Passing Cuba

Saturday, January 03, 2009
Speed 8.0 knots, heading 101, course101. Today is nice, partly cloudy and windy: 15 knots out of the east. Off to the left is Cuba, but it is currently out of sight. We are over the Cuban Trench in almost 14,000 feet of water. I have a current from the north pushing us to the right and have set a correction in the negative sway (Y) axis to offset it, so we are using 87% on two EMDs. Before I got off last night, I saw the old light house on one of the Cuban fingerlets, its light was yellow (not white) in the night. There was one other lonely light in the hills above and east of the light house. This morning, all of Cuba has retreated, but will come back to us before we make our turn above Jamaica. We have amended (actually, Fairmont) our waypoints to the north to accommodate friendlier currents.

At chow we were talking about welding. Someone asked who invented welding and another answered that it was somebody in 1840, blah, blah. One of our scholars said, no; it was Hephaestus, to which some rig hand asked “who the hell was that?”

Hephaestus was the god of fire out of Ionian and Medean myth. He made—when it suited him—the finest armor on earth or in heaven. He was known to fuse metals together for strength and portability. He built the armor for Achilles, in fact. Some myth says that it was Vulcan, Roman god of the forge, who was the Olympus-blessed smithy. He was the son of Zeus (Jupiter) and Hera (Juno) and was married to Aphrodite (Venus). All works on Olympus are his, even the thunderbolts fashioned for Zeus. Apollo was the god of craftsmen, and Vulcan was his protégé. The high station of the smithy from either culture shows great respect. Diego Velasquez painted Apollo with Vulcan and the craftsmen at the forge in a famous masterpiece. In the fifth century BC, Herodotus wrote that Glaucis of Chios, a mortal, invented welding by heating iron (and some alloys) in a high-carbon coal fire that produced a pitted iron called sponge iron. He joined that sponge iron together in a weld by hammering, which filled the pores of one piece with the substance of the second piece and working both ways. He must not be confused with the female Glaucis spoken of by Demosthenes, nor of the goddess Glaucithenea. I can find ought else on the mortal man. One could go further, I’m sure, since it is known that Egyptians brazed sponge iron and gold about 600 years earlier than that. Here is a subject that I’ll pursue: how hot is an acetylene tip, an arc-weld, galvanizing? It can then be filed away with other useless information in my well-aged brain. Things like: the word “terrible” comes from the Latin “terra”, which simply means “earth”. A potato, in French, is a pomme de terre, an apple of the earth. “The whole nine yards” was the link length of .50 caliber ammunition used in the P-51. An oilfield barrel is 42 gallons. The word “dollar” comes from the word “thaler” (pronounced ‘tah-ler’), the name of a coin mined in Joachemsthaler from 1519 A.D. and periodically afterwards. Doo Dah.

We are moving a bit over 8 knots to the east. The day has been uneventful. Our safety meeting featured our physician, Gregg Siren. He spoke on diabetes, which some of our party has. I must pay attention to myself about this matter. We should reach a turn point tomorrow and pass between Jamaica and Hispanola.

Feeling frivolous for unknown reason, I have prepared a poem in the meter of the Ancient Mariner:
“The course is set, the gray sea split
Tis o’er the waves we pass.
Our last waypoint we squarely hit;
We’re really burning gas.”
(I made that one up myself! I am another ancient mariner, and I stoppeth by a tree…)
“The galley’s doors were open wide--the beans were very good.
All the hands were gathered in the chow line where they stood:
Mooney spiced the beans real good before the cooking started;
Their plates were cleaned, they raised their legs, and boisterously farted.”
(I made that one up, too, but wonder if I should take credit. Mooney likes it.)

Sunday, January 04, 2009
It is another fine day, if a bit windy. We passed Waypoint 5 (amended) and turned southerly, from 097 to 122 degrees. At the waypoint, Cuba had receded 90 miles and could not be seen. It is coming back toward us now, and we will pass it at Cabo Cruz, missing it by about 40 miles. A bit later, we’ll pass only 25 miles from the north coast of Jamaica. Then later, we’ll be within 28 miles of the south coast of Haiti, near Cap Dame Marie. At mid-afternoon we are 20deg 21.8’ N and 79deg 26.5’ W. We are 1088 NM from Corpus now and 1200 NM from Barbados and are getting into more open water, with scatterings of Leeward Islands. Barbados is in the Windward Islands, the first to get an Atlantic hurricane. Once we leave Barbados, the Atlantic Ocean is both open and ours—or perhaps—we are its. Now, there is a piece of logic that sounds like Pogo, who said, “we have seen the enemy, and he is us.” Truer words were ne’er spake.

