May 19th
First full day living on the ship.
Last night was my first night on the ship. I fell asleep in
my bunk anchored at Fisherman’s terminal in Ballard and woke up to the sound of
roaring engines and water splashing against steel. We left the harbor at 5:00 in the morning and
I remember some small part of me woke up, felt the shift take place and knew
that we were underway. When I came up on deck at 7:00 sharp for breakfast, I
stood out on the Fantail and watched the coastline running by, faster than I
had expected, and our frothing white wake coming up over the swim step.
It should have been a triumphant moment , one of pride and
excitement, but for the moment, fear is eclipsing any positive emotion that
tries to break through the cloud curtain of my thoughts.
The days are extremely long, and half of the time I don’t
know what’s going on. Things would move much faster if I felt like I was really
helping with some of these projects. If only more deck hands would get giant
splinters embedded beneath their nails like yesterday, then I can be helpful.
It seems like most of
the energy of the expedition crew, together with the deck hands, is all poured
into how we’re going to lash 26 double sea kayaks onto the extendable dock and
then hoisting the whole thing from the fantail to the sun deck four stories
up. It’s a lot of winching and rigging
and engineering and crap I don’t know anything about.
I know a little more today than I did yesterday.
That sentence sounds a little more optimistic, and little
more after school special, than I feel right now.
Everything is different on the ship. It’s more than a world,
it’s a universe. The walls are steel,
ugly and magnetic, and the stairs are steep and loud. And everything has a
different name- everything’s either a hatch or a ladder or a bulkhead or a
head.
What cheers me up is two thoughts, and I run them together
in my head during the day like clicking marbles.
One: the electronics I’m going to bring aboard when we set
sail to Alaska next Saturday. Lovely, clean, glowing, little things full of
music and electronic books. All the songs and stories I’m going to pack onto
those things, even if I never get a chance to look at them just knowing that
they are there.
The girl in my head, the girl I probably ought to be,
wouldn’t bring anything Apple onboard. She’s bring weathered books on Alaskan
history and leather bound journals to fill in. She’s untether herself from the
seduction of Steve Jobs and his many glowing, soothing screens.
Screw that girl. Forget it. This boat world is full of dirt
and salt and engineer’s oil. The deck hands and guides walk around with
sunburns and bleeding hands. Something about my little silver Ipod seems like a
secret, a rebellion, a connection to my regular life on land that I refuse to
give up.
Does that make any sense?
The other thought that cheers me up is medicine.
But I’ll get into that in another post. Sometimes thinking
about being an EMT onboard a ship cheers me up to much I think that maybe I
just want the medicine and not the ship.
But then….
Then the day is over, finally over, it’s eight in the
evening and I walk past the Bosun on my way downstairs to my room. He’s sucking on an electronic cigarette and he
gives me a nod and says, “You did a good job today.” He keeps walking.
Encouragement is hard to come by around here. So when you hear it, you believe
it. It starts to tilt your world back into place the smallest bit.
A moment alone is nearly impossible to find so when you do
stumble upon it, it’s like this perfect capsule of pure relief breaking over
you.
Day number one. Thirteen hours pass between when you wake up
and when you stop working. You stand under a cold shower for a minute. And then
you climb into your bunk, which tips back and forth a little bit, and wait for
tomorrow to get here.
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| Writing in a rare place of refuge...the emergency gear room. |