May 31, 2012
Day 5 at Sea
Somewhere in Canada
 |
| Bosun and his spy glass |
Everything was smashing in the galley this morning. The
weather was rough as we were completing our first open Sea crossing. It was
heavier than expected and while I was up getting breakfast the boat started
really rolling and everything slid off the shelves. It was spectacular.
A palette of eggs was the first to go, and after that came
the plates, a tower of chocolate croissants (not for crew) wine bottles, coffee
mugs and silver wear, all hitting the steel floor and smashing apart with a satisfying raucous.
Everyone in the Galley made a grab for something- I threw myself on a stack of
china plates- and held on as the sous Chef, Karlos, tried to keep his feet from
slipping on the egg-covered floor and his palms from falling onto the hot
stove top which takes up the entire wall as the floor of ship tipped back and
forth. Meanwhile someone made a lunge for the broom and was trying to sweep up
the glass while fruit platters continued to sail off the shelves.
We sat in the dining room as waves of grey water lashed
against the window and our breakfast slid all the way down the table and the
all the way back. If you got up to get a fork or a knife, you had to task
somebody with babysitting your plate and holding it down so it didn’t topple
over and spill onto the carpet.
Then you’d be in real trouble.
We’ve sailed straight through an Orcas pod, and seen a
glistening humpback appear slowly out of the water, and a Grizzly bear on the
shore lumbering along, looking exactly like a man in a Grizzly bear suit. Those
were my thoughts when I saw the bear- “That looks exactly like a man in a
Grizzly Bear suit-“ and that’s when I knew I simply was not a naturalist at
heart.
We’ve engined past bright, white waterfalls cascading off of
deep grey granite (the granite was the color of the Humpback) and massive
rivers spewing out of the trees and into the Sea and a dozen types of
waterbirds including trumpeter swans and Marbled Murellettes and still, it is
the image of the eggs and plates smashing in the galley and everybody hitting
the deck in a collective hail Mary that sticks with me the most, and in
particular the cook, dancing on the split yolks, his legs bicycling beneath him the
way they do in cartoons, trying not to get grilled on his own stovetop.