Haiti on the Left, Fiesta Bowl on the Mind

Monday, January 05, 2009
Today Texas plays Ohio State. Hook ‘em, Horns. Jamaica sends nice radar returns from about 22 miles. The mountains are vaguely visible, but the day is hazy. Outside is hot, about 85 degrees. Seas are running against us from the left (or, port), and our speed is 7.7 knots on a course made good of 122°. Coordinates are N18°31.6’ and W76° 31.7’. We are 1250 nm from Corpus and 1180 from Barbados. Capetown is a mere 6437 nm from here. Late tonight we will come upon Haiti on the left. There are beginning to be fuel concerns, but it has to do more with greed than need.

The Egyptians were never blue-water sailors. They would sail the Mediterranean in flat-bottom boats, boats not designed for hard weather or strong oceans. Consequently, they remained generally in sight of land, and at night they preferred to land their craft and sleep on terra firma. However, for those ventures pre-dawn or post-dusk, They kept up with steerage by land’s location, or the port. Traveling west on the Egyptian coast, the port was off to the left and stars would be seen on the right (starboard). Traveling east off the Pamphyllian (Turkish) coast, port was left and stars on the right. Hence come the names port and starboard. It came from a history of the Phoenicians, who WERE deep water sailors and fine navigators, as well as the inventors of our current alphabet. There is good evidence that there is another origin, out of medieval Europe. Their voyage vessels were rowed with banks on each side, but the rudder was always on the right side, and was called the steorbord (steer-board). I wish to credit the earlier version, because the traveling habits at sea of the Egyptians was as mentioned above. If ‘taint so, it ought to be, and this is MY journal but an argument can be made about the former: what if they were going the opposite direction, so the stars were on the left…?

The Phoenicians, on the other hand, learned their navigation in the deep deserts of Arabia and Mesopotamia. They learned first to get from oasis to oasis, watering hole to watering hole. Some scholar I read offered that tribes were limited in population by the sheer unavailability of the desert to sustain: scarce water, wood, crops. As a tribe approached about 23 families, plans were made as to whom would fall the splinter to form a new tribe. When it was reasonably peopled, they split—the original group going one way and the new tribe the other. One can see how it became necessary to know how to precisely navigate, for sure death awaited those lost and without means. They learned the stars and how to use them, including the pole star. They found Vega and others and accounted for the heavenly rotation. During the day, they learned to place a staff in the sand vertically and mark the end of its shadow. After an hour, they marked the end of the shadow and joined the two points. That line ran east and west. They were nomads, without lands or homes or permanent baggage of any kind.

When they came to the sea, navigation was not a problem. They observed certain craft in the water, particularly Egyptian, and learned how to operate and sail. When they built their own boats, they eventually settled on deep-draft, larger vessels, and they took to the sea, without regard to land or depth of water, navigating all over the Med and even past the Pillars of Hercules. They never learned how to permanently establish themselves in a land. Rather, they preferred to lease or borrow land upon which to live and to port their fleets. Such a place was Carthage. They were traders and travelers and used the ocean to their gain. Other nautical interests learned from them, and the Phoenicians advanced the state of the art greatly.

Very soon after I got into a special operations outfit in Thailand, I had a mission up into the karst of north-central Laos. We worked principally in Laos and Cambodia. Anyway, I was new to the business, and the monsoon was upon us. Clouds covered the mountains and monsoon rains limited visibility: we were doing the best we could up the canyons. We finally found a whiskey site to refuel, which had to be done manually out of pre-stowed barrels. A Loach (OH-6A) with an Air America pilot (CIA) came out of the murk to take on gas. He was an old head. I asked him how to get from here to Lima Site “N”. He said, “It’s pretty easy. You fly down this canyon on the left. You’ll pass two canyons on the right and come to a “Y”. Take the left fork for a mile or two, and there she is. You can’t miss it.” That country was rugged beyond belief and visibility out of the clouds was about two miles. We DID find the Lima Site, but it had little to do with skill. Still, I would rather be really lucky than good anytime. Those were not clearly defined canyons, like you see in the Big Bend. Every escarpment had drainages, draws, creeks, rivers, canyons, or chasms, and everything was jungle, the entire world a dark matte green, with tendrils of steam and cloud wisping up out of the trees in ribbons. Eternal rain swelled low areas and channels, and clouds hung unevenly in a dark gray sky. Ceiling was perhaps a hundred feet over our heads, and it was entirely possible that the clouds would drop all the way to the earth in one of those blind canyons, leaving us on instruments with zero visibility and mountains above our altitude all quadrants, and a sky full of airplanes in close proximity. We went left down that, canyon, descending to about 100 feet above the floor, six ships lined up about 300 yards apart, one behind another, stacked high. That is, the airplane behind stacked above the airplane in front to avoid rotor wash, or dangerously low flying. The fourth guy back had to stack low in order to stay out of the clouds, as did #5, and #6 stacked high on five. We flew a few minutes and off to the right a deep gorge cut through the mountains. A few minutes later, another canyon made confluence with our own, and it was to the right. We came to a Y and turned left and landed at Lima Site N, pretty as you please. Brother, it was raining! Sometimes, it did not go that well.

Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Seven-hundred and sixty-five nautical miles: That was the distance to Barbados when I came on today. That equates to the trip from Beaumont to El Paso, 880 statute miles. We are doing 8.5 knots and taking a strong current quartering off the port bow. I am having to compensate by thrusting left and forward simultaneously. This is a good exercise in Cartesian coordinates and vectored forces: so many units up and so many units left. In a coordinate system we would be 40 units of force up and -16 units of force laterally. We use Cartesian coordinates because the scale of our position is so small as compared to the curvature of the earth. The space shuttle would be more concerned with a spherical geometry, because they move so quickly as to have to deal with the curvature of the earth. It is not likely that we can get this tub in orbit. At 4pm local, the captain on the tug reports Barbados as 820 NM, 6200 NM to Cape Town. His numbers account for contingencies and maneuvering. Mine are simply one GPS fix to another, but there is a curious 90 mile difference. Perhaps we are going to a small, uninhabited island to load on some treasure, or to abandon a few undesirables. If I find a woman there, I swear I shall not marry her. Maybe I’ll just buy her a house and give her a car and move on.

There is a steady roll of seas off the nose. We begin to look like a see-saw: up, down, up…So far, it is along the surge (X) axis and is not uncomfortable. When we get into the open Atlantic, the swells will come across the beam and cause the ship to roll left and right. Roll can get uncomfortable. Worse is the combination of confused seas where you roll and pitch simultaneously. That frequently causes the wimps aboard to puke. I can say that because I never get motion sick, but it can be very uncomfortable (see page one). I flew in a C-141 from Tokyo to Saigon and was surrounded by GIs and cargo. We all sat along the side of the airplane in canvas web seats. Pretty soon, one of the army lads vomited, then another, then another... In a little while, I was sole-deep in puke. The guy next to me was green, but wasn’t puking yet so I helped him get it over with by the reminder of “chicken skin…fish fat…slicky snot…cold grease.” He barfed and got it over with. I was such a nice guy.

It is 1800 hours local, and we will move clocks forward an hour in another 200 miles, or so. Meantime, we have hit a wall of water coming from 40° off the port bow. It has slowed us down to 7.0 knots and promises to do more than that. Seas are picking up, with a lengthening swell rolling in. In the Atlantic, that swell is very long and lasts the entire voyage. Off Nigeria, we worked a year in 8 to 10 foot swells rolling in every 20 seconds. In the late spring and early summer, the sky turned yellow for a month. Sand permeated everything. It was part of the annual sand storms coming off the Sahara and blowing sand all the way to Venezuela. Scientists say a billion tons of sand a year blows into the ocean thus. I had thought that the Sahara would someday run out of sand, but human population is killing plant life, such that the deserts expand by almost 60 miles a year. Someday before long, Africa will be a dead continent.
Oh. And the Longhorns beat the Buckeyes 24-21 in a really exciting game. Colt McCoy engineered a 78-yard drive beginning with 2:05 on the clock. He threw a 26-yard TD pass to Quan Cosby with 0:16 remaining to come from behind and win the game. Now if Florida will rub Oklahoma’s nose in it again, I’ll be happy.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Location at 12pm EST: 16° 30.1’ north and 70° 25.6’ west at 7.5 knots. Winds are 19 knots out of the east and current is running against us from port forward. It appears now that our arrival in Barbados will be Saturday. It lies 600 NM east-southeast, so it should require, at this speed, 80 hours to the anchorage: 3.3 days. Actually, we do not anchor ordinarily. We use the dynamic positioning capability of the vessel. That is my job, driving the ship. DP is a complex algorithm that builds a control loop and feedback. We have fully azimuthing thrusters that jet into the sum of outside forces and counteract them exactly. By controlling three axes of motion in X, Y, and ψ (yaw), I can make the vessel stay in one spot exactly and hold an exact heading. I can also move at any given rate of speed or turn, within the vessel’s limits. We are not concerned with the Z (vertical) axis, except in special circumstances. The vessel is setup to allow fully automatic functions of DP, semi-automatic, or manual. The current configuration, since we have two tow boats up front pulling us in the positive X axis is to automatically hold heading and manually enter the vectored forces for surge and sway. When doing precision work, coordinates are entered, accurate to four decimal places (d.m.mmmm), and that is good to a foot or two. I routinely enter a 20-inch diameter pipe from a point 6500’ above it, so the system is very accurate.

