The Agrinautica

   This past Sunday -- I hurled myself down the companionway ladder, and bracing myself against the lurching of the ship I leaned over the chart table looking for the radio receiver. I found it, waited until the bucking hull wasn't trying to throw me in the opposite direction and picked it up. Took a breath, and pressed transmit:
   "May day, may day, this is the sailing vessel Dawn Treader..."


   To properly tell this story I'll have to begin the week before, however. My friend, coworker and fellow tallship sailor Russell had invited me out to a bar in Dana Point, and I had taken my friend Anna along. There we met Russell's friend Monique, a red-headed woman of about fifty who I think was already drunk as a skunk when we met her. She immediately annoyed me with "oh how long have you been volunteering on the Pilgrim? Oh you'd have remembered me if you'd been there when I was there, I'd have been the one telling you what to do," and generally engaging in one-up-tionship about sailing and then when she noticed I have a slight Irish accent trying to similar play some sort of "more Irish than thou" thing because she'd apparently once been in Waterford, where, from her account, it sounds like she made a nuisance of herself at a tallship festival. As the night went on she eventually became belligerent and Russell had to escort her away.
   The next day Russell reported that she felt terrible about the night before and wanted to invite us all to go sailing on her 35' boat. I was kind of skeptical about spending any more time with her, but was optimisitc than when sober she'd be a lot better. Just to cover my bases I asked if I could invite one more person and extended the invite to my friend very-experienced-sailor Ryon whose substantial experience and strong personality I felt would provide a buffer against her.

   So on the day of sailing we had myself, Russell, Monique, Ryon, Anna, Anna's three year old son Vincent, and another friend of Monique's came, this guy Dave who was a pretty alright fella.
   At the time of departure I believe there were already two red flags in the harbour. One red flag denotes a "small craft advisory," and two means the wind is blowing at gale force. Apparently it was expected to increase in force as well. Monique was skeptical about these conditions but we had a very experienced crew and we were all excited to go out, so out we did.
   We had a grand time out there, we were barely even heeling over, and though there were whitecaps all about the swells weren't that big. Monique didn't want to set the jib (the sail between the mast and the jibboom in front), so we were sailing with the main only -- which I thought was a bit amateurish -- these boats are designed to be properly balanced with both sails set. With only the aft sail set there's significantly more force pushing laterally against the back of the boat and its going to constantly want to turn windward. Finally I convinced Monique to set the jib and she admits in her own account of the adventure that the boat then handled much better.

   After bounding about for maybe two hours out there, Monique declared she wanted to return to the harbor for fear her old sails would blow out. We put on the motor and headed upwind to the harbor entrance with the main up and centered to balance us, acting as a sort of sky keel if you will. Ryon was at the wheel, belting out some ribald shanty. At this point we noticed what appeared to be a paddleboarder standing on his board about a half mile downwind of the harbor entrance. This immediately seemed out of place among the flying spray of the whitecaps, and we soon ascertained he was waving his hands for help, so we made for him.
   At this point Anna was busy puking over the stern and would be uninvolved in subsequent events. Her son managed to sleep through it all.

   I had gone to the front of the vessel to better see and communicate with the paddleboarder we approached. As we got close we could see he looked to be a young guy, maybe 18, on not a paddleboard but a tiny ten foot sailboat with its sail down and in the water. Then we heard him yelling something at us that just curdled the blood -- "my mom is in the water somewhere over there! my mom is in the water!!" you could hear absolute terror in his voice.
   One interested aspect of this is that I was so focused on what I was doing I was barely aware of things that happened that I wasn't involved in. I believe Ryon relinquished the helm to Monique and with Dave doused the mainsail so we could manouver under motor better.

   As we came abreast of him, presumably to come upwind and down to him, the lad leapt from his boat. That was my impression anyway but everyone else agrees he "Forrest Gumped it" and walked right off the boat. On any account, as I saw him go in with no lifejacket, I was sure he'd just made his last bad decision. I remember glancing back at the cockpit and seeing everyone looking panicked, but no one had gotten the throwable lifering in hand yet so I yelled at someone to do that and went to the rail nearest the incoming swimmer. Astoundingly, he quickly swam the 20-30' between our vessels, against the whitecaps to our moving vessel! Thats the power of sheer terror I guess. He tried to grab our side and I swear it was like a scene from a movie, it was probably his only chance and he couldn't quite make it. I hit the deck and with one arm around a stanchion with one hand reached out and.. just got his fingers! But that was enough to get my other hand on his arm and from there we got him up. He of course immediately started frantically babbling at us that his mother was in the water and we needed to get her. We immediately started steaming that way and I went below to call the it in on the radio.

