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).