Cold Weather Floater In Paradise

Korea is cold.

How cold is it?

Well, all the potable water pipes on the ship froze. The burst pipes spilled water all over the deck, which then froze into sheets of ice, many of which are in hard-to-see places or invisible in the dark. We salted them, but walking still required care, and more than one of us has gone down.

The sewer pipes also froze - with little or no notice. For the last five days, we have just two working toilets on the ship, one in the engine room and one in the cargo office, both of which are more than 7 floors below and all the way aft.

I was awakened from deep sleep by engineers below the house with hammers pounding on frozen pipes on day one, a rude awakening that repeated randomly throughout our port stay as they tried, and failed, to alleviate our toilet-induced misery.

I called the trek to the only working toilets "the walk of shame" if the sailor was too preoccupied to make eye contact when enroute, or "walking penguin" due to the stiff-legged way the concerned ambled aftward if they answered nature's call without respectful haste.

I was also awakened by fire alarms on several occasions when diesel exhaust from cargo overloaded the smoke detection system and set off the general alarm. Yes, one of them was during my deepest sleep.

Standing an 8-hour watch when it's 11 below 0 is a special kind of tedium. Every motion requires effort due to the many layers. Gloves must be removed for anything requiring dexterity, then put back on to keep from freezing. Breathing too hard can give you an icecream headache.

The battery-powered vest Stu recommended to me has proven its worth. The chemical hand warmers have made life much more bearable, as well... There is no part of me that likes the cold, but at least I came fully prepared.

Sadly, I think I've developed some type of allergy to my expensive wool baselayers. Have I continued to wear them despite breaking out in a rash?  Of course. It was 9 degrees Fahrenheit out there... I'm no fool.

I know there are some cold weather dwellers out there saying that this is not that cold - but add force 10 winds into the mix (that's 55 mile an hour, you filthy, bloodless landlubber), and the inability to leave your post or do anything besides observe, demand ID, and perform the occasional search will make even the frostiest of snowmen bitch in abject discomfort.

At one point, the wind snatched a cargo strap out of the ordinary seaman's hands. The strap and the dumpster lid he was trying to secure with it simultaneously struck him in the face, landing him in the dubious care of the chief medical officer, aka the second mate. He's a great navigator, but he is the medical officer by necessity and default, not because he's any good at it.

Thankfully, the ordinary's teeth survived unharmed despite being busted in the kisser, and he took it without complaint.

The tide at this port is almost 30 feet, so cargo ops can only take place when the tide is high enough for our stern ramp to reach the dock- if it's too low the ramp gets damaged, if it's too high then the ramp is too steep. The window of opportunity is two four-hour blocks of time per day.

Because the mooring lines need constant adjustment due to the tides, the chief mate made all sailors watch standers. My 8-hour gangway watch (as in Tacoma) was split up between me and one of the day workers - and the task of tending lines and moving lashing gear all over the ship for the longshoremen was divided up between us. 

I stood the first 4 hours as security watch and the second 4 hours doing cargo and lines. I also made new heaving lines because the Korean line-handlers stole our heaving line when we tied up.

I also was on standby from noon to 1600, but never got called out to do anything. I listened to the handheld radio as the sailors on watch worked while I drafted house designs in AutoCAD - designs I'll hand over to a professional (Paul) at some point.

After 5 long, hard, miserable days in port, we departed at 0500 for the anchorage where I am writing this.

We expect to be here for only 2 days, then return to the dock to take on cargo to replace that which we just offloaded.

How long should that take? I'm told 2 weeks. 

Sometimes it's easy to disparage the people out here doing this job. For the most part, they're misfits. In large part, they're unemployable in standard shoreside workplaces. 

But if just anybody could do this job, then I want to see them try, because the one thing all these people have in common is a psychological toughness and resiliency that can handle pipes clogged with turdcicles. When working long, uncomfortable, and dangerous hours. While locked inside a cage with other maladjusts. For extended and protracted periods of time.

And laugh about it.