   "...may day may day this is Dawn Treader just outside of Dana Point Marina there is a woman in the water out here" I announced as clearly as I could into the receiver... and realized I wasn't hearing anything on the radio and didn't appear to be transmitting. I desperately looked for any buttons or knobs I'd need to push but didn't see any. I'd find out later when things calmed down that I'd needed to take a panel off the radio to see all the knobs, but in the heat of the moment I just had a receiver that wasn't transmitting and no buttons in sight. So I pulled out my cellphone and called 911. They were right on it, as soon as I informed them I was a vessel outside Dana Point marina they transferred me to harbor patrol, who seemed to have a slightly harder time wrapping their mind around the fact I wasn't in the marina.

   We set off looking for the next MOB (Man OverBoard). I think all of us were really worried there was a good chance we'd never find her out there. I'm told Ryon had managed to shimmy halfway up the mast for a better vantage point. Finally the kid himself spotted her. As we'd find out later, their vessel had capsized, they had had only one lifevest with them (shakes head), and his mom had started to drift away from the boat so he'd swam to her and given her the lifevest ... which I'm sure saved her life, notwithstanding he'd endangered it himself in the first place. but swimming back to his boat and standing on it was probably for the best because we'd have never seen them both in the water.

   We approached and threw the throwable (unless we were dragging it all along, lord if I know). I also remember I kept bringing lifejackets on deck, as I was trained to "throw everything that floats at them" and someone else kept throwing them back below I guess to make room. I also told someone who looked idle to get lots of towels ready.

   We ended up circling her what felt like twenty times. I was kind of annoyed, because there's a manouver called a Williamson Turn that Monique should have known with all her experience which would have gotten her to the location of the MOB, instead of a constant turn hard-over which would never ever arrive at the center of the circle. The MOB was very lucid and responsive. The red Vessel Assist boats had emerged from the harbor moments after being called, but had then hesitated in the harbor entrance with sirens blaring for what felt like an eternity. God forbid the one vessel going in tight circles might be the on who called them out. Finally they put two and two together and came out. Finally just as two red vessel assist boats and the sheriff boat pulled up around us Dave made a throw with the throwable that the MOB got a hand on. As she was being pulled, realizing I had a free moment, and thinking the woman clinging to the throwable with the red rescue boats in the shot right behind her would be an excellent photo I tried to get my phone out and on camera mode but I was too slow. This may seem kind of silly but in retrospect I think I was just still in "what can I do next > what can I do next > what can I do next >" mode and when I found she was being pulled in and people were standing by with towels my mind moved right on down the checklist to "take a picture!"

   The mother showed classic signs of hypothermia, ie didn't feel cold, wasn't shivering. I'm told her toes were blue. We gave her some towels and a change of clothes and told her to go below and get out of her wet clothes. Talking about it afterwords we were all a bit irked that she apparently declined to do this. Her son had been given similar directions and we were quite alarmed to find that what he had in fact done was put the clothes we provided him on OVER his wet clothes!! So our "note to self for future rescues" was to be really stern about the importance of getting out of your cold wet clothes. [though my dear friend the infinitely-experienced-sailor Asli has since reported to me that its not actually important to get them out of the wet clothes as logn as you put sometihng warm over them, the wet clothes will act as a heat-retaining wetsuit at that point I guess, which makes sense.]

   We then served them hot tea, which I vaguely recall I think you're not actually supposed to do, but being as it was only a vague recollection and I wasn't in charge here I didn't suggest otherwise. It didn't kill them on any account. I just googled this and the internet doesn't seem to think its a bad idea but I could swear someone told me it does something like makes your blood rush to your stomach area and therefore exacerbates the condition of your extremities or something.

   The only photo I got out of it was of vessel assist coming in some half hour later with their boat in tow.

