It's All About The Wake-Up

There is a cinematography trick where the camera zooms in on something in the foreground while the background zooms out- it’s called the “dolly zoom” or the “vertigo effect.”

The sensation created by this camera effect is also the exact same sensation I feel when figuring out when I will reach completion of my contract aboard this ship: The closer I get to the end of my incarceration the further out that date gets pushed by delays.

It was originally the 28th of December.  Then the 29th.  Then the 30th.  Now it’s the 3rd of January.  I have been saying “12 days and a wake up!” for a week, now.  It’s become a running joke.  On Sunday I overheard the 3/M say “We go in on Tuesday- that’s 5 days and a wake up.”

We anchored in Pakistani waters for four days before coming into the port of Karachi.  Now that we’re here, it looks like we’ll be here until late Friday night, at which point we’ll shift to another dock a mile downriver for an unknown duration.

Every morning the 4x8 sailor on security watch calls out his relief- the 8x12 sailor, the mate-on-watch’s relief, myself, and the daymen at 0700.  Similar to last time here, I get a wake up call at precisely the time my alarm goes off (this sailor is very good with his calls).

Unlike last time in this port, however, the outgoing A.M. tide is at maximum velocity at approximately 0700 (it was at approx. 0500 last time).  Coincidentally, this is the same time that my alarm clock goes off and the phone rings for my wake-up call, and when the City of Karachi opens the floodgates at the sewage “plant” and flushes the accumulate of 30 million toilets into the river.

This river.  The one the ship is in.  

At breakfast I announced to the crowded mess hall that every morning in Karachi is a shitty morning. Have I mentioned how wildly popular I am aboard this ship?

And, like last voyage, I have jammed a box of dryer sheets into my air conditioning vent so that my quarters smell like a laundry in a river of crap instead of just a sailor’s quarters in a river of crap.

When I mentioned this to the old man, he said he learned you can repel gnats by rubbing your clothes, hands, and face with Bounce™ dryer sheets… something I must try in lieu of drowning the little bastards in Skin So Soft™ next time I am in the South.

The project of the day has been chipping the cofferdam deck above the Old Man’s room and below the bridge wing.  I played the song of my people to all who would listen with three spud guns and a “lawnmower” on plate steel.  I have been given dirty looks by a few of my harshest critics- not everyone appreciates true talent.

I will play my song again tomorrow and listen to it played back to me in the echos from the ships on the other side of the river.

And that’s what I got.  Punch drunk, worn out, and unfazed by anything.  There is no world outside this bubble of grease, stack gas, bunker fumes, surly sailors, and the daily toxic soup of chemicals that make up this ship except the one at the other end of this keyboard.

I hit “enter” and it travels around the world in less than a second, to you.

More Cargo in Karachi

Advanced Tetris

Port of Karachi

Pakistani Fishing Boat

At Anchor (Ningbo?)

The Short-Timer's Stare

Where The Cranes Roam

No. Not like that.

Doing it wrong.

Saved this...

AIS contact shared with me by the 3/M

Coaster at dock in Ningbo

At Anchor

Winter Has Found Me.

The red-footed booby is distinguished from it’s cousin, the brown booby, by the color of its feet, but the most remarkable coloration of the seabird isn’t its feet- it’s its bill.  They hang out by the fo’csle, hovering and waiting for flying fish to erupt from the bow wake, at which point they dive and skim the wave-troughs in pursuit.

As they hang there, waiting for calories, the blue of their bills appears so incongruous with the drab of their black and white work clothes.  It is a color of blue unique to the booby with the texture of fine-grained sand, and as I see it from deck against the backdrop of the sky, it clearly takes as much inspiration from the clear cobalt of the tropical ocean waves as it does from the soft hues of the low latitude sky.

They give me the studied examination of a reptile with dark and calculating eyes set into that blue, sanded face and then disregard me as not-food and never look at me again.  I prefer to be not-food.  I am glad they aren’t larger.

I have only seen a pair of pilot whales and one herd of acrobatic spinner dolphin from my lowly perch upon the rusted upper deck. I do steel work and rarely get to look out my office window and marvel, but I always see the boobies when they are there fouling my deck.

I decided to read everything my Union Agreement has to say about who does the sanitary work aboard our vessel and when they do it.  Suffice it to say, it didn’t make anything clearer.

It says: on one-man watch vessels bridge sanitary is done from 0800 - 1000 by daymen and the gang’s deck is done from 1000 - 1200 by daymen.  That’s how we’ve been doing it and how it’s always been done on ships I’ve sailed.  Simple.

It goes on to say in Section 56 that on two man vessels bridge sanitary is done by a member of the 4x8 Watch between 0800 - 1000, and in section 17 that bridge sanitary is done by the Quartermaster between 0600 - 0800, (and that it isn’t to be payable as overtime), while the windows aft of the doors of the wheelhouse and the sweeping are to be done by a man of the 8x12 Watch between 0800 - 1000.

With that in mind, Watchmen and Quartermasters are forbidden to do anything but their specific duties while on watch, so sanitary or maintenance has to be done by their relief, whether that is on overtime or not.  If it is the 8x12 Watch’s relief, that means me- The Bosun, and I don’t do it if it interrupts my ability to run the gang (per the Agreement) but send someone up to do it in my stead.

And that doesn’t even touch on the sanitary for the Gang’s deck.

So why bother getting clear on it?  Because the C/M said the Old Man (a dues-paying member of my union) said we should do sanitary for a 2 man watch, per the contract.  There was a challenge there… and in this case, a bit of a smile.

To take this challenge is to lose.

So why issue the challenge in the first place?  Dunno.  Probably a test.  If I take the challenge then I fail the test.  The prudent man will smile indulgently and continue on as per past practice and make the officer push the matter.  At that hypothetical point, the prudent man would then explain the multiple proscribed methods and then say “but per past practice you’ve paid us to do it this way” and point out how wise it is to not fix what ain’t broke.

“I think we should do it exactly how you’ve always had us do it” or “I think you’ve been right all along.”  A little bit pander, a little bit accusation.  A win/win....

Or I’ve been out here too long and this is one of those trains-of-thought a man can board and ride for as long as he is left alone to follow the tracks.  Add those trains of thought to the conversations that have been re-lived, reimagined, and re-had and you see how some men get lost out here… some of the old-timers sail and live a punishingly hard life until they’re in their 70’s, retire, and immediately die.  Some keep sailing, afraid that will be them.

Like being not-food, I prefer to be not-lost.

We just left the anchorage for Qingdao.  When I boarded in July the heat was so unbearable I thought I’d never find relief.  Acclimatization is a hell of a thing, tho- soon it didn’t bother me too much and I stopped sweating at heat below 85.

Four days ago it was still hot and the days long as we steamed north.  It is now cold and bitter, the sun falling behind the horizon at 1700.  I have taken to wearing every sleeved thing I’ve got over my sleeveless tropical gear.  That 30 dollar “North Fake” jacket I bought in Shanghai last trip is now being put to use over a hooded sweatshirt.  I’m wearing sweatpants under my carhardts.

I am cold.

So that’s what I gots- musings from Voyage 4.

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.