Homeward Bound!

Ah, yes, one of my favorite views. Leaving the anchorage and the boat behind as I begin my journey home.

So, yesterday I started the journey home. We made our way into Rio de Janeiro yesterday morning where we immediately set up on DP so some contractors, who arrived as soon as we did, could do some tests on the DP system. The assumption was that we were going to sit in the anchorage until all the tests were completed instead of crew changing first thing. Thankfully, the crew relieving us showed up earlier than expected and we were able to leave. Finally being able to leave the boat and begin heading home is one of the best feelings in the world. Right up there with taking your shoes off after a day on your feet.

Unfortunately, it was too muggy to get any good pictures of Rio as we entered the bay. So I'll end this month's hitch with some more sunset or sunrise photos (mainly to placate my father who asks for pictures of the ocean even though I've tried telling him again and again that the ocean pretty much looks like the ocean on any day of the week) and a couple of photos I took when I had a day to visit the Christ the Redeemer Statue.

This sunset rated about an 8.7 out of 10. Plenty of pink, orange, and lavender to suit me. 

This is a sunrise from one of my previous hitches when we got up to a rig in order to either load groceries or finally pick up the cook. Once we were finished and started pulling away it got all cloudy and I managed to snap a photo of a rainbow. 

A sunset that kind of reminds me of the beginning of the Lion King. Because of that, I gave it a 8.9 out of 10.

Figured I'd share this photo. It's not the greatest because at the time the screen broke on my camera and I was shooting from the hip, so to speak. I was with a coworker, but the only photos I got from him were pictures of me trying to "high-five" the statue.

Currently, I'm sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting for my plan to start boarding. I hope to be home by 3pm at which time, I can get myself a ham Italian from Amato's (sort of a coming home ritual), take a shower, and attempt to stay awake until a decent time so I can get back on a good sleep schedule (darn you red-eye flights).

I Can Just Hear My Father Yelling "Stay Away From the Windows!"

Tonight, the seas were almost flat calm and the moon was bright, so the sky was a rich midnight blue instead of black. I tell you, Orion never looked so bright. Usually, I think the ancients were crazy when they say "that constellation looks like a dragon" because they almost always don't, but out here, man, out here Orion looks like a hunter (apparently, he doesn't have a bow like I always thought, thanks, Wikipedia, for ruining that for me). These big, fluffy cumulus clouds started rolling in, all silver and gray encroaching, perfectly, like a blanket being pulled up to your chin and thin, skeletal branches of white lightning spread across the clouds, making the night brighter. Once in a while one of the streaks of lightning would snap out across the midnight sky instead of staying in the clouds. I've never seen a storm like it where part of the sky was pewter and part of the sky midnight and stars.

Nights like this are why I'm thankful to be a sailor.

Schrodinger's Grocery Box

The other day I promised to wake up early and take photos of us getting the grocery box from the drill ship. Luckily, I did not have to wake up early since they called us just as I was about to get off watch at midnight. Unfortunately, this meant that it was dark out so my photos aren't the greatest.

This is the FPSO that now has our grocery box. At this point, I'm really jonesing for a diet coke.

So, we start moving up to the FPSO (floating production, storage and offloading vessel). There's all sorts of protocol that you're supposed to follow, like move to 500m away from the FPSO or rig, then do a drift test and make sure that everything is working. Then, while using the dynamic positioning system, move into the 250m zone, do some more of the making sure everything's okay, and then move closer.

This is the DP station.

So we did everything we're supposed to and then moved in up to the FPSO. I had to take pictures from inside the boat because every time I went outside my lens would fog up. You'd think I'd have remembered that from when I was in the Middle East.

Look! A drill ship! The windows on this part of the bridge are all scratched up.

The guys on the FPSO were a bit impatient to get things done. It was midnight, they'd been taking stuff off the supply boat before us and they had plenty of grocery boxes to go.

Egads, impatient much, guys?

They had the grocery box swinging over the water by the time we got close enough for them to put it on the boat. Eventually, they got it on the boat and we moved away.

I expected the AB's to start putting the groceries away immediately, but when I went down to help they had a chain around the door of the grocery box so no one could get in. I dubbed the grocery box "Schrodinger's Grocery Box" because, well, the box may or may not have had groceries in it.

Thankfully it did. I really do hate it when the boat runs out of food.

This Is My Job; I Love It

When I was at school I would stand watches on the school's ship in order to make some extra money during school vacations. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, entire summers were given up in the pursuit of some money in order to survive during the school year. For $10 an hour, I couldn't have asked for a better job. I'd stand watch on the quarterdeck making sure that no one came on the boat. Every hour the other watch-stander and I would take turns doing rounds; if I were on watch with an engineer I'd do all the weather rounds on the bridge so that I wouldn't have to go into the engine room. If there were no engineers around, I figured myself mostly competent enough to do the engine room round on my own. I could even go down into the murky depths of the engine room and no break something (well, most of the time). If I were lucky, I'd get put on the midnight to 8am watch where I wouldn't have to deal with people coming on the boat to work, tour groups, or faculty. This meant that I'd be able to knit all of watch. Not watch movies, of course, because that would be inappropriate. Cough. Cough.

 

This is where I sit, mostly. Yes, that's my knitting right there and yes, that's my coffee cup. You can't have a proper watch without coffee.

