Tonight we arrive in Yokohama. I am planning on eating sushi at a place a fellow cohort (from my brief stint as a ferryman) recommended named "The 105." It's apparently cheap and good.
And that's what I gots.
Stunned at someone going to sea for a career and not knowing about flying fish and boobies. (Clearly she is there to learn and you are there to teach). Meanwhile, enjoy that sushi!
ReplyDeleteThanks for that, I got seasick just reading it! Mmmmmmm sushi, good sushi, love sushi!
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