Rolls Become Less of a Novelty, Amurica!, and Cleaning

March 11, 2012

Dawn watch, in the lab again, reduced to sitting on the sole on top of my foul weather gear for cushion. My fellow labbie is lying down on the floor for a little nap, but she’s sliding right down to the leeward side. I fear for the little sink vials and the chemicals that could accompany the binders and notebooks that I’ve given up on putting back in their place. The disco ball hanging in the corner for winkling oxygen is spinning and throwing dots of light about. Every so often a wave splashes against the windows of the lab, complementing the groaning of the mini fridge next to me that smells of fish and 100 counts. These waves are getting ridiculous…it’s rather difficult to sleep when you’re being thrown against the side of your bunk and you can hear waves crashing on the wall next to your head. We have officially reached gale force. The watch before us hit 47 knots, and at one point the port rail was in the water. We’ve been reduced to one sail, the main, double reefed, out of the nine we have, and no one is allowed forward of the quarterdeck. You know how weather is usually a topic of awkward conversation? Here it plays a different role: competition to see which watch observes the top wind speed (a title that’s broken roughly every 2 watches lately), complaints about the bruises and nausea resulting from the rolls, theatrics as we dance about down below. It directly influences us at every moment. Folks in the for’c’stle are literally lifted from their beds with some of the rolls.

That being said, deck today was exhilarating. I came off afternoon watch with little salt deposits in my ears, unable to hear with my right ear where the wind was blowing. We actually got to do a bit of sail handling, striking the forestays’l and tightening some other lines, all the while attached to a jackline, just in case a wave were to wash over us there would be something to keep us attached to the boat. Of note, we exited international waters and entered the United States EEZ (exclusive economic zone) this afternoon. This doesn’t mean too much, except that you need a permit to fish or do research. To prepare for this momentous (not really) occasion, we sang the national anthem and some other patriotic songs on deck, and shouted “Amurica!” in an obnoxious display of nationalism.

I thought it might be interesting (interesting??) to explain the way we clean things around here, since we have dawn clean up tomorrow. I must say, I have a new respect for sponges and continually marvel at their design. We have this sponge system in which the status of sponge is denoted by the number of corners it has. A one cornered sponge (misleading because it actually has 3 corners) is used for bulkheads and overheads. A two-cornered sponge is hardly recognizable as sponge any longer, decrepit and reduced in fluffiness as it is. These are for bowls and soles. I find it hard to believe they really clean anything, and am continually disgusted by the amount of hair that sticks to my fingers, though it’s noticeably less since the equator.