   So yeah, that was a fairly exciting mother's day. (:

LAST MAY: The power is out. The small packed dining-hall-turned-conference-room is dimly illuminated by a few flashlights and battery powered lights that someone rustled up. The curtains flutter at the draft the windows are failing to keep out, and frequently flash with lightning. It's pouring outside. Sitting at the dais table at the front of the room I contemplate that the scene looks exactly like the kind of storm-outside-a-hotel-or-mansion that occurs in cliche horror movies of the 50s and 60s.
   Some 40 berobed Ethiopian farmers are crowded around the tables in the room, and one of them is asking a question. After the man finishes asking it in Amharic, the Ethiopian language, my interpreter Girmay turns to me with the translation:
   "He wants to know what we should do about the honey badger"
   Outside there's a crash of thunder and a flashing at the windows.

   It had been a long road to Korem...



   I had to get from the town of Bahir Dar to Korem, which, though both in the north of Ethiopia, are about 300 miles apart. I would have liked to have gone by car and seen more of the countryside (and the famous rock-hewn church at Lalibela would have been on the way) but that turned out not to be plausible. Earlier, when I was in Nigeria, my friend Doug had just come from Ethiopia and had tales of driving out to remote salt mines and hiking to active volcanos, which all sounded terribly exciting, but apparently I'm not as good at fitting volcanoes and salt mines into my schedule as Doug is. Alas I apologize dear reader for leading such a dull life.
   Instead I had to fly via Addis Ababa, which you'll note is not at all between the two points.

   Bahir Dar is one of the primary tourist destinations in Ethiopia, because it is the origin of the Blue Nile (see picture above), and generally a nice place. Despite this, the airport terminal is a kind of glorified shack. My driver was about an hour late to take me the fifteen minutes to the airport, but that turned out to be okay because my flight was an hour and a half late. There followed about an hour and a half of peacefully jetting through the sky in an aluminum tube, followed by an hour or two of the hectic traffic and bustle of Addis Ababa, then another hour and a half shooting through the sky, and I was in Mek'elle!

   Addis Ababa ("New Flower") is a crowded bustling city in the mountains, frequently chilly with a slight drizzle. Bahir Dar ("By the Lake" or some such) by comparison had broad tree-lined boulevards surrounded by undulating brown hills bespeckled with trees. My first impression of Mek'elle was that their airport looked nicer and more modern than the one in Orange County California! I guess it had just been built. Beyond that though, the Tigray highlands are a barren desolate place that look a lot more like the Ethiopia you picture when people inform you "there's starving people in Ethiopia" than the other places I'd been. The city itself is over a small rise from the airport, so you exit the airport into nothingness, but then you drive over the hill and voila there it is:



   Mek'elle looks like its still in the stone age. The streets are cobblestone, most walls are made with roughly hewn stone blocks jigsawed together. At one point we had to wait for a large number of camels to finish crossing the road.
   I checked into the relatively nice Axum Hotel in Mek'elle, we would be proceeding by car down to Korem the next day (about four hours winding down between the mountains it turns out). All the hotels I'd stayed at in Ethiopia thus far actually had been really nice. Even in the smaller town of Finote Selam I had had a room with the fanciest most complicated shower/bath/jacuzzi/time-machine I've ever seen. Nigeria, on the other hand, I can't terribly recommend their hotels (just be happy for a high wall and several kalishnikov (AKA "AKs," AKA "the guns the baddies use in movies") toting guards who seem to be at least half paying attention).

   As Goru, the local representative of the NGO, dropped me off, he informed me we might not be able to get to Korem the next day because the car wasn't available or was having trouble or something (cars are very expensive in Ethiopia and thus they're always a bit in short supply, the organization never had spare cars sitting around, we usually had to hire a car and its driver for the day). I was a bit alarmed by this. I didn't come all this way to sit around gathering dust in a stone age town.
   As it turns out though we did manage to rustle up a driver. but then Goru had to find an interpreter (waiting until things should have been ready to start working on it seems to have been a pattern), so six more hours passed before they rustled up Girmay, an apiculture (beekeeping) graduate student at Mek'elle University.

   The road south proceeded for about an hour through relatively flat barren wastelands, with the occasional neolithic looking village somehow eking out an existence. And in the middle of this, suddenly there were the giant masts of modern wind turbines on the outskirts of Mek'elle (Ethiopia can be surprisingly steam punk. Did you know the country you've always known as a paradigm of poverty is a major exporter of electricity??). The road then began to meander among steep green mountains. Blueish woodsmoke curled above little clusters of huts. As we slowed down to pass through villages, children would chase the car happily exclaiming "ferengi ferengi!" or "china! china!"
   Ferengi, like the aliens from Star Trek, yes. Apparently the word was taken from the Ethiopian (Amharic) word for foreigner. Also the Star Trek Ferengi leader is the "Grand Negus," "Negus" being Amharic for "king."
   "China," because apparently all of us non-African people look the same to them! And they're more accustomed to Chinese engineers coming through I guess.



