Approaching Barbados

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Position is 13 degrees, 7.9 minutes north and 59 degrees, 46.5 minutes west. We are stopped and holding position in DP mode 8 miles from Barbados. Quite a lot of motion on the ship. Awaiting fuel. Wind is 14 knots out of the ESE, barometer 29.84 and falling.
This morning I saw Barbados dead ahead. Just after I came to work, we brought the rig to a stop and went on DP. Here is the gate to the open Atlantic. We are parked on the west (lee) of the island, but the water is 2300 feet deep at only eight miles from the land. The gradient here is steep, indicating that Barbados was a volcano once, long ago. It is flat, more or less, achieving an elevation of 1100 feet. It was a British colony, and English is the tongue here. There is a flotilla of small boats around us, wondering what in tarnation we are.

Gary Pickle found—as only he would—the Mensa Invitational by the Washington Post. They invite readers to take any word from the dictionary and alter it by adding, subtracting, or deleting one letter and then supplying a definition. If you wonder how this change of topics occurred, it is the word “tarnation”, above. I’ll provide the mensaism for it and some others:
Reintarnation: coming back to life as a hillbilly.
Bozone: as seen above—the substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.
Foreploy: a lie told about yourself in order to take advantage of the opposite sex.
Giraffiti: vandalism sprayed very high up.
Sarchasm: the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
Osteopornosis: a degenerate disease.

A second part of the Post’s contest is to take common words and supply new meanings:
Esplanade: to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Negligent: absent-mindedly answering the door while dressed only in a peignoir.
Lymph: to walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle: olive-flavored mouthwash.
Flatulence: the emergency vehicle that picks up someone run over by a steam roller.
Rectitude: the formal, dignified bearing adopted by a proctologist.
Frisbeetarianism: The belief that—after death—the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
Circumvent: an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
Testicle: a humorous question on an exam.
Balderdash: going bald really fast.

I think those are funny. I made them available out here, and the upper half of the cadre laughed, while the bottom half didn’t understand it. Bozone layer, I guess. Even the Windows spell-check doesn’t catch on.

I saw “No Country For Old Men”, the movie. It was a good flick, if depressing and somewhat agitating. I kept thinking of that title—a good one—and that I had seen it before. I had. It is the first line of the poem “Sailing to Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats:
“That is no country for old men. The Young
In one another’s arms…………”………etc. (Verse One)
Verse two continues the message about the aged:
“An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick………”……….. (and so on.)

A good title is a wonderful thing. Some authors can say more in a title than the book contains, like two by Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls. They make one want to read the book. No Country For Old Men makes one wonder, “what country, what condition is that? What’s so harmful to old men?” Of course, there are many countries not for young men, too, like those requiring self-abnegation, consideration, celibacy, and so on, but young men are invaders. Old men are not. A transition thus occurs between the twain, and now one must wonder what THAT is, and so many a tale, or idea can spring forth. There are many books here.

What I gathered from the movie was a physical, actual passage from one age to another, from one culture to another, from one life force to another. Sheriff Tommy Lee Jones represents the old man, and the murder of the citizens represent the new order: what was is no more. As the drug wars heat up in south west Texas, its technology, its means of intelligence, and its targets—even the weapons— pass by the sheriff. He is a veteran officer who can neither physically catch nor prosecute nor understand, and so retires and leaves the wars raging around him. His own country becomes indifferent to him. He ends up harmless, ineffective, and finally meaningless. The sad thing is, he knows it, and that he will never make a difference again, and that right and wrong have been inverted, and it makes no difference. That is no country for old men. (Yeats).

Now I am an old man, too, and I have witnessed the disappearances of entire passages, tint and shade, tone and timbre. The times of war and passion, broken hearts, exhilaration are but small points in yellow— remembered scenes in the folds and bifurcations of my mind—yellow days, and brilliant flashes of good health, beautiful women, fine airplanes, strapping friends, hedonism for its own sake; the events and places of life. Sometimes I listen with expectant, ringing ear, or search with dull, rheumy eye, for the wonders of past occurrences, and my memory hears the muted roar of jet engines, the faraway rattle of riflery, the laugh of a lost comrade. Is that the scent of Her perfume? I can sometimes visualize those lean, lithe bodies in hard effort, grinning and sweating, and the sight of places now gone and lost to time. Now I see others—young men—assuming my territory, filled with life-blood that they so enjoy and so little understand or appreciate. I have become…An Old Man…to be shelved or retired or laughed at…But I am okay, and I wonder what’s next? In time, they will learn this same lesson. Lengthening shadows of one’s life lead finally to the night. I wonder what’s in the night? Perhaps THAT is the country for old men, and I do not fear it.

My brain cells must have become excited at the sight of land, because they took off with all that heavy artillery, above, before the account of our adventurous arrival was told. Last night we stopped near St Lucia to disconnect from one of the tow boats. When he was gone, the remaining tow boat asked me to come out of DP mode and to change the heading. I forgot about men working on the side and crane and started maneuvering too soon. One of them came running into my control room and asked us to stop, which I attempted, but we are and were running on minimum engines at maximum output. As a result of that and some poor communications, I blacked the ship out: went dead in the water without power. We have removed all of our defaults against blackout and engine auto-start in order to run two engines hard. We were dead for half an hour, getting engines online and having them fail. Finally, we were able to get three engines up and running and added adequate thrusters to finish the turn and to resume navigation. The event occurred because, when we were told to stop, we were already doing 5 knots, and stopping 30,000 tons doing 5 knots ain’t easy, requiring 8,437,500 foot-pounds. Still, I feel kind of like a sophomore.

Tonight we are holding position and heading just offshore Barbados. Our phones and internet are down, but some guys are able to make cell phone contact. I am truly hoping that we do not have to cross the Atlantic for 33 days with no contact with the world. And that’s the way it is, Sunday, January 11, 2009.