I guess we'll see how much we're laughing after two more weeks of this kind of cargo op... Just 5 days of it definitely kicked the shit out of us. 

Between A Flat Rock And A Weird Place

I arrived on the bridge the other night for my watch.

The helmsman I relieve was in an animated discussion with the third mate, so I didn't interrupt to assume the watch, but instead settled down with my coffee over on the bridge wing.

The ordinary seaman was on the bridge for some reason, and he migrated over to where I was nursing my life-giving nectar and began talking at the side of my head.

Through the haze of freshly cast-off sleep and the bouquet of steam from that bean-juice cradled under my nose, I became aware of three distinct things at once:

First, the strange lights in the sky were back, and they were - once again - operating relative to Saturn; they were visible 5-degrees above the horizon, 2 points to port. 

Next, the ordinary seaman was on the bridge to see these UFO's for himself (everyone aboard has heard about them), and he began explaining his understanding of them in relationship to the Simulation Theory.

An finally, to my other side, the helmsman was arguing with the third mate - attempting to convince him that the world was, in fact, flat.

I must ardently defend myself from the people who know me best - I had not prodded, poked, nor precipitated in any way the discussion about the Simulation Theory with the ordinary. It was entirely unprovoked.

I share Taco Tuesday dinners with many of these people, dinners which typically conclude at about the time I bring up the Simulation Theory.

But the flat-earther?

Not height-of-eye calculations, great circles in navigation, nor the observable phenomenon of a ship visibly coming up over the horizon were sufficiently persuasive arguments from the third mate to sway the mind of the guy who is paid to watch ships actually come over the horizon, while transiting the globe on a great circle, from a perch granting him a vantage point 138 meters up in the air.

It was a moment of sheer madness in all directions all at once, the least mad of which were the UFO’s tracing strange patterns in the dark sky.

Lights and Boobies in Blue Skies

Welp. Saw more UFO's... Or, as the kids call them, "UAPs," or "unidentified aerial phenomena."

We were an hour or two to homeward of the IDL and the night was as clear as they come... If not for the curvature of the earth, we could've seen the lights of Japan.

Instead, we saw weird lights moving erratically in the sky about 5 degrees above the horizon. It is difficult to say how far away they were because it was so unbelievably clear, but by our best guess (my watch partner and I discussed it at length afterward), they might have been 40-60 miles away.

I could see starlink constellations moving in the sky alongside these UAP so no... It was definitely not satellites... They were about half to a third as bright as squid boats, and they had the variety of colors that some blue giant stars have (i.e., Sirius).

The light show continued for almost an hour, and we decided not to call the captain... It's just too easy to imagine "WTF!? You're waking me up for WHAT!?"

He wasn't pleased that the Third Mate and I didn't call him, though, so, should we see them again, we will most certainly call him. I mean... 

When we did tell him the next day, a conversation about the Ununaki and the Younger Dryas broke out (Lizzid People!) so... Yeah. Call the old man to see the funny lights in the sky! Roger that!

I've had a string of really upbeat and positive days, and my previous angst toward the captain and mate for working us watch standers on watch has slowly subsided. In some ways, it has alleviated the slowdown of time caused by taking two sleeps a day, and so I am forced to appreciate the requirement.

That was not the case two weeks ago, but now I begrudgingly must concede - busy busy busy is being much gooder.

I have studied management styles since I first "went to sea," and I've seen some of the worst bullshit imaginable. Demeaning, demoralizing, and deadly. I know exactly what not to do, and I know why not to do it.

But I've also seen very good management, and this company's captains and mates continue to impress me. Even when the unlicensed crew text the crewing guy shoreside, they get cordial responses... I have never heard of that before. Never.

So kudos to them. I've bitched long and loudly about bad management before, so I feel it's important to acknowledge when it's done right.

We have retarded our clocks several more times since the last blog post, and crossed the IDL into the future. I am one day ahead of y'all.

Maybe I've crossed back into my original timeline, and maybe I haven't, but so far the future is warm and sunny.

