Day 4    Tuesday, December 16, 1997

Pacific Ocean (Monterey - Santa Barbara)

00:30 First Bell and All is Well

We're heading 110° magnetic into a cloudy night. The engine is puttering along at 1500 rpm giving us a ground speed of about 5 knots. She can do as much as 8 knots, says Ray, but she (or he) likes it better at this speed. There is a light 10 knot breeze at our port stern. We tried going by sail only for a while, but it wasn't enough. The radar above me shows absolutely nothing at all within 16 nautical miles range. A visual confirms the situation. Yup, there is nothing at all our there.

Let me take this moment to introduce the ship's bell system. It works like this: Starting at midnight, a bell is rung every half hour. Twelve thirty is one bell, one a.m. two bells, one thirty three bells, etc, all until eight bells at four a.m. Then the cycle starts again. The actual bell itself sits up by wheel and it's the watch person's responsibility to ring it. We also have a wall clock that rings as well, but it's not quite as audible. Besides, manually ringing the bell confirms that someone still is in command. We usually change watch at every 8 bells. The only exceptions are the First Dog Watch (16:00-18:00) and the Second Dog Watch (18:00-20:00). These are named so because they’re curtailed. (Yeah right, Ray.)

It's just after 3 pm and my second watch will end soon (at 4 pm if you've been paying attention). Today, I learned to whip a rope and tie a bowline. Rope whipping isn't quite as painful as it sounds like. It involves tying up the end of a rope to make it tight and fit to avoid having it splinter. You start by pushing a piece of string through it, preferably using a sailor's awl, then you make a loop along the length of the rope and start coiling the string around the rope, loop by loop, as tight as you can. At the end, when you've done about an inch's worth, you pull the string through the loop you made before and start pulling it back under the coil. Let it go half way and it will be nicely set and protected. To finish it off, you can thread the loose end back up above and across the coil, twisted about 90° and then through the rope again. This is called a Dutch whip, something that according to Ray every seaman would be proud of.

The bowline tie is a simple, but very useful knot. Start by looping the rope around your open left hand: up across the palm, below, and back up again. Then make a big loop and take it back between the rope and the backside of your hand, under the lead going into your palm, and finally between the rope and the palm of your hand again, this time going towards your arm. Tighten up and there you are. Well, or at least something like that. I managed to do it a couple of times after some prompting, but I fear I've already forgotten half of it.

As I put down my trusty Psion on which I'm typing these notes, Ashikin and I both notice them at the same time: Dolphins! Two little bottlenecks just came up to our starboard bow. Unfortