Tuesday, January 13, 2009
We are leaving Barbados, eastbound, and entering the Atlantic. Already, the swells are deepening, with longer periods between. It is rough, and wind is blowing out of the northeast at 20 to 25 knots. The day is clear and two boats are pulling, one on each pontoon. Our own contribution is 6200 kilowatts going to eight thrusters, each thrusting at 33%. The DP system holds heading for me, but I am setting such deltas in surge and sway as are required. The island curves back to the north as we proceed. On our course from here, it is 1800 miles to the equator, 5353 miles to Cape Town, and 10,564 miles to Dampier, Australia. The wind is the northeast trade, and it brought European explorers to North and Central America. That includes Columbus, who landed on Barbados, as well as St Vincent. The latter, he landed on 22 January—St Vincent’s Day—hence the name. At our current 6.6 knots, Cape Town is 33.2 days away. Hopefully, we can make better speed soon.
At Barbados, our nautical charts finally caught up with us, complete with the Gulf and Caribbean, which we have all ready traversed. They did not send the north Atlantic, which we are in now, that runs from the pole to the equator. So, once more, we are chartless and will remains so for almost 2000 miles, until we cross the equator.
Had I a compass, I’d look very smart;
I’d set it right down on an up-to date chart.
The gyro I have reads out the degrees,
But I haven’t a map, and I’m lost on the seas.
If you happen to know about headings and throttles,
Please put some maps in some sea-worthy bottles.
Throw them as far as you can in the foam,
Then if we miss Africa, we might can find home.
I’d do it by stars, or by word of mouth:
Doesn’t the sun come up in the South?
No sweat on navigation, Prince Henry. If I head east for five or six thousand miles and run into land, maybe it will be Luanda, or Port Harcourt. I’ll stop and ask somebody: “is this Africa?” If he says yes, then we’ll go south and follow the coast line, then stop and ask somebody: “Is this Cape Town?” But what if we land in Spain and they say “no, this is not Africa. You must fill out this form and present your charts for approval before we can release you to Africa.” We have no charts and might end up in the Torrejon jail. Of course, they may pay us to take this eye-sore away from their shore. We could threaten to drive it near shore and leave it sitting on the bottom. None of us speak Spanish, though, but, I can learn it, just like German. I still remember the first lines of German that I learned: “Wo ist Herr Doktor Gruber?”—where is Mr. Dr. Gruber? Foreign languages are not completely out, but I had a Frenchman teaching first semester French who critiqued my first oral exam: “some of the words are right, Monsieur Griffith, but the dialect is not suitable.” The first German vowel I had to conjugate was “to go”—ich fahrt, ich bin gefahrten, and so on. Unhappily, I mispronounced it, to the great glee of some class mates. It sounds like fěrt, fěrten—and not as it appears. Thus, maybe I’ll learn Spanish in case we hit the Spanish coast. I already know some, anyway:” como esta frijole?—how you bean?” I can not find an upside down ?.
It is rougher than a wash board out here. The sea state is transitional between the Caribbean and the coastal Atlantic. Lots of current blows up from the south. Meanwhile, we are pitching and rolling four or more degrees. The best speed so far has been 6.7 knots, and the worst 5.9. There are still no phones or internet, so we are alone out here, and the crew worries about pay, bills, and families.
“Alone, alone; all, all alone—
Alone on a wide, wide sea,
And ne’er a saint took pity
On my soul in agony.” (Coleridge, Rime…)
I saw a movie with Laurel and Hardy in the French Foreign Legion. The troop was in the Sahara and marching single-file when a bad sandstorm hit. Every trooper grasped a belt, or pack, or other object of the man in front of him in order to stay together and not be lost, and the squadron marched on. They marched all day when the storm finally dissipated, and there was Hardy, holding on to an empty bayonet scabbard with nobody attached, and Laurel hanging on to Hardy’s belt. That is how I feel now, following these two silly boats in rough seas. Crikey! We could separate and they end up in Denmark and we in Marrakech, hanging on to a limp cable and wondering how South Africa became so sandy. There was a young captain explaining to us lieutenants how it is not possible to be completely lost, because you already know where you aren’t. In truth, I am not lost, and know with precision where we are.
It became too rough for our old tub, and we had to reduce speed to four knots. That’s fifteen minutes per mile, a normal walk. We hope we don’t have to ballast down, but we are really taking a beating. Doubtless, some bathrooms are ankle deep in puke. That is shameful, because dinner tonight was one of Mooney’s masterpieces. Wimps.
Looking out the window, it is darker than the inside of a cow, except for the two boats in front of us. They are lighted, and move half- way up the window, in unison, then ride back down and out of sight. They are much smaller than we, so their ride must be a real head-knocker. I am spending a bit of time hoping this stuff will settle down some.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Waiting and Watching
Monday, January 12, 2009
We are still on DP, holding position a few miles from Barbados. The Alpine has gone to the island to refuel and replenish. The plan is that we will not take on fuel ourselves until we get to the equator, where it is supposedly going to be calmer waters. We’ll take on fuel from each of the tow vessels. The BCO has ballasted the 7500 down in the water to 36 feet of draft, and the ride is much smoother here, since there is much less surface interference. However, Barbados will not allow us to exchange fuel within 12 miles of their island. Can’t say I blame them—some outfit will surely have a spill someday. I am ready to get under way again, but there is one advantage to being close to land: telephones. For now, the island is close, and we can use cell phones for something like $4 a minute. I called Mom and asked her to relay to Cali to pay rent, AMEX, gasoline, and so forth—a thing she’s never done and which she may muff.
Pitch and roll are two axes about which the ship is disturbed along its long axis and its lateral axis, and the ocean gives us lots of it. I have some bathroom scales in my state room, so this morning after my run, I weighed. The scales moved from 197 to 209, right along with the ship’s motion. I presume that I weigh the mid-point of that range, about 203. The new year’s resolution I set last year was to lose 20 pounds, and I weighed 200 at the time. I managed to gain 22 pounds and then lose 19 pounds of that, but my resolution was shot. This year, my resolution is more modest: I am not goings toi mak ani corrctions to eny typos/bicayse thot wyls sav smcuch timef. And maybe lose that 20 pounds from last year. My exercise regimen is good, and breath and heart are responding nicely. In fact, I am running up to half mile at 8.5-minute/mile, and it has been a long time since I have done that. My goal is to “race” a 5k in 28 minutes this year. Never again shall I see a six-minute mile on this old body: old, but good, reliable, still among the living.
Outside this evening, it is brewing up a Caribbean squall north of the island. It is pretty and non-threatening. The sun is setting beneath the surface and night coming on fast. We are only 13 degrees north, virtually atop the Tropic of Cancer. Night comes on quickly. The second tow vessel, Alpine, should be alongside in an hour or two. We’ll attach it and then leave. Barbados is the last land we’ll see for nearly 6000 nautical miles. We still have no phones or internet, no marisat, and we are launching. It makes me really quite angry. In a thousand miles, there can be absolutely no help, and probably no way to let anyone know that we are in trouble.
Practical jokes are not unknown out here. One lad was bald. Someone chalked the liner of his hard hat with blue chalk. We had some VIPs out when the victim came into the room and removed his hat. This, of course, left the blue outline of his webbing on his shiny pate. Everybody had a laugh, but our victim was not one to take it lying down. He found a photo of a .45 pistol in a magazine and cut it out. He traced the outline onto a piece of aluminum foil and cut it out. Then he placed the cutout between the shell and the bottom of the other man’s carry-on bag. The man flew back and forth to work, and when he had his baggage x-rayed, they naturally saw a pistol. They took him into custody and searched high and low for the gun, of which the new victim was totally unaware. The gun had been cleverly taped to the bottom of the bag’s floor, so when they pulled the bottom up, they could see only fabric of the bag. They finally found the silhouette taped and then presumed that the passenger was a practical joker and hauled him off. He finally convinced the gendarmes of his innocence. When he returned to the rig, he managed to slip a pork chop into the back pocket of the first victim, who then put his going-home clothes in the downstairs locker. Three weeks later, he opened the locker…
Our voyage is about to begin again. Both tows are fueled, and we are attaching the Alpine to the tow line. In a short while, before I come back at noon, we shall have navigated around the south side of the island and taken up a southeasterly course into the open Atlantic Ocean. There will be no more land for thirty days, or so. Brazil juts out into the Atlantic to about 35° west. We are currently at 59° 46.5’ west, so almost 24 degrees east of here, we can take up our great circle route and finish the trip. That is over 1800 nautical miles from here. That gives some idea how big Brazil is. When we are safely past Brazil, we’ll only have 3880 more miles to go.
