Other activities including a short teaching stint at the local Maritime college and large doses of real life have kept me away from the old blog but I’m back on the high seas again battling the elements. The weather is on the agenda very much this time of year, low pressures rolling across the Atlantic inexorably creating havoc on land and sea. Read on for the gory details.
Just had a week of Southwesterly gales battering the ship, culminating in a violent rolling last evening that turned my tidy cabin into a bomb site. The loose paper started first to slide onto the deck, a bad sign. Then the creaking and groaning. Up to the bridge to have a look at the weather, 2 more hours before the next alteration to a more comfortable course, bang there goes something flying off the chart table, ding-a-ling, the bell starts ringing itself, …back and forth to the rhythmic sound of the Pilot Books rattling back and forth in their secured shelf, gadunk, gadunk and the coffee percolator delivering clunks of hot beverage to the bin beside it.
Meanwhile down below in my cabin the fridge has had enough of holding any contents and the door swings open 2 bottles of a green colour fly across the cabin and disintegrate upon meeting steel bulkhead, shards of glass mixed with a sticky sugary liquid mixing in with the paper already on the deck, coefficient of static friction substantially reduced and not helped by worn out Crocs on my feet I go sliding and skating across the deck until I reach a bit of carpet which steadies me up. Clearing up broken glass on a rolling ship is work for stunt men, and not one of them am I. Eventually and mercifully we change course and get the sea on the quarter, the clean up complete I make it into the bunk and sleep the sleep of the exhausted.
Roll on next port, as long as it doesn’t roll too much.
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Sounds like a nightmare. A couple of years ago, crossing the Bay of Bicay I got caught in some bad weather. After, I spend a couple of hours trying to get the mess in my office sorted out. When my relief came a few days later he asked me how the trip was and I told him I had hit a rough patch a couple days earlier. Later we were reviewing the document folder and found, between the ships registry and the Load Line certificate, a crumpled up, coffee-stained overtime sheet for the Chief Steward . My relief asked me “how this get here? I told him, “like I said, I hit a rough patch.”
Good to see you posting again.
Thanks Captain!
I have to sort out the paper pile yet, God knows what I’ll find!
Have a safe trip!
Tim.
one of the many reasons i elected to serve in submarines rather than the surface fleet. i don’t do so well in weather. of course, when we were on the surface, we bobbed like a cork in the bathtub. definitely NOT GOOD.
one of the things we would do upon our first dive would be a series of “angles and dangles” to make sure the boat was rigged for sea. it’s amazing how many coffee cups and whatnot get left in out of the way places, out of sight. that first 20 degree dive, with a hard port turn, followed by a series of ups and downs, right, left, turn all around, would tend to clear all kinds of stuff out of the overhead and behind pipes. kind of like a dog shaking itself after a bath.
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Welcome back Boss. Was watching Blackadder the other night and thought of you when Captain Rum showed up.
“You have a wooooooooooman’s purse m’lord”
Good to see you again.