sagacious.us

(20 October 08) I know my brain has its limits but this limit was a little unexpected.

(12 October 08) A few days ago I posted a couple poems inspired by both the geographic and the timewise expanse of the sea - by the responses I received it is clear that I did a poor job of showing what it is that I love about the sea. I hope this clears all that up a little.

(11 October 08) Gray skies last for days.

No birds, no whales, lifelessness.

Every day the same

(05 October 08) So pirates still exist. I was on a ship a while ago transiting the Red Sea and along the coast of Somalia (the coast of Somalia often holds the title for the worst pirate waters in the world). We carried four Nepalese Ghirka Guards armed with shot guns and an M-14, they were a pretty jovial bunch of guys and hung out at our BBQ's, drank beer...

(27 September 08) At the moment I'm laying in bed. It is about 10:30 in the morning so I'll get up in about another half an hour to take a shower, eat lunch and go to watch. We are sneaking up on a typhoon right now and the swell has picked up. It isn't super rough, we are probably only rolling 10 degrees

(27 September 08) These days I spend a whole lot of time sitting at my desk. I'm working on trig that I never learned at CMA since the further I go in calculus the more I'm realizing that I'm going to be seriously behind if I don't conquer trig. My laptop is here next to me playing, well at the moment it is playing "Free to Be You and Me", but normally it is playing music. I'm drinking a glass of wine,

(20 September 08) Moonlit and dramatic heavy clouds share the sky with twinkling stars this morning. You mustn't breathe too deeply in this delicious tropical air or you will become intoxicated.

(16 September 08) A friend emailed me on a ship with a bunch of questions about the life at sea. I responded to her emial and later looked over my responses to her questions, the questions are good and the responses are complete so I though I should share them with all

(11 September 08) We are finally underway. We sat at the dock for two days and it felt like a long time. There were two reasons: one is that there is an energy to a ship when she is underway that doesn't exist at the dock (I like that energy) and the other is that since passage planning is my job until we actually start using the passage plan I can sit around and tweak it, re-word it, etc. Now that we are underway and the captain and all the officers have signed it, the thing can't be altered with out the captain's signature/approval.

(15 September 07) We are now steaming south in the Sea of Japan. Yesterday at noon we took one engine off line and reduced the load on the other so we are moving at the glacial pace of 9kts (10mph) to allow typhoon Nari to get ahead of us before we make our turn around the southern end of the Korean peninsula. For two weeks we rolled along across the gray north Pacific...

(08 August 07) As autumn nears the vast North Pacific turns gray, sunny days and star filled nights are rare. After seeing nothing but this ocean for ten days it is easy to forget that anything else exists, so when a bird appears 1000 miles from the nearest land it is a fast reminder of the outside world.
Albatross are amazing masters of flight. They fly effortlessly for weeks at a time and stay at sea for months.

(21 July 07) We are discharging mountains of sugar, over 34,000 tons, I said mountains. Discharging sugar is about the messiest job I have ever seen. Using purpose made cranes the sugar is scooped up in buckets on a belt transferred to a belt and whisked off over the ship to the silos ashore but not before sprinkling a light dust of sugar all over the ship.

(15 April 03) We had already discharged half of our cargo in Haifa Israel before heading south to Ashdod. After watching the discharge in Haifa I believed that all discharges were clean, smooth operations. The excavators used in Haifa drew the grain from the hold and carried it cleanly and efficiently to the elevators ashore.

(18 December 02) I have been thinking about traveling across the country when I get off this ship. I want to go back to Reserve to go see a glimpse of life in that small town in the bayou. There are surely dozens of towns just like it all over the gulf but their identities remain a secret.

(21 November 02) I was standing on deck watching the grain being loaded and was struck by what the dust was doing. Little pellets of dust were blowing off the conveyor belt. they would fall to deck but on the way they would begin to fall apart leaving a trail of dust that would abruptly end in mid air when the clod was expended. Each of these would explode at a different point filling the air with little streamers like tiny comets...