sagacious.us
Swim Call!
So the news from the ocean here is that we left Guam yesterday and are headed for Ningbo, China. A few hours after leaving Guam we hove-to to test a lifeboat then when that was done we had a swim call! I never imagined that I'd be on a merchant ship that would just stop in the ocean and have the crew go swimming in the ocean! It was awesome. I jumped from the main deck in to the water and while I haven't measure it I think it is about 40 feet. I stood there at the rail trying to muster the courage to do a swan dive but finally chickened out and went feet first. The fall was long enough that I had time to think "You wuss, you should have done the swan dive" then "Crap, am I still falling?" then "I'm starting to think that a swan dive was actually a bad idea" then "My arms should probably be" SPLASH. All those thoughts really did go through my head as I was in the air. It was pretty cool to see the ship from that perspective, though I wish I had goggles so that I could have swam back aft and taken a look at the propeller - it is huge: 7.5 meters in diameter and has six radical looking streamlined swept back blades (I've seen pictures so I'd love to see it for myself).