   Finally we arrived in Korem, which I found to be a positively delightful little town nestled in the mountains. The hotel here felt more like a large bunker than anything else -- it was a shell of concrete walls, with the rooms inside opening out to a dim cavernous "atrium" in the middle that, with a concrete roof overhead and no windows, looked more like a cellblock than a hotel. It was also, rather than square or rectangular like the overwhelming majority of buildings in the world, was this sort of star shape. Perhaps it had in fact once been a bunker or perhaps police outpost of the former sinister "Derg" regime. But the staff were friendly, it was only $5 a night, and they made relatively decent food.



   When it came time to leave again a week later, we had more people than car space. So the driver drove half of us to a little town halfway between, then went back for the others, and in this way we leapfrogged back to Mek'elle!




   As to what to do about the honey badger, I didn't have an answer. Another of the farmer's did though. He answered the question and then Girmay translated for me: "He says 'get a dog'"

   You can usually see it coming, a solid wall of grey stretching from the ground all the way up to the clouds. Its just a few miles across, so you can see blue sky on either side of it. Sometimes it passes right by you. I've watched two of them pass on either side of me, flashing with lightning, without feeling a drop.



   When I'm in its path though, I can watch the tomato field disappear into the grey as it approaches, hear the approaching sound of rain hitting the plants. When it's about to hit me I put the lid on the last hive I was working on, cover everything that shouldn't get wet, and jump in the cab of my truck as the wall of water hits. I sit there and enjoy the fresh coolness the rain brings to the air, the wonderful smell of fresh rain on dirt, and then, in about ten minutes, its over as quickly as it started. In its wake it leaves a stifling high level of humidity. In an hour the water has all evaporated and you'd never know the rain squall passed through.

   For awhile these things seemed to come through like clockwork at around 9am every morning.

   "Yehh, we haven't gotten any rain this summer, it's been dry as" says Trevor, standing barefoot in the dry red dirt next to the chili fields. Nothing's flowering, the bees aren't packing away any honey. The lagoons and reservoirs are drying up. We'd only gotten 7mm of rain compared to an average of 173 (6.8 inches) for that point in January.
   These little rain squalls don't even show up on the weather report. I guess they really don't count for anything. Back home in California it either rains or it doesn't.

   Finally one morning I looked at the weather report and it had "heavy rain" for every day of the next week. "Well, that should get things going" I thought. Looking at the satellite image, a huge ominous spiral of cloud hundreds of miles across was just above us. Seemed a bit alarming, but no one seemed concerned.
   I woke up at my usual time on Friday, but it was clearly pouring and the forecast was for it to continue all day, so I just sat back and drank my coffee. Trevor called and asked what I was up to "just watching the rain," I said,
   "Ah, yehh, no worries. Hey since you won't be working in this why don't you bring your ute down here some time today and we'll have the mechanic service it."
   So I took a leisurely morning finishing my coffee and about two hours later dropped off my truck on the farm and was driven back home.
   And it kept raining, and raining. 4 inches (102mm) had fallen out of the sky by the end of the day.

   The next day was Saturday, January 26th, "Australia Day." Once again I got up at the usual time and watched the rain pouring and pouring outside. It being Australia Day, I thought I ought to see what festivities were afoot, so I called the "courtesy shuttle" of the local restaurant-tavern at the corner of town and asked them to come pick me up.
   "This is a bit full on isn't it?" I commented to the driver about the rain.
   "Yeah, we usually get heavy rains in January but we expected them earlier. The road out of town will probably be closed in half an hour though, and I live in Bundaberg, so I'm about to evacuate myself."
   There were a lot of families at the tavern, but nothing particularly exciting. I had a burger the Australian way (with an egg on it) to celebrate Australia Day, and reconfirmed that an egg absolutely does not belong on a burger. Took the courtesy shuttle back and found my street to be under a minimum of a foot of water. The new driver commented that they probably wouldn't be able to continue the courtesy shuttle service much longer. I rolled up my pantlegs and jumped out of shuttle into water halfway to my knees.
   And it continued to rain and rain. During a calmer moment I saw the neighbor kids out swimming in the street. Literally swimming. 4.6 inches (118mm) fell on Saturday.

