Ops, yo.

Pelican Report

All's Well.

Blunderbusses and Boobies.

So I figured it out… it was a red-footed booby, not a juvenile northern gannet that spent two days zigging and zagging in front of the foremast on her hunt for flying fish.  How did I finally make this conclusive determination, you ask?  The red feet.  Elementary, really.

My bird tally so far this run is an olivaceous cormorant, two red-footed boobies, some unknown little sparrow-like song bird, and today- contrary to all expectations- a stork.  Like every cartoon you’ve ever seen, a stork is an unmistakable bird: long legs that hang awkwardly down and aft, a long neck tucked into a tight s-shaped hunch held tight against the body, and a bill of pelicanescent proportions.  What the hell a goofy, gangling, shore-bird is doing struggling against the ocean winds out here is beyond me.

Great stars… our course taking us between a sky dominated by Canis Major, Orion, and Taurus to that of Ursa Major, Minor, and Cassiopeia…. with Perseus tucked between at the interstice of these two skies getting lots of face time.  It’s been clear enough that Andromeda’s galaxies stand out quite visibly, the salty air kicked up by 25 knot winds and cats paws notwithstanding.  During my stint on the APL President Polk, Jupiter was crossing the rat-like face of the bull… now, however, it has migrated all the way down to Gemini, south of Taurus in the sphere of the sky… if I project forward another year then Jupiter will be in Cancer this time next year- pointless trivia for most, but when I sit for my 3rd mates unlimited next year I will be using it to shoot a nightly asthmus, so it isn’t trivial to me...

My first glimpse of the sea at noon’s watch presented me with a flock of flying fish exploding off the port bow like bird-shot from a blunderbuss.  They flew a hundred meters or so, and cued by some unknown signal, all dove into a swell as one… but the cormorant and the booby were nowhere in sight.  I spent the rest of the watch making coffee for people visiting the bridge and blabbing about nothing so if there was anything else noteworthy to see, I didn't see it.

And there you have it.  My watch is done.  This is written.  I am showered and shaved.  Lights out for this intrepid sailor.

Millibars and Mid-flight Vomitus.

The wind picked up last night and with it has come 2 - 3 meter swells.  We're safely inside a high pressure system that is keeping the low pressure cold and snow over most of the N. American continent at bay, but the barometer continues to drop, so... the nasty might be on the way, even out here in the warm Atlantic current north of the Bahamas.  I don't care- the more it builds the better I sleep.

I've seen plenty of flying fish the past few days, too.  An olivaceous cormorant visited yesterday, and today we played host to what might have been either a juvenile northern gannet or a red footed booby, who flew back and forth off the bow at the height of the foremast on the hunt for flying fish, upon sight of which, the bird would swoop down and chase the fish across the wave tops at great speed.  Also, inexplicably, the bird puked in an exaggerated and comical fashion while in mid flight... a thing I don't think I've ever imagined but now know was clearly absent from my ocean-going experience.

OK.  The 12x4 watch has me exhausted and bedtime is overdue.  My book, "Seabirds of The World," by Peter Harrison, is a total win.

Indigo Seas

Crepusculars

Sunset Over The Atlantic

As seen through my salt encrusted deadlight, tonight.

The ocean was a brilliant indigo, today, with light cumulous clouds that never seemed to get in between me and the sun.  No wildlife to speak of but for a lone black seabird with a long, loon-like neck (of course my seabird identification book is in my quarter and I am up on deck 03- so now my failure to identify before blogging is merely an indication of my shameful laziness).

It feels like a great change to be on sea watches, doing sailorly things, after so much time at the dock and in the boatyard.  A light swell on our port bow makes for a pleasant and smooth pitch that lulls me to a nodding sleepiness, a sirens call that is hard to ignore after yesterday's 18 hour day.

I Drive a Ship, Bitches.

And this is where I do it.

Because photos are easier....

We're sitting at the dock in Cape Canaveral getting ready to go out for "box maneuvers," the only type of sailoring I'm gonna see on this boat.... as I've described before, box maneuvers consist of going out into the ocean and going round and round, back and forth, as directed, for little to no apparent reason.  So below are some pictures of life on a ship when said ship sits most of her time made fast to the land, because there just isn't a lot to say.

My chariot- after my 12 hours of work I often escape
the ship and pretend I'm a normal person. 

This is the unlicensed crew mess hall.

Cape Canaveral pelicans at night.

An endless stream of gigantic passenger vessels passes
within 1/4 mile of our bow as they arrive and depart the port.

A "polka-dotted wasp moth," or an "uncle sam bug," a
harmless moth that did not look harmless when it confronted
me on my chariot.

The ship's gym.

This is the inside of the gangway's guard shack, the place
I spend 8 hours a day, from midnight to 0800.

"Sea Smoke" on the warm water when the temperature
dropped all the way down to 47! one night this past week.

I had to.

A ghost crab of the Space Coast variety...

A sunrise off the port bow- not visible from my guard shack,
so I have stopped posting sunrise photos each morning
to facebook as I did when we were at the shipyard in
Charleston and my view of the rising sun was unimpeded. 

Behemoth InThe Dark

Making Way.

Coming into port...

Cast off!

Sea trials in 40 knot winds and nasty seas... No word on the swells, but they've had all night to build up... The smoother this goes the happier it'll make me. 

A Mullet? Really!?

Being in the shipyard is dull.  Yeah, there is plenty of activity and there is an endless stream of stuff to do, but we're not underway so the time I would be doing my navigation watch is spent in a guard shack, instead (per earlier post).  One of the oddities you might encounter should you be able to board my ship at midnight is the Ordinary, the Chief Cook, and the GVA hanging out on the stern.

The Chief Cook is half Filipino and looks Hawaiian; he's as wide- muscle, not fat- as he is tall.  The GVA is Arabic and always wears a derby hat with suspenders and sings decidedly Arabic vocals in quarter steps.  The Ordinary is Filipino.  They gather around the Ordinary's 4 foot tall hookah and pass the pipe around while the Cook plays a tiny ukulele, and I imagine if he were to spontaneously burst into song he'd probably sound like Don Ho.

And just about every time I go to the port stern, directly over the furthest aft deckspace on her quarter, a two foot mullet-looking fish slowly swims out from under the dock, does a loop, and disappears back into the shadows and doesn't reappear again until the next day.  The first few times I was like, "huh, would you look at that."  The first dozen times it started to be remarkable.  Now, 6 weeks into our shipyard stint, it's just friggin' creepy.

If we have spirit animals I sure hope mine isn't a giant mullet.