A 5-meter swell rolled us all night long, and at one point, we hit a few 12-degree rolls and things went everywhere, but nothing like the 30-degree rolls on our way into Tacoma several weeks ago.

We continue to have safety drills, inspections, and the horrific firefighting equipment in the EGL (emergency gear locker, the new moniker for the damage control locker these days) has been completely replaced with brand new gear. 

I was just awarded a $50 Amazon gift card for having the cleanest room aboard during our latest sanitary inspection.  Go me!

Anyway, that's all I got. There isn't much traffic out here; the client has sent us completely around the low-pressure system, so the weather has been perfect, and there are many boobies for me to enjoy while on watch!  As well as pilot whales and dolphin, and one lone albatross... But I do love the boobies.

I must note that I have many videos I'd prefer to embed on this blog, but Blogger has seemingly stopped supporting video in recent years, so I've been trying to take more relevant photos... I'm actually not a Luddite. Promise. 

To Home And Back Again

After picking up the pilot from the Port Angeles pilot station, I drove us south through Puget Sound to Yukon Anchorage - a little triangle of water behind Blake Island (a marine park), north of Vashon Island, and south of Bainbridge Island.

We shifted the next day to the Tacoma dock and began cargo watches (8-hour watches), so I was able to, for the first time in my maritime career, go home and sleep in my own bed while working on a ship.

Cargo was a slow and tedious process, so our departure was delayed several times, which was fine by me.

While I wasn't able to truly relax, it was relaxing. What I found was that even a short time at home felt like a full reset to my energy level by the time I drove the ship out to sea, 6 days after the gangway hit the dock.

Another car carrier was moored at the Port of Tacoma when we left. And a third RoRo had replaced us at anchor in Yukon Anchorage.

As we passed yet another inbound car carrier, I commented to the pilot that it seemed like there were more RoRo's than I'm used to seeing. I didn't know if it was because my awareness was suddenly greater, since I was on one of them, or if my observations were correct; he confirmed it was the latter.

Laura grabbed some spectacular photos when I passed by Shilshole. If you zoom in all the way, you can see me waving from the wheel. 

I turned over the helm at a quarter ‘til four PM north of Point No Point. When I went back on the wheel at 1945 hours, we were almost to Neah Bay. We exited the vessel traffic system on that same watch and travelled south 1000 miles before taking a right turn and beginning the transit across the Pacific.

The next day, I was sad to learn that this new captain and mate had tasked us watchstanders with maintenance work – chipping, painting, etc., during ocean crossings, instead of standing our customary watch. I signed on as a watchstander, not as a day worker, so now I feel like I'm getting the worst of both gigs -- dirty-ass, physically demanding deck work, lack of sleep, and a destroyed circadian rhythm -- all for less money.

It has become both a mental and physical slog, and keeping my morale positive is now the focus of all my attention.

I have witnessed without exception that shipping companies hire permanent captains for their vessels in pairs -- one is crew-friendly and focused on improving the crew's quality of life aboard, while the other is a die-hard company man, only concerned with checking boxes and adhering to budgetary constraints to the point of foolishness. 

The captain who left - the Hungarian guy - is very much missed.

This captain takes the standard approach to clock changes - we retard the clocks 20 minutes at 1800, 2200, and 0200 each. The net result sets the clocks back an hour as we cross each time zone. 

I gain 20 minutes of sleep on my first short sleep of the day, I stand an extra twenty minutes on my watch, and then I gain 20 more minutes of sleep on my second long sleep of the day.

A "good" captain (one who isn't sucking up to the company, anyway) will then advance clocks during the day on the way back over so that nobody is deprived of sleep, but apparently, this guy advances clocks at the same times that we retard them. So, I expect my return trip across the Pacific after the insanity awaiting us in Korea will be a grueling one, indeed - sleep being the most valuable commodity.

When we cross the International Date Line (IDL), we advance into the future and skip a day, so all my correspondence will be from Future-Me... Future-Me, who knows things from the future.