I never figured that my job working on the school's ship would actually prepare me for something. Work on the ocean was supposed to be exciting, breath taking. Days in port were supposed to be filled with on-loading and offloading cargo while my days at sea were supposed to be filled with navigating and chart-work and celestial navigation. I'd go to the far flung reaches of the world, visit places I never thought I'd never thought I'd get to see.

These are the radars. Not a whole lot there, but you can see the drill  ship at the bottom left of the circle.

Instead, I'm stuck in a situation similar to that of Bill Murray's character Phil in "Groundhog Day". Wake up, fluff about cabin until it's time to go on watch, stand watch, do a change of watch, fluff about room, sleep. Rinse and repeat until crew change. My vessel is a standby vessel, so we pretty much just run weather patterns around the drill ship and rig until we're needed. At some point we're supposed to get groceries, which will be handed down from either the FPSO (floating production, storage, and offloading vessel) or the rig near us, so that'll be something to break up the monotony. I'll try to get some pictures because it is kind of cool to see how close we get to the rigs using Dynamic Positioning.

This is to the right. Yes, those are socks I'm knitting. I'd tell you the pattern I'm using, but it's kind of unfortunately named and I'm not sure who's reading this thing, so I figure I'll keep it PG in here.

Now, don't think I'm complaining about my job. I love my job. I take my knitting up to the bridge with me, put on some quiet music, and contemplate life while making sure we don't hit anything. I get to see sunsets uninterrupted by geography and trees. We had a gorgeous one the other day that I, in my ineptitude, forgot to take pictures of although my photography ability is pretty much nonexistent and wouldn't have done it any justice. A lot of sunsets have streaks of pink and orange that seem almost garish as they scream across the sky (although not as much as sunrises). This sunset was subtle; a ball of orange cradled by a haze of pink, then lavender and periwinkle. Brushes of bright orange peaked here and there, melding from the clouds, giving a bit more color to the sky. As far as sunsets go, I gave it a 9.1 out of 10 even though it wasn't the most vibrant sunset ever. This sunset wasn't a swan-dive sort of sunset, it was a graceful actress taking a bow as velvet curtains fall softly around her.

I took this earlier tonight before I got off watch. I thought the cloud in the upper right sort of looked like a whale if you squint a little bit.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I'm sorry I haven't been posting. Not a whole lot has been going on and it seems unfair to continuously post about sunsets. I've a few ideas for future posts, though, that don't involve sunsets. Maybe I'll sneak into the engine room and snap a few photos. Maybe I'll regale you tales from my one month semester in Ireland and the miserable seven hours I spent hungover on the flight home. Maybe you'll hear of my cadet shipping time in the Middle East. Maybe I'll even see if I can hunt down pictures from my freshmen cruise and whip out the ones from junior cruise. Maybe I'll save all these for the times I get really desperate for something to write? Who knows? Right now, I'm going to run down and get some oatmeal because we're running out of food and I'm getting empty-stomach-nauseous. For someone who gets it a lot on the boat, I have such a difficult time spelling "nauseous". Thankfully there's spell check.

LOOK! A SUNSET! (Gave this one a 8.3 out of 10).

I'm On A Boat! (and that song is so overdone)

This is all you see when you look around the boat. Muggy gray skies and the murky depths of the Southern Atlantic. Doesn't help the AC is broken on the bridge and my coffee was chewy (darn you coffee grinds!).

I got to my new boat yesterday (finally) after sitting in the hotel for a week. I was a bit nervous, because I had heard "THINGS" about this boat (seriously, sailors gossip way more than any little old lady I know) and one can never be too sure when one goes from vessel to vessel. Luckily, the "THINGS" I had heard were all false and/or were with a different crew.

Okay, so I lied earlier. We're sort of yo-yo-ing between this FPSO and a rig, so we can see at least two things on the horizon.

We got underway yesterday, too, and the Captain was telling me they have a pretty fast turnaround time. Not because the Captain wants one, but because the company in Brazil claims that the every time the boat comes in, something breaks. Which is kind of silly. Of course something breaks. This boat is 15 years old and they aren't doing the proper maintenance on her because the boat isn't in port more than twelve hours. Common sense is lacking here.

I didn't get seasick last night, which is fantastic. I'm a bit nauseous now, but I did drink a lot of coffee and broke into a bag of dark chocolate M&M's. I'll have to cut back in the future.

The Ditty Bag with a glaring sunset behind it. As far as sunsets go, I'd rate tonight's about a 5.5 out of 10. Not enough pink and orange for my liking.

One of the things I'm glad about is that I'm on noon to midnight watches this time around instead of my usual midnight to noon, so I finally get to take some sunset pictures. Sunrises are all good and fine, but I think sunsets usually have a bit more panache. Tonight's wasn't that great, but I have twenty-something more days to get photos of some good ones. I keep hearing stories of whales coming up along the ship last hitch, so I'm crossing my fingers I'll get to see some this time. I've only managed to catch glimpses of smaller Minske whales and dolphins and have never had my camera on hand to photograph them. Maybe this time I'll luck out?

Don't tell me you wouldn't miss this. Look how pretty it is! I got one good storm when I was home and missed two since I've been gone. Okay, I admit, there may be some wiring loose with me.

As much as I love it down here, I'd rather be back in Maine enjoying what's left of the winter and what's starting of the spring. Maybe if I luck out, Mother Nature will save a snow storm for me for when I get home.