sagacious.us

(12 October 08) A few days ago I posted a couple poems inspired by both the geographic and the timewise expanse of the sea - by the responses I received it is clear that I did a poor job of showing what it is that I love about the sea. I hope this clears all that up a little.

(11 October 08) Gray skies last for days.

No birds, no whales, lifelessness.

Every day the same

(05 October 08) So pirates still exist. I was on a ship a while ago transiting the Red Sea and along the coast of Somalia (the coast of Somalia often holds the title for the worst pirate waters in the world). We carried four Nepalese Ghirka Guards armed with shot guns and an M-14, they were a pretty jovial bunch of guys and hung out at our BBQ's, drank beer...

(29 September 08) Right now we are waiting for the port of Ningbo to open up, a typhoon is running over Taiwan and up the coast of China right now. It is getting less and less ferocious every hour so we will probably be headed to the dock tomorrow morning - my fingers are crossed. I'd like to get these two Chinese ports behind

(27 September 08) At the moment I'm laying in bed. It is about 10:30 in the morning so I'll get up in about another half an hour to take a shower, eat lunch and go to watch. We are sneaking up on a typhoon right now and the swell has picked up. It isn't super rough, we are probably only rolling 10 degrees

(27 September 08) These days I spend a whole lot of time sitting at my desk. I'm working on trig that I never learned at CMA since the further I go in calculus the more I'm realizing that I'm going to be seriously behind if I don't conquer trig. My laptop is here next to me playing, well at the moment it is playing "Free to Be You and Me", but normally it is playing music. I'm drinking a glass of wine,

(26 September 08) I never imagined that I'd be on a merchant ship that would just stop in the ocean and have the crew go swimming in the ocean! It was awesome.

(20 September 08) Moonlit and dramatic heavy clouds share the sky with twinkling stars this morning. You mustn't breathe too deeply in this delicious tropical air or you will become intoxicated.

(16 September 08) This doesn't happen very often, or perhaps it does and my eyes just aren't open to see it.
I had a long summer with little work (I enjoy not working but I do need to pay the rent) and I had been thinking that I should set a savings goal, which if not met would keep me ashore to continue looking for work but if met would allow me to go to school in January. As it became apparent that I wasn't going to make that savings goal I started thinking about how I felt trapped in this line of work...

(16 September 08) A friend emailed me on a ship with a bunch of questions about the life at sea. I responded to her emial and later looked over my responses to her questions, the questions are good and the responses are complete so I though I should share them with all

(11 September 08) We are finally underway. We sat at the dock for two days and it felt like a long time. There were two reasons: one is that there is an energy to a ship when she is underway that doesn't exist at the dock (I like that energy) and the other is that since passage planning is my job until we actually start using the passage plan I can sit around and tweak it, re-word it, etc. Now that we are underway and the captain and all the officers have signed it, the thing can't be altered with out the captain's signature/approval.

(17 October 07) Voyage 284 from Redwood City and Richmond to Inchon South Korea carrying scrap steel

(15 September 07) We are now steaming south in the Sea of Japan. Yesterday at noon we took one engine off line and reduced the load on the other so we are moving at the glacial pace of 9kts (10mph) to allow typhoon Nari to get ahead of us before we make our turn around the southern end of the Korean peninsula. For two weeks we rolled along across the gray north Pacific...

(30 August 07) Just a quick note on our route: amazingly the steel run to Korea has become a reality. We are now loaded with 32,000 tons of scrap steel bound for ports unknown in South Korea.

(13 August 07) I am the Second Mate, and this is a tramp. For the uninitiated: the Second Mate (2/M) is the navigation officer, it is my job to make sure the charts and pubs (again for the uninitiated: maps at sea are called charts, reference books are called pubs short for publications) all corrected for the parts of the world that we will be sailing.

(08 August 07) As autumn nears the vast North Pacific turns gray, sunny days and star filled nights are rare. After seeing nothing but this ocean for ten days it is easy to forget that anything else exists, so when a bird appears 1000 miles from the nearest land it is a fast reminder of the outside world.
Albatross are amazing masters of flight. They fly effortlessly for weeks at a time and stay at sea for months.

(05 August 07) We have been steaming along on one engine for the past week and a half on our way to Nawiliwili (Kaua'i) to make a timed arrival at our birth. We steamed as slow as we could given that the evaporators need a minimum amount of waste heat from the engines to make water, but still we are two days early to port. To kill time and because anchoring is nearly impossible since the sea floor is as steep as the sides of the mountainous islands we are drifting south of Kaua'i and west of Ni'ihao.

(22 July 07) On nearly every ship I have sailed on I have carried on a little tradition: I bring seeds from home and plant them as soon as I get aboard a ship. Usually they are beans, but this time I took some green lentils. After I found my cabin, scrubbed the head, cleaned the drawers...

(21 July 07) We are discharging mountains of sugar, over 34,000 tons, I said mountains. Discharging sugar is about the messiest job I have ever seen. Using purpose made cranes the sugar is scooped up in buckets on a belt transferred to a belt and whisked off over the ship to the silos ashore but not before sprinkling a light dust of sugar all over the ship.

(15 April 03) We had already discharged half of our cargo in Haifa Israel before heading south to Ashdod. After watching the discharge in Haifa I believed that all discharges were clean, smooth operations. The excavators used in Haifa drew the grain from the hold and carried it cleanly and efficiently to the elevators ashore.

(18 December 02) I have been thinking about traveling across the country when I get off this ship. I want to go back to Reserve to go see a glimpse of life in that small town in the bayou. There are surely dozens of towns just like it all over the gulf but their identities remain a secret.

(15 December 02) When taking Sim 1 and Sim 2 I knew that the practical navigation was realistic, taking bearings off lights, getting ranges off the radar was all straight forward enough. Now that I have a little experience I can see just how realistic it really was.

(21 November 02) I was standing on deck watching the grain being loaded and was struck by what the dust was doing. Little pellets of dust were blowing off the conveyor belt. they would fall to deck but on the way they would begin to fall apart leaving a trail of dust that would abruptly end in mid air when the clod was expended. Each of these would explode at a different point filling the air with little streamers like tiny comets...

(20 November 02) I think I should admit that I feel a little bad about the amount of joy I felt in listening to southerners.
I find it fascinating that the people on earth that I think have the most unique or interesting lifestyle are in my own back yard. I have heard many stereotypes about southerners and back-woods hicks from the bayou, but was quite alarmed to speak with and listen to them.

(20 November 02) In Louisiana we loaded soybeans at the Zen-Noh grain elevators about 150 statute miles up the Mississippi river. The soy beans look just like black eyed peas or white beans, they are round, cream and very hard. When you step on them on deck when they are scattered thinly they act as ball bearings.

(12 November 02) After the initial dizzy feeling that came with the excitement and nervousness of my first real ship, I became a little worried
The third mate that I was reliving was too anxious to get off. I could tell he was warn down, like her had been cheated out of one month of his life. that month came after the four that he had signed on for. Unfortunately it came, most importantly it came out of the United States. Galveston was the first American port in 70 days and with Galveston came Me, his relief.