Long ago, perhaps 3rd Century BCE, Apollonius Rhodius put into text the story of Jason and the Argonauts. It is the only surviving Hellenic epic, The Argonautica. One can see where our term “nautical” comes from by looking at the title. Also, “argosy”.The myth was very early, pre-dating Homer’s heroes. In fact, the crew of Argonauts was made up of the predecessors of the heroes in the Iliad and Odyssey: Heracles (Hercules) and Hylas, Castor and Pollux (brothers to Helen and Clytemnestra), Peleus (father of Achilles), Laertes (father of Odysseus), Telemon (father of Ajax), and Zetes and Calais (sons of Boreas), and others—about 50 in all. The ship, ARGO, was built by Argus, the master, and supposedly was the first of the Greek-style deep-draft vessels of later fame. Out of this myth spring many others, including Hypolita and the Amazon women, Medea and her sorcery, harpies, sirens, and others.
As a heroine in the second tier, Homer’s, Helen knew nothing of the fate of her brothers, Castor and Pollux. In book 3, Iliad, she is on the walls of Troy with Priam and is identifying the various Greek heroes. She searches in vain for two great warriors, one swiftest afoot and one swiftest on horse. They are her brothers. Her search is in vain and she so advises King Priam. Alexander Pope translated that event:
… Thus spake the fair, nor knew her brothers’ doom;
Wrapt in the cold embraces of the tomb;
Adorned with honors on their native shore,
Silent, they slept, and heard of wars no more.
King Pelius stole his brother Aeson,s throne at Iolcus. Jason was Aeson’s son and was hidden away from the evil intent of Pelius (not to be confused with Peleus). When he came of age, Jason returned to Iolcus to take the throne, but by deception (and it seems to me naiveté or stupidity) was sent after the Golden Fleece to prove he was worthy. Roaming the known Greek world to find them, he enlisted 48 Heroes and one Heroine to make the trip with him. Argus built the finest ship afloat and named it after himself. The voyage presented many adventures and fights, monsters and so on, and covered all the known—and some unknown—Greek world. I’ll leave the adventures, at least for now, in order to cover the trip.

It was a doozy. They launched from Iolcus on the east coast of Thessaly and proceeded to the Bosporus and Hellespont and into the Sea of Marmara and beyond. They encountered Amazonia, Cius, and came near to the place where Prometheus was bound, finally ending up in Colchis in the far outskirts of civilization. This is where the fleece was tacked to a sacred tree. I don’t know how the ship kept up with the apparent portages, because they left the Sea of Marmara and went overland, or via rivers, west to the Adriatic Sea. They sailed south, down the east coast of Italy, turned around and went ashore just west of the entry point. They crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, then south and down the west coast of Italy. Crossing the Mediterranean, they apparently found the Nile, then proceeded west across Libyan desert to Triton. Back in the Med they traveled northeast and sailed the various islands of the Aegean and finally back to Iolcus.

Today, that trip would be long and adventurous, but one might travel by many means in lighted thoroughfares and propelled by mechanical or electrical means. One must realize that the times of Medea were black at night: no lights existed, save from a few scattered wood fires. Population was small and scattered. Forests came right down to the city boundary. There were no dams against floods, nor understanding of weather or sea. At night, the trillion stars were all visible, almost right down to the tip of one’s nose. Wild beasts were common, there being lions yet in Assyria. It was a wild, dark, ignorant world, so tales of golden fleeces and the Minotaur grew naturally out of fears, gossip, and story…finally becoming myth, “and the people just over those mountains are giants and eaters of men…” Sailing was propelled by the backs of men, or the fickle winds. Overland would be walked or made on horse back. Disease was appointed for some misdeed, and the gods were frivolous and intervened in the affairs of men. Over on that island live a race of monsters, with a single eye in the middle of the head and feet the size of my shield….Myths are lovely things, more appealing than the truth. I have an inclination that I’ll write more on myths.

Stories. Children love them. Adults love them, too. I shall close my thoughts of voyaging on the seas today with a poem that was read by my mother to my brother and me, when we were wee. It stuck with me always, and when I was a grown man I had it in a book, along with Dr. Seuss and the Pants With Nobody In Them. When my daughter, Callisto, was about five or six, she found them, and now they are hers. I hope they stay with her as they did with me. A poem by Eugene Field:
Winken, Blinken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe—
Sailed off on a river of crystal light
Into a sea of dew.
“Where are you going, and what do you wish?”
The Old Moon asked the three.
“We’ve come to fish for the herring fish
That live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we!”
Said
Winken,
Blinken,
and Nod.

The Old Moon laughed and sang a song
As they rocked in the wooden shoe,
And the wind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew.
The little stars were the herring fish
That lived in that beautiful sea—
“Now cast your nets wherever you wish—
Never afeard are we”;
So cried the stars to the fishermen three:
Winken,
Blinken,
and Nod.

All night long their nets they threw
To the stars in the twinkling foam—
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe
Bringing the fishermen home.
‘Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
As if it could not be,
And some folks thought ‘twas a dream they dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea—
But I shall name you the fishermen three:
Winken,
Blinken,
and Nod.

Winken and Blinken are two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head.
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is the wee ones’ trundle-bed.
So, shut your eyes while mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be.
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock in a misty sea,
Where the Old Moon rocked the fishermen three:
Winken,
Blinken,
and Nod.
May your seas be starlit tonight, and thanks, Mom, for that gift. Its message was so poignant it was painful, with the facts that broke me up when I looked at Wesley in his crib, his father dead and his beautiful young wife a widow.