There are 250 NM between waypoints 5 and 6, so we should be at 6 about this time tomorrow. Barbados is the next one and lies east 907 NM. The world is small for televisions and airplanes, but it is still plenty large for a ship. 907NM is about five and a half million feet, a very long walk. By the by, I had blood sugar checked this morning and it was 101, which Doc pronounced good. 101 what, I do not ken: farthings? grains? millimeters? proof? pounds? Actually, I believe it is millifarkles per decipeck.

Poseidon—ΠοσέІδώγ—was a major god, brother of Zeus and Hades. They were six siblings who spent their youths hiding from their father, Cronos, who ate them when he caught them. The Roman counterpart to Cronos was Saturn. Francisco Goya painted a masterpiece titled and showing Saturn Eating His Children (look it up). Cronos and his siblings were the Titans. Their offspring, such as survived the cannibalism, were the Olympians, who overthrew the old Titan gods. When the division of heaven and earth was meted, Poseidon was given the sea, Zeus the air, and Hades the underworld. A brother, Apollo, was helper and friend to Poseidon, who possessed the same sexual philandering notions as his brother Zeus, both fathering many children. He was moody and could be a terrible god. By smiting his trident on the ground, he caused earthquakes, floods, high winds and seas, drownings, ship wrecks, and storms. He was called “Earth Shaker” and was frequently cataclysmic. When happy, he created new islands, fresh-water springs, and calm seas. Woe to those who crossed him, as Odysseus did by defending himself against Poseidon’s son, the Cyclops, Polyphemus. To save his own and his men’s lives, Odysseus blinded the Cyclops. Poseidon was unmoved by pity and never forgave any mortal and frequently tussled with gods and goddesses. He loved horses and fish, but was indifferent to man, although forcing himself on many mortal women. His main preserve was the ocean, and the ocean was forceful and fatal all too often, and Greek sailors made elaborate offerings to the sea god, sometimes even drowning horses. Occasionally, Poseidon helped a mortal, or a group of mortals. He helped the Greeks against the Trojans, because of a slight he perceived by the Trojans. He also helped the Greek navy defeat the Persian navy at Salamis. He tried to kill Odysseus and kept him lost and at sea for a decade. But for Athena, he would have. It leads us to think of the sea and its lord as—at best—indifferent to man. At worst, it is an unstoppable device of killing and destruction, immune to man’s attempts to save himself, his vessel, or his home.

I have seen that lord’s good side and bad side. This trip has been blessed by Poseidon, and we didn’t even offer a horse sacrifice, but the seas are near calm and easy with wind enough to keep things cool. I have seen his tantrums, too, and they are unforgettable. Katrina blew over us as we ran away from it, but it churned up many square miles of shingles, roof tops, lumber, plastic bottles, trash cans, milk cartons, limbs, trees, styrofoam, dogs, cats, birds, chickens, and all manner of storm-wrecked flotsam, doubtlessly including humans. Trash floated on the ocean for miles. We have seen the sea come up green and white, above the vessel, opening great chasms to fall into. Then rise up again atop a rolling behemoth. Foam blows across the sea so thick that one can not see the water. Riggings and welds groan and cry out. Wind howls and the ship rolls and pitches without letup, our 24,000 horsepower props ineffective, but for heading. Platforms and jackups are torn from their anchorages and pushed willy nilly, or sent to the bottom. Ensco lost rig 74 during Hurricane Gustav. We have found only a piece of one leg, but the rest is gone god-knows-where. Gordon Lightfoot wrote, “Does any one know where the love of God goes when the wind turns the minutes to hours?” Engines overheat, iron pieces fall, heavy objects wash overboard and the beating of water on steel is polyphonic and disturbing. Our ship screams and moans, pops and groans, and wind whistles through the derrick. Radar is blind, and there will be no help of any kind until the storm moves on. We must respect Poseidon, but he is a real son of a bitch. I truly hate to see the annual onset of hurricane season.

I wonder where all that flotsam and junk goes; to the bottom, I guess. Some of it is bio-degradable and some not. So much of the Gulf Coast was destroyed and washed out to sea that the bottom must look like a shanty town. I know when we flew back to our ship over all that, there was mud and weeds with rivers of oil running through it. It is amazing that the waters are still clear. Some day it won’t be so. Some day we shall have so fouled our nest that for a millennium the air, and earth, and sea will puke all that trash back upon us, and we have it coming. Poor animals and fish and birds are victims at both ends of humanity’s incompetent stewardship and nature’s coming rebellion.