   Sunday morning I awoke with a start to the sound of a high pitched warning alarm. I dashed out of bed to find my smoke alarm going off... for no particular reason. Going to turn on a light though I found the power was out. I picked up my phone but it was dead. It was raining lightly at the time but I looked out my window and was shocked and concerned to see that my street appeared to actually have a current now, flowing like a river.
   I turned on my laptop but it informed me the battery was at 0% (I'd left it on but when unplugged its supposed to turn itself off after 20 minutes, I don't know why it didn't). I hastily checked the weather report and saw a predicted 10 inches (252mm) of rain, before the laptop shut itself off. Leaving me sitting there in disbelief. The average January rainfall is 173mm and we're supposed to get 252 IN ONE DAY???

   Throughout most of the day I watched the rain coming pretty much horizontally past the kitchen window, and every ten minutes or so mopped up all the water that had come in under the door (and I had all my roommates towels there to try to stop it!). I bottled the 30 liters of beer I had been procrastinating bottling, started another batch brewing, read some dry materials I'd been meaning to read about bee diseases, and read some of a book ("Emperor" by Conn Iggulden). Ventured out every now and then, only daring to use the downwind door to the house. Though the street was a canal, it didn't appear to be threatening to flood the house. In exposed areas it was hard to even look in the direction the rain was coming from. The power came back in the late afternoon, reinstating my connection with the world (though my phone problem was inexplicable and it wouldn't charge).
   Looking at the news I learn that tornadoes have crashed through three of the neighboring communities.

   Monday morning I awoke to find it nice and sunny outside. Rain was still throughout the forecast so I waited a few hours, but no rain appeared. Called my boss via skype
   "Nah, the roads are still out, probably not today mate. I'll call y-- oh wait I can't -- okay call tomorrow morning and we'll get you back to your ute."
   Walking down to the beach I found a ridiculous amount of foam had piled up in huge drifts. The weirdest part was if you waded into it, it was quite warm!



   Weather stayed nice (well, uncomfortably hot and sunny) all day, and I went to bed that night looking forward to finally getting back to work the next day.
   At 1am my phone announced it was back to life by playing the morning wakeup alarm. Thinks its clever does it.
   The next morning (Tuesday) I got up and got ready for work. This time there wasn't even any rain in the forecast. Called Trevor at 0700,
   "Oh hey, Kris, how are you today?"
   "Oh I'm pretty good, how are you?"
   "I'm up to my waist here in water down at my house! Packing the last of my things and we're evacuating!"
   "What??"
   "Yehh mate, the whole area here is flooded. Lived 'ere my whole life and oI've never seen anything like it!"
   He said to call him in a few days when the waters have receded. I must say I was a bit shocked that even having his home and farm completely flooded didn't knock down his cheerful demeanor. As I digested this news it also registered with me that (A) a minimum of the three bee trailers by his house, possibly nearly all of them, may have been wiped out by the flood, (B) my work truck, unless he had someone drive it to safety, may be destroyed.

   Looking at the news, I found the nearby town of Bundaberg (through which one must travel to get anywhere else in civilization from Moore Park here) had been flooded, with 17 helicopters working around the clock to pull 7000 people off rooftops.
   Walking on the beach (it was another sunny day) I found three different people in the act of relocating clutches of sea turtle eggs that had become exposed, digging a new hole in higher ground and carefully redepositing them.



   Attempting to walk to the shops, I found my normal path through the lagoon to be too deep for travel.



   Wednesday morning, while I'm out gathering coconuts on the beach I note that there's a bunch of refugees from Bundaberg sitting in folding chairs in the park by the beach.
   "We're very lucky! Most of the evacuees are crammed in a school in [unpronouncable place I've never heard of]" a man says to me, as he pours water on the large black and white cat panting in the grass at his feet. The cat does not object. "And the people evacuated by helicopter all had to leave their pets behind! Old Jervis here doesn't like the interruption to his life but he's very lucky!"
   I walk to the shops and this time there's even ankle deep water across the road over the lagoon. You see, Moore Park Beach has a lagoon along the middle of it with only a few crossings, which never seemed like a problem before....
   While at that corner of town I confirm with my own eyes that the road out of town is lost under a vast lake of brown water. We're officially an island! Where said main road continues from the corner shops into the interior of Moore Park it is also flooded at the lagoon. The grocery store was a bit surreal itself, with rows and rows of empty shelves, and busier than usual with the influx of evacuees from Bundaberg. I cleared out the last of their canned food.
   "They say the bridge across the Burnett River is washed out in Bundaberg" Sean, who runs the pizza place next to the grocery store, informs me. "I'll probably have to close up shop after today, and the grocery store's only going to be getting resupplied by airdrops if the bridge is out."