I went outside just now (2315 hours) to look once more upon Bridgetown, the city on the island. Across eight miles of black water, she is filled with diamonds, rubies, amethysts, topaz…stars. It is our own little milky way over there, and the last of its kind for these eyes for a long time. I wish I could have gone ashore. Maybe someday.
We are still on DP, holding position a few miles from Barbados. The Alpine has gone to the island to refuel and replenish. The plan is that we will not take on fuel ourselves until we get to the equator, where it is supposedly going to be calmer waters. We’ll take on fuel from each of the tow vessels. The BCO has ballasted the 7500 down in the water to 36 feet of draft, and the ride is much smoother here, since there is much less surface interference. However, Barbados will not allow us to exchange fuel within 12 miles of their island. Can’t say I blame them—some outfit will surely have a spill someday. I am ready to get under way again, but there is one advantage to being close to land: telephones. For now, the island is close, and we can use cell phones for something like $4 a minute. I called Mom and asked her to relay to Cali to pay rent, AMEX, gasoline, and so forth—a thing she’s never done and which she may muff.
Pitch and roll are two axes about which the ship is disturbed along its long axis and its lateral axis, and the ocean gives us lots of it. I have some bathroom scales in my state room, so this morning after my run, I weighed. The scales moved from 197 to 209, right along with the ship’s motion. I presume that I weigh the mid-point of that range, about 203. The new year’s resolution I set last year was to lose 20 pounds, and I weighed 200 at the time. I managed to gain 22 pounds and then lose 19 pounds of that, but my resolution was shot. This year, my resolution is more modest: I am not goings toi mak ani corrctions to eny typos/bicayse thot wyls sav smcuch timef. And maybe lose that 20 pounds from last year. My exercise regimen is good, and breath and heart are responding nicely. In fact, I am running up to half mile at 8.5-minute/mile, and it has been a long time since I have done that. My goal is to “race” a 5k in 28 minutes this year. Never again shall I see a six-minute mile on this old body: old, but good, reliable, still among the living.
Outside this evening, it is brewing up a Caribbean squall north of the island. It is pretty and non-threatening. The sun is setting beneath the surface and night coming on fast. We are only 13 degrees north, virtually atop the Tropic of Cancer. Night comes on quickly. The second tow vessel, Alpine, should be alongside in an hour or two. We’ll attach it and then leave. Barbados is the last land we’ll see for nearly 6000 nautical miles. We still have no phones or internet, no marisat, and we are launching. It makes me really quite angry. In a thousand miles, there can be absolutely no help, and probably no way to let anyone know that we are in trouble.
Practical jokes are not unknown out here. One lad was bald. Someone chalked the liner of his hard hat with blue chalk. We had some VIPs out when the victim came into the room and removed his hat. This, of course, left the blue outline of his webbing on his shiny pate. Everybody had a laugh, but our victim was not one to take it lying down. He found a photo of a .45 pistol in a magazine and cut it out. He traced the outline onto a piece of aluminum foil and cut it out. Then he placed the cutout between the shell and the bottom of the other man’s carry-on bag. The man flew back and forth to work, and when he had his baggage x-rayed, they naturally saw a pistol. They took him into custody and searched high and low for the gun, of which the new victim was totally unaware. The gun had been cleverly taped to the bottom of the bag’s floor, so when they pulled the bottom up, they could see only fabric of the bag. They finally found the silhouette taped and then presumed that the passenger was a practical joker and hauled him off. He finally convinced the gendarmes of his innocence. When he returned to the rig, he managed to slip a pork chop into the back pocket of the first victim, who then put his going-home clothes in the downstairs locker. Three weeks later, he opened the locker…
Our voyage is about to begin again. Both tows are fueled, and we are attaching the Alpine to the tow line. In a short while, before I come back at noon, we shall have navigated around the south side of the island and taken up a southeasterly course into the open Atlantic Ocean. There will be no more land for thirty days, or so. Brazil juts out into the Atlantic to about 35° west. We are currently at 59° 46.5’ west, so almost 24 degrees east of here, we can take up our great circle route and finish the trip. That is over 1800 nautical miles from here. That gives some idea how big Brazil is. When we are safely past Brazil, we’ll only have 3880 more miles to go.
I went outside just now (2315 hours) to look once more upon Bridgetown, the city on the island. Across eight miles of black water, she is filled with diamonds, rubies, amethysts, topaz…stars. It is our own little milky way over there, and the last of its kind for these eyes for a long time. I wish I could have gone ashore. Maybe someday.
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.
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.
Rough Seas and Wild Rivers
Saturday, January 10
N13° 45.4’/W61° 36.2, west of St Lucia, 130 NM from Barbados. Seas are rough, winds out of the northeast at 22, barometer 30.00 steady. Somewhere southwest of is the estuary of the Orinoco, but it is of little or no impact here. Yet, the seas are swirling in unsteady eddies, for awhile from the right, then later from the left and always on the nose. Our speed is only 6.5 knots.
I like wild rivers and hope to see every one of them, the Yarling Tsang-Po, the Wahge, the canyon of the Blue Nile, the upper Amazon…I recall being a young Air Force pilot with access to the world’s maps. I spent a lot of time in the map room. One of the survival manuals spoke of techniques for survival in river country. Of the Orinoco, it said “Survival in this region is not likely.” I checked the 1:250,000 aviation chart of the Orinoco from its estuary south. Within fifty miles there was only white paper with the notation “Relief Data Not Available”. In those days, cartographers were needed to make maps, and no one could get up there and survive to come back. I knew some cartographers in the Air Force. One had a story of being attacked by baboons in Ethiopia and actually losing men to the beasts. Four-hundred inches of rain annually, they surmise falls in the Orinoco basin. With satellites came unlimited mapping capacity, and all the world’s rivers—and other features—can be seen now. People have now been up the Orinoco and back with films of wild canyons and spectacular mountains. I’d still like to do it. In my next life, I shall be a river runner.
One of my fantasies has been to run the entire Amazon, from the Urubamba all the way to Belize. At its estuary, the river is 200 miles across, bearing 20% of the fresh water of the planet. Its banks explore the last of the unexplored, and that will not last long. The Chinese claim that fewer than two hundred outsiders have ever even seen the Rainbow falls of the Tsang-Po. Two rivers are said to be un-runnable: the Tsang-Po and the Wahge in Papua, New Guinea.
We are now two hours ahead of the clock on which we started, and will move our clocks up another hour in three or four days. College football is over, and I am glad for once. The bureaucrats and press gangs have turned it into a beauty contest. The BCS is a total failure, and it disappoints many. Texas defeated five top eleven teams this year, won their fifth consecutive bowl game, and actually dropped in the polls. No team has ever accomplished what they did. Neither have the polls.
N13° 45.4’/W61° 36.2, west of St Lucia, 130 NM from Barbados. Seas are rough, winds out of the northeast at 22, barometer 30.00 steady. Somewhere southwest of is the estuary of the Orinoco, but it is of little or no impact here. Yet, the seas are swirling in unsteady eddies, for awhile from the right, then later from the left and always on the nose. Our speed is only 6.5 knots.
I like wild rivers and hope to see every one of them, the Yarling Tsang-Po, the Wahge, the canyon of the Blue Nile, the upper Amazon…I recall being a young Air Force pilot with access to the world’s maps. I spent a lot of time in the map room. One of the survival manuals spoke of techniques for survival in river country. Of the Orinoco, it said “Survival in this region is not likely.” I checked the 1:250,000 aviation chart of the Orinoco from its estuary south. Within fifty miles there was only white paper with the notation “Relief Data Not Available”. In those days, cartographers were needed to make maps, and no one could get up there and survive to come back. I knew some cartographers in the Air Force. One had a story of being attacked by baboons in Ethiopia and actually losing men to the beasts. Four-hundred inches of rain annually, they surmise falls in the Orinoco basin. With satellites came unlimited mapping capacity, and all the world’s rivers—and other features—can be seen now. People have now been up the Orinoco and back with films of wild canyons and spectacular mountains. I’d still like to do it. In my next life, I shall be a river runner.
One of my fantasies has been to run the entire Amazon, from the Urubamba all the way to Belize. At its estuary, the river is 200 miles across, bearing 20% of the fresh water of the planet. Its banks explore the last of the unexplored, and that will not last long. The Chinese claim that fewer than two hundred outsiders have ever even seen the Rainbow falls of the Tsang-Po. Two rivers are said to be un-runnable: the Tsang-Po and the Wahge in Papua, New Guinea.
We are now two hours ahead of the clock on which we started, and will move our clocks up another hour in three or four days. College football is over, and I am glad for once. The bureaucrats and press gangs have turned it into a beauty contest. The BCS is a total failure, and it disappoints many. Texas defeated five top eleven teams this year, won their fifth consecutive bowl game, and actually dropped in the polls. No team has ever accomplished what they did. Neither have the polls.
Of Haircuts and Hamilton
Thursday, January 08, 2009
We are south of Puerto Rico at 15 degrees north and 67 degrees west, doing 7.9 knots. Ahead of us lie thunderstorms. Off to the right, some distance away, is Venezuela, home of Hugo Chavez, house-fly. We are 490 NM from Barbados and expect to arrive on Saturday. Some of the men are antsy already, and we’ve been sailing for only 11 days: less than a quarter of the way there. What a bunch of weenies. Of course, they are used to a 14-day rotation, they have wives and kids, boats and motorbikes, and booze, or other interests. They missed Christmas, and new year’s day, bowl games, family… To me, this is as much home as I have. It’s a good job among good people, so I am content ashore or aboard ship. When there are no hurricanes to fight, this is a pretty easy task.
One plus about being out here: haircuts. No one has to worry about them. I got one just before sailing, and it is a bad one. The woman used only scissors, comb, and fingers, and she created a geometrical thing on my head. She cut it quite short at my direction “since it will be six or more weeks…” It was so short that it would not lay down very well, so it was spiky and punk-looking. I thought it would lay down in a couple of weeks and would work out fine for my well-groomed entry into Capetown. It has grown out, and I classify it as the third worst haircut I ever had. She managed to cut some kind of negative ellipsoid on the top right side. Where my skull rounds outward, she cut a saucer, rounded inward on that side. Looks like a hairy swimming pool. My hair is too fine and much to short to style in any manner. It is still spiky on the left side at the part, and concave on the right side, which will get spiky when it is a little longer. So I’ll have a soup turin with spikes on my pate on one side and long, frizzy hair over my left ear on the other. Fortunately, hair style is not noticed out here, but it made me so mad that I cut the left half of my mustache off, and they notice that. Hair! Who needs it! I am setting a new trend, growing only half a mustache. When I get home, I am going to go to that woman with my half mustache and when she asks about it, I’ll tell her that it is designed to draw attention to my haircut.
My worst haircut occurred in Rio Grande City. We were drilling a deep, hot well in Starr County. I went to town one afternoon and found a barber shop, complete with rotating white and red spirals. It was a one-seater, and the proprietor was a Mexican, maybe forty years old. He offered this seňor a shot of tequila when I walked in. That should have clued me in: “you wohn leetl wheeskey, no?” I sat and was duly covered in a green, red, and white shroud bearing the eagle and serpent of Mexico, and he went to chopping. First there was a painful tug, followed by some term like “osheet.” It went down hill from there, and when he was done he gave me the job for half price. I wish I had taken that shot. When I got home, I found my hairdo resembling that at the nether regions of a long-haired dog, tufts and warps all over. Patchy. It was so bad that my wife bought me a hat and told me not to take it off. I look dorky in a hat, so I went to the land owner’s place and borrowed his sheep shears and scalped myself. It was seven weeks before I could comb my hair again. The Alamo remembered.
I won’t write the details, but the second worst was in New Bedford, Mass. When I got back out on the ship, the superintendent asked where I got my haircut. I told him, and he said, “I won’t be going there.”
I landed in Luang Prabang, Laos, one time to pick up some indigenous folk for a fight up north. We had the occasion to wait for a couple of hours, and a few of the troops had bicycles. I borrowed one and pedaled to town, about a mile or two. I found a kid selling ice cream on a bike, so I told him where he could make a fortune (and he did). There was a young man sitting in a barber chair outside getting a haircut in the street. He was licking an ice cream happily, hair cuttings and all. I pedaled back to the aerodrome and there were perhaps a hundred pilots and soldiers happily licking ice creams, but without hair cuttings. I don’t think I could enjoy ice cream and hair. Then we flew off to war, and some of those kids died that day with ice cream spots on their shirts, and blood.
North of us, in the Leeward Islands—not so far away—lies the Dutch island of St. Eustatius. It is only 8 square miles in area, but has a neat history with the United States. In November, 1776, a ship bearing a red, white, and blue flag appeared near by. The Dutch fired a salute, honoring the new flag of a new sovereign nation. They were the first foreign power to acknowledge the United States. The whole story was revealed in the book, First Salute, by Barbara Tuchman. She presents this history so well, as she did in everything she wrote. We were actually very fortunate to have survived our war of independence and of independence itself. Perhaps we’ll explore why later.
Friday, January 9, 2009
It is about 300 NM from Barbados. We are doing 8.2 knots at N14° 35.6’ and W64° 19.5’ tracking 107 degrees. That will take us 11NM south of St. Lucia and her twin volcanoes, jumping out of the sea. Some weather concerns have some supervisors re-planning a fueling stop: St Lucia or Barbados? Who cares? Not all supervisors reside beneath the bozone layer, but enough do to cause doubling of effort, paper trails, and confusion. Never show them what you are working on, or you’ll have to put it on a spreadsheet and distribute it to Him, Hymn, Her, and Hal. Hal is the political correctness guy. Pretty soon, the document becomes the raison d’etre, and the job for which it was created scarcely matters anymore. Then, Him thinks we ought to add the what-for temperature, and Hymn wants the sum of the squares of the residuals…Her thinks the procedure for covering the female end of a tubing is sexist and must be renamed. Hal is quick to remind us that we can not use a “flat bastard file” and must either rename it, or get rid of the tool. In other words, things work here just as they do everywhere.
Not far away, to the north, is the island of Nevis, a British colonial possession. It is from there that Alexander Hamilton came. His boyhood was one of uncertainty and poverty, so when he had the chance to go to the American Colonies, he took it and was educated in New Jersey and New York. He distinguished himself as a college graduate and lawyer. During the War, he was a captain in the New York Militia and became aide-de-camp and confidante of General Washington. He commanded three battalions at Yorktown and was elected to congress. He resigned that commission in order to practice law and to form the Bank of New York, which still exists. He was the only New Yorker to sign the constitution. Washington appointed him Secretary of the Treasury, and his influence on fiscal matters was tremendous. Hamilton fought for a strong central government and its implied powers, and from that came the federal assumption of national and state debts and certain tariffs, as well as a national bank. From my point of view, there could have been no United States without the central government assuming states’ war debts, the first functional step in coalescing the nation together.
Hamilton was born out of wedlock and was eventually abandoned by the male parent, from whom comes the name Hamilton. His mother inherited some property on Nevis which included a library, and from that, Hamilton educated himself, including the classics. He was, a bastard, denied access to the British school, which was run by the church. When he was thirteen, his mother died, and Hamilton came to the colonies. He carried that stigma with him for the remainder of his life. (Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow.)
During the course of his second term, Washington became excoriated by opponents— former allies and friends—led by Jefferson and Madison. They formed a coalition fully opposed to Hamilton and to the administration. This led to the unhappiest fact of American political inheritance: the creation of bicameral competition. The rift was vitriolic, renting the fabric of our new democracy and directly led to the death of Alexander Hamilton. The new party, the Democratic-Republicans were not evil, but opposed the Federalist ideas of building a nation. I believe that their loyalty could certainly be questioned.
I personally note here that the two principals, Jefferson and Madison, were brilliant men, but they were NOT combatants in the war. Both were in Congress, except Jefferson who spent much time at Monticello, or on the run. Their primary concerns were with the Hamiltonian ideas of the Treasury and strong national government, and they also wanted a system of checks and balances to protect the minority from any possible tyranny from the majority: individual rights.
