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.