   On my way back home an army blackhawk (with pontoons) was landing in the field in the center of town as an emergency rescue helicopter took off.
   "Maybe its worse than they thought" a bystander comments to me.

   At the time of this writing (Wednesday evening) the Burnett river is said to have topped out at 31 feet (9.53 meters), breaking all records. Waters still seem to be rising here though as the water slowly spills across the fields. At the present moment it is raining.

   I think I'm going to appreciate the quick passing squalls a lot more now!



See also: this entry where I posted a few pictures from the news showing the extent of the devastation in Bundaberg.

EPILOGUE: Friday

Last night / this morning:

   "Kris!" I'm jolted awake from a deep sleep by an urgent voice. In the red glow outside the curtain of my bunk a figure whispers "half an hour till your watch!"
   "A'ight, cool" I respond before even really fully awake. I lie there for just a few moments as the gears in my head get back up to speed. I'd been in the middle of a dream about Australian wildlife (wherein the wind kept lifting me off the ground in a manner very similar to the gravitational effects of waves on a boat). "Your watch" means something slightly different this time though. It's not just the watch I'll be standing on, I've been appointed the third Watch Officer, so this watch IS "my" watch.
   Scramble for my clothes (all my possessions that are to be easily accessible must fit on my bunk, which is smaller than a twin bed and has maybe three feet of headroom between itself and the bunk above), wiggle out over the lee-cloth (a canvas cloth tied across the entrance to my bunk so I don't get flung out by waves). I find myself in the main hold, a square room with bunks on three walls, table in the middle, ladder (or steep stair if you will, but on a boat everything's a "ladder") up to the deck in the middle, watertight door on one wall. The room is illuminated entirely by red light, since that doesn't effect your night vision. I put on my boots, then strap on my harness (you never know when you'll need to clip in. Rangi claims his harness saved his life when he was able to clip in when a wave roared completely over the boat during "the great potatoe rebellion of twenty one ought"), and put on my peacoat.

   "Chi-chunk! .. chi-chunk!" the watertight door makes a heavy noise as a pull the lever to open it and move it again to close it behind me. Here I'm in a hallway leading to the aft cabin, captain's cabin, the two heads (bathrooms), a ladder up to deck, or the watertight door I just came from. Up the ladder and I find myself on deck. It's around 23:45 (or as I like to say, "fifteen jingles until eight bells." Bell time being a traditional thing aboardships, and jingles being my own invention for a subunit of bells, corresponding exactly to the number of minutes), and above me the sky is filled with stars as far as I can see. The sea stretches off into the darkness in all directions, relatively small waves sparkling in the starlight. There's only a light breeze. It is truly a beautiful night.
   The three members of B Watch are standing at the helm and con, and the two other members of C Watch are also already up there. Pony, the B Watch watch officer, is a rather large fellow with a boyish good natured disposition. I ask him about the current conditions and he summarizes the calmness of the weather and notes our companion vessel, the Lady Washington visible as only a light way back behind us and to port.

   I descend down another companionway (hatch & ladder) into the aft cabin. There I find normal white light and charts on the chart table. In the rough log I note down the time, latitude and longitude from the GPS (yeah no celestial navigation or taking bearings on things for us. We also are running on diesel engines at the time, since we're headed right into the wind), barometer pressure, wind direction and force (force 2), cloud cover, and that the most recent boat check has been done. Then I plot that position on the chart and calculate our "course made good" (the compass angle we're actually traveling), and how it compares to where we should be, and calculate our "speed made good." I enter the most relevant data into the official log, including that "C Watch (Fricke) takes the deck."
   After this I pop back on deck and inform Pony we're ready to take the deck.
   "Course three three zero" state's Pony's helmsman (Rangi) as he hands off the ship's wheel to Noah on my watch, "course three three zero, aye" repeats Noah.
   "B Watch Stand Down!" declares Pony enthusiastically. The time is 00:02.
   "If you could, change from three three zero to three five zero, please" I instruct Noah on the helm. Our compass of course doesn't steer on true north and apparently isn't even aligned correctly on the boat anymore after a wave seriously damaged the binnacle during the aforementioned "great potatoe rebellion." However, I can see from our chart that we need to be twenty degrees starboard of the course we've been steering, so the numbers our compass currently displays may be essentially arbitrary but by adding twenty degrees to the course being steered on them should get us in the right direction. And thus we blunder on through the darkness, up the coast of the Olympic Peninsula, past the "Flattery Rocks."