Washington, on the other hand, fought the entirety of the war and took no pay from the treasury, but paid out of his own accounts. He was victimized by being given charge of rag tag armies without rifles or shoes or training, and who were not being paid by congress, as promised. Neither would the congress, nor the states from whence came these men, increase the duration of enlistments, such that at year’s end, the entire army just melted away. Congress, neither then nor now, met its obligations, nor put the country first. I am convinced that George Washington is the greatest American to live, and his single most significant acts were those of denying us a monarchy (in which he would have been king by popular acclamation) and of retiring from the presidency and going back into private life. He established the precedent. After Yorktown, he could have had anything. His modesty and principles remain elevated far above the rest of us.
We are south of Puerto Rico at 15 degrees north and 67 degrees west, doing 7.9 knots. Ahead of us lie thunderstorms. Off to the right, some distance away, is Venezuela, home of Hugo Chavez, house-fly. We are 490 NM from Barbados and expect to arrive on Saturday. Some of the men are antsy already, and we’ve been sailing for only 11 days: less than a quarter of the way there. What a bunch of weenies. Of course, they are used to a 14-day rotation, they have wives and kids, boats and motorbikes, and booze, or other interests. They missed Christmas, and new year’s day, bowl games, family… To me, this is as much home as I have. It’s a good job among good people, so I am content ashore or aboard ship. When there are no hurricanes to fight, this is a pretty easy task.
One plus about being out here: haircuts. No one has to worry about them. I got one just before sailing, and it is a bad one. The woman used only scissors, comb, and fingers, and she created a geometrical thing on my head. She cut it quite short at my direction “since it will be six or more weeks…” It was so short that it would not lay down very well, so it was spiky and punk-looking. I thought it would lay down in a couple of weeks and would work out fine for my well-groomed entry into Capetown. It has grown out, and I classify it as the third worst haircut I ever had. She managed to cut some kind of negative ellipsoid on the top right side. Where my skull rounds outward, she cut a saucer, rounded inward on that side. Looks like a hairy swimming pool. My hair is too fine and much to short to style in any manner. It is still spiky on the left side at the part, and concave on the right side, which will get spiky when it is a little longer. So I’ll have a soup turin with spikes on my pate on one side and long, frizzy hair over my left ear on the other. Fortunately, hair style is not noticed out here, but it made me so mad that I cut the left half of my mustache off, and they notice that. Hair! Who needs it! I am setting a new trend, growing only half a mustache. When I get home, I am going to go to that woman with my half mustache and when she asks about it, I’ll tell her that it is designed to draw attention to my haircut.
My worst haircut occurred in Rio Grande City. We were drilling a deep, hot well in Starr County. I went to town one afternoon and found a barber shop, complete with rotating white and red spirals. It was a one-seater, and the proprietor was a Mexican, maybe forty years old. He offered this seňor a shot of tequila when I walked in. That should have clued me in: “you wohn leetl wheeskey, no?” I sat and was duly covered in a green, red, and white shroud bearing the eagle and serpent of Mexico, and he went to chopping. First there was a painful tug, followed by some term like “osheet.” It went down hill from there, and when he was done he gave me the job for half price. I wish I had taken that shot. When I got home, I found my hairdo resembling that at the nether regions of a long-haired dog, tufts and warps all over. Patchy. It was so bad that my wife bought me a hat and told me not to take it off. I look dorky in a hat, so I went to the land owner’s place and borrowed his sheep shears and scalped myself. It was seven weeks before I could comb my hair again. The Alamo remembered.
I won’t write the details, but the second worst was in New Bedford, Mass. When I got back out on the ship, the superintendent asked where I got my haircut. I told him, and he said, “I won’t be going there.”
I landed in Luang Prabang, Laos, one time to pick up some indigenous folk for a fight up north. We had the occasion to wait for a couple of hours, and a few of the troops had bicycles. I borrowed one and pedaled to town, about a mile or two. I found a kid selling ice cream on a bike, so I told him where he could make a fortune (and he did). There was a young man sitting in a barber chair outside getting a haircut in the street. He was licking an ice cream happily, hair cuttings and all. I pedaled back to the aerodrome and there were perhaps a hundred pilots and soldiers happily licking ice creams, but without hair cuttings. I don’t think I could enjoy ice cream and hair. Then we flew off to war, and some of those kids died that day with ice cream spots on their shirts, and blood.