When we make the return trip from the "Far East," we’ll repeat a day, which reminds me of a previous IDL crossing I made on a holiday. I wrote in holiday pay for both the holiday and the repeated day as a joke (I had a correct timesheet ready to turn in), and the chief mate lost his mind.

Imagine having no sense of humor at all. 

Korea will be cold, cold, cold... Well below freezing, even at the high temperature of the day. At this port, there’s a 25-foot tide, which means the mooring lines are adjusted hourly, and with the ramp only able to handle cargo 2 hours at a time, twice a day... it could take up to two weeks to unload the ship.

But right now, we’re at the 30th parallel near Hawaii, the arctic air far, far away. It's warm and sunny, and the water has that magical shade of sky blue I named "Aloha Blue" years ago. I don't know why or what about it is so distinct, but you could drop me anywhere in the world and I'd know I was in the Hawaiian waters by the color alone.

A milk-chocolate brown booby took up his symbiotic residence aboard. He's spent days hunting the flying fish kicked off by the bow wake, but there’s no cross arm on the fore mast where booby's love to sit, so I've wondered where he's sleeping. I found his perch by happenstance today while painting on the forward mooring station: On the anchor. 

The brown booby was then replaced by a red-footed booby, who spent her time flying in an infinity-shaped pattern across the bow, much as her predecessor had done. I have not yet found her perch.

And, that's the news from this RoRo upon which I ride. Somewhere between here and there is the portal into the timeline I came from - the one where current affairs do not look like a mashup of the 1880s, the 1930s, and the 1960s with added robots, AI, and evil billionaire villains for that extra spicy flavor.

Making Way Again At Last.

We are finally underway, making way, since we first started drifting 13 days ago.  

It's hard to shake off mental fog and awaken from the fugue state induced by going nowhere when each day is a repeat of the one before. The rumble of the engine making 14 knots at 78 RPM helps do exactly that. We'll take on a pilot and anchor in Puget Sound in just a few days.

Interestingly, we’ll drop anchor in the anchorage I transit through when I run to my boathouse in Port Orchard from Ballard. It's named "Yukon Anchorage" and I've never heard it referred to by that name, nor does the internet know it as such... But that's what it's called on the Admiralty charts in the ship's ECDIS (chartplotter).

I’ve used my Peter Harrison’s seabird identification guide – a new edition – to easily identify two different albatross I've seen in recent days - a waved albatross and a black-footed albatross. Oddly enough, the two birds appear on the same page.

The new guide is so much better than the older one I used to carry (which relied on photographs, not Peter's artwork). It's a wonder I could identify anything accurately!  

And I've seen a blackfish known as a "false killer whale" and at least three pods, 50-strong, of striped dolphin. The dolphin always make a beeline for the ship when they see us, I think because they love to play in the wave that forms around the bulbous bow.

They're probably horribly disappointed when they discover this ship doesn't have a bulbous bow.  It's the only ship I've ever seen without one, actually, and I wonder exactly why the designers omitted the efficiency and performance-enhancing structure from this boat.  

Now, we steam north toward Tacoma, where I hope to quickly say hello/goodbye to any and all my peeps available and grab some extra warmth-making items in preparation for the extreme cold of Korea.

My brother flies to Incheon regularly, so I hope to run into him while I'm there. I know that sounds weirdly casual, but it's actually more likely than any non-transportation-worker might expect.

Since we began heading north this morning, the swells have built considerably. They're massive, slow-rolling things that are hard to measure; after 4 hours of watching them on my first watch of the day, my best estimate is 6-7 meters from NNE with a 12-15 second period. The wind waves are minimal. It looks almost flat but feels anything but.

Bowditch (background here) says most mariners underestimate the height of seas, and the ship's log agrees with that - the swells were reported as only 3 meters.  

I visualize the geometry of peak and trough, then throw mental high-boy containers in that simplified triangle as my method of estimating seas. One high boy is roughly 3 meters high.