   It really dawns on my that I am the Person In Charge when Noah asks my permission to leave the deck to go get a cup o noodles from the galley (Bean, the third member of our watch, has the helm). I certainly never expected to be made a watch officer this soon, yet here I am, entrusted with the responsibility of navigating a 64 ton, 103 foot vessel with ten other people aboard through the night. It's a beautiful beautiful night, life doesn't get much better than this.


   A dim glow over the horizon indicates where the light on Flattery Rocks is. It slowly passes by safely over the horizon. During my earlier 1200-1600 watch we were approaching "Destruction Island," just another reminder of how dangerous navigating these waters can be.


This picture is from later, obviously. Around 1030 the next (ie this) morning. The Lady Washington as seen from our deck, Olympic Peninsula behind her.

   I wake up in my sleeping bag on my bunk. I can see my breath, and beyond that I can see the early morning light coming in through the hatch above me. Some people do everything they can to avoid morning light, but I actually selected this bunk specifically for its proximity to the hatch. I hate waking up in the dark -- when it's morning I want to know!

   It's still an hour to reveille, but I have one thing on my mind. It pertains to having drank three pitchers of india pale ale in town with the captain the night before. Though it's always disappointing to have to climb out of a nice warm sleeping bag before you have to so you can relieve yourself, it's not all bad news -- there's a wonderful thing that happens to be nearby called SHORE HEADS! (ie bathrooms that aren't on a ship!!)

   I climb up the ladder out the hatch and find myself slipping on the deck -- it's covered in frost! But it is a beautiful crisp morning with the sun just barely rising over the horizon (and frost on all the ground). The shoreheads are just a short walk away in the marina office, but I decide while I'm up to walk a little further.
   To get to the town of Kalama one must walk all the way around the marina, up a pedestrian overpass over the train tracks, and then under the freeway. Once there one will find two bars and three antique stores, and a 24 hour laundromat/espresso bar with free wifi. But most noteworthy, on the freeway underpass there is a mural of the Colombia river with from one side to another: indians in canoes; trappers in longboats; the original of the boat I am on (the Lady Washington); and two or three progressivly more modern ships.


   We have a crew of 12-14 (every few days we lose or gain someone), nearly all of whom are either 26 or 27. The youngest is 25, the captain himself is 27 I believe, the first mate is 30, and then there's maybe two people who are older. One of the other crewmembers is i_id and posted a faq about life aboard.

   When not handling sails, standing bow watch or doing other chores we're usually kept busy the entire time from 8-5 with ship maintenance or other projects. They keep us busy and it's wet and it's cold, but it's altogether damn fun. (:
   Our cook is great, the food has all been delicious, and almost every day she bakes fresh bread.

   After Kalama we pulled into a quaint little fishing town called Cathlamet, where we didn't even get cell phone reception. When I finally got a chance to walk downtown that evening and find cell phone reception I found I had a text from a friend back home, whom we'll call friend X -- friend X wanted me to confront friend Y about something friend Z had said friend Y had said. Ugh. I informed them I probably wouldn't have reception for several more days and turned my phone off.


   Was going to wake up early the next morning to see the sunrise but when I awoke, cacoooned in my sleeping bag, and rustled around to stick my face out, I found it far far too cold to consider venturing out and withdrew back inside the protective cacoon.
   Clearly I should have planned ahead and tried the three pitchers of beer trick the night before :D

[Stand by while I try to jostle my photo processing software into submission so I can add a picture]
Nevermind apparently that's just not in the cards. Here's one that would be better if it was cropped and possibly had the curves adjusted to brighten it (and of course borders added...

My current home
The Lady Washington
At Kalama, Washington