North of us, in the Leeward Islands—not so far away—lies the Dutch island of St. Eustatius. It is only 8 square miles in area, but has a neat history with the United States. In November, 1776, a ship bearing a red, white, and blue flag appeared near by. The Dutch fired a salute, honoring the new flag of a new sovereign nation. They were the first foreign power to acknowledge the United States. The whole story was revealed in the book, First Salute, by Barbara Tuchman. She presents this history so well, as she did in everything she wrote. We were actually very fortunate to have survived our war of independence and of independence itself. Perhaps we’ll explore why later.
Friday, January 9, 2009
It is about 300 NM from Barbados. We are doing 8.2 knots at N14° 35.6’ and W64° 19.5’ tracking 107 degrees. That will take us 11NM south of St. Lucia and her twin volcanoes, jumping out of the sea. Some weather concerns have some supervisors re-planning a fueling stop: St Lucia or Barbados? Who cares? Not all supervisors reside beneath the bozone layer, but enough do to cause doubling of effort, paper trails, and confusion. Never show them what you are working on, or you’ll have to put it on a spreadsheet and distribute it to Him, Hymn, Her, and Hal. Hal is the political correctness guy. Pretty soon, the document becomes the raison d’etre, and the job for which it was created scarcely matters anymore. Then, Him thinks we ought to add the what-for temperature, and Hymn wants the sum of the squares of the residuals…Her thinks the procedure for covering the female end of a tubing is sexist and must be renamed. Hal is quick to remind us that we can not use a “flat bastard file” and must either rename it, or get rid of the tool. In other words, things work here just as they do everywhere.
Not far away, to the north, is the island of Nevis, a British colonial possession. It is from there that Alexander Hamilton came. His boyhood was one of uncertainty and poverty, so when he had the chance to go to the American Colonies, he took it and was educated in New Jersey and New York. He distinguished himself as a college graduate and lawyer. During the War, he was a captain in the New York Militia and became aide-de-camp and confidante of General Washington. He commanded three battalions at Yorktown and was elected to congress. He resigned that commission in order to practice law and to form the Bank of New York, which still exists. He was the only New Yorker to sign the constitution. Washington appointed him Secretary of the Treasury, and his influence on fiscal matters was tremendous. Hamilton fought for a strong central government and its implied powers, and from that came the federal assumption of national and state debts and certain tariffs, as well as a national bank. From my point of view, there could have been no United States without the central government assuming states’ war debts, the first functional step in coalescing the nation together.
Hamilton was born out of wedlock and was eventually abandoned by the male parent, from whom comes the name Hamilton. His mother inherited some property on Nevis which included a library, and from that, Hamilton educated himself, including the classics. He was, a bastard, denied access to the British school, which was run by the church. When he was thirteen, his mother died, and Hamilton came to the colonies. He carried that stigma with him for the remainder of his life. (Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow.)
During the course of his second term, Washington became excoriated by opponents— former allies and friends—led by Jefferson and Madison. They formed a coalition fully opposed to Hamilton and to the administration. This led to the unhappiest fact of American political inheritance: the creation of bicameral competition. The rift was vitriolic, renting the fabric of our new democracy and directly led to the death of Alexander Hamilton. The new party, the Democratic-Republicans were not evil, but opposed the Federalist ideas of building a nation. I believe that their loyalty could certainly be questioned.
I personally note here that the two principals, Jefferson and Madison, were brilliant men, but they were NOT combatants in the war. Both were in Congress, except Jefferson who spent much time at Monticello, or on the run. Their primary concerns were with the Hamiltonian ideas of the Treasury and strong national government, and they also wanted a system of checks and balances to protect the minority from any possible tyranny from the majority: individual rights.
Washington, on the other hand, fought the entirety of the war and took no pay from the treasury, but paid out of his own accounts. He was victimized by being given charge of rag tag armies without rifles or shoes or training, and who were not being paid by congress, as promised. Neither would the congress, nor the states from whence came these men, increase the duration of enlistments, such that at year’s end, the entire army just melted away. Congress, neither then nor now, met its obligations, nor put the country first. I am convinced that George Washington is the greatest American to live, and his single most significant acts were those of denying us a monarchy (in which he would have been king by popular acclamation) and of retiring from the presidency and going back into private life. He established the precedent. After Yorktown, he could have had anything. His modesty and principles remain elevated far above the rest of us.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
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.
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.
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.
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.
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