To be fair to my watch partners, unless you're staring at the ocean without distraction for several minutes, you might not even see the swells, especially when there are no wind waves.

They're focused on updating and upgrading firefighting equipment, prepping for cargo, new crew turnover, etc., and aren't staring at the sea with the same patience nor degree of leisure as me.

In these conditions, the ship pitches with a seven-second free-fall drop that gives way to a significant increase in weight as we climb out of the trough.  

It's amusing watching sailors on the stairs as they race up as much of a flight as they can during the drop, and then suddenly stop to wait out carrying the extra pounds they've acquired when climbing out of the valley.

Anyway... I’m supposed to be skipping dinner and sleeping so that I get enough rest, not writing this blog post on my phone... so with that, I dive back into the flatline of the routine and reenter the dream I was having before I woke up long enough to put this into words.

Onwards.  I'll see y'all in Tacoma.

Hove-to, Holidaze, UFOs Past and Present

5 days.  It's only been 5 days.

We left that little port outside of San Diego 6 days ago and steamed west for 300 miles, then turned the ignition to "off" and started drifting to wherever the waves and winds dictate.

To a watchstanders such as myself, however, that means it's been 10 sleeps, not 5 days.  

Time slows down.  The circadian rhythm gets tossed out the window.  I have my short sleep in the afternoon, and my long sleep in the morning like a crepuscular animal whose life-cycle follows a semi-diernal tide.

I saw a large pod of spinner dolphin on the way out to the waters where we're now drifting. They made directly for the bow of the ship where, if the past is any indicator, they played in the bow waves but were completely out of sight from my lofty seat up on the bridge.  

I did not see their departure.

The green glow lit the waves during the transit out here, too, and the white horses were clearly visible in the long eyes all the way to the horizon in the impenetrable night.

I watched the international space station pass overhead, from right to left, and then I saw other lights in the sky that didn't make any sense.

I watched them manoeuver in weird circles, then disappear for awhile before reappearing nearby.  They were amber in color.  They were far away.  They were fast.

I finally pointed them out to my watch partner.

We heard one side of a radio communication where a shoreside facility was asking another vessel if they saw any signaling lights, that they were getting reports of flares reported in that area, but because that vessel was too far away we never heard their response.

But I've seen flares on numerous occasions, and those were not flares.

I didn't see them again until last night, 5 nights into our drift.  The deck cadet was up on the bridge bored and lamenting missing out on celebrating New Year's Eve but the light show was brief.  I had just managed to dial in my binoculars from where the previous watch had ganked with the eyepieces before they disappeared, not to return.

Again- not flares.  Not even close.

We've been drifting for 5 days.  Only 5 days.  

We have 14 more to go... 28 sleeps until Tacoma.

I told my watch partner about a 4x8 watch I stood with the Chief Mate on the APL President Polk in 2013, when we saw an unidentified and unexplainable light we presumed at first to be Venus rising and then the ISS in flight.  We were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 1000 miles from the nearest land.  We were pretty sure it was either extremely high altitude or suborbital.

Then, this object performed a smooth, 90-degree port turn and went behind a cloud, something no satellite, weather balloon, or space station could do.

That CM refused to acknowledge what we'd both just seen. One minute we were puzzling through what it might be, then it defied physics; the next minute, the CM was gaslighting himself about what we saw and refused to talk about it.

I persisted the remainder of that voyage to get him to admit what we saw, but without success. I'm convinced that's why he started playing Pentecostal "rock" on watch every morning after that, much to my horror and chagrin.  

28 sleeps.  

The weather has been flat, warm, and mostly sunny, but that's about to change for the worse.  A north wind is coming and with it will come the ocean swells, wind waves, rain, cold, and an end to the calm, flat conditions.

Our mild drift southward will become more pronounced.  Rest will suffer.  Work will become even moreso.  

The only thing that will be the same will be the slow passing of the next 28 sleeps, and I am about to enjoy one of those right now, so on watch tonight, when I'm looking for the lights in the sky, I will be saying to myself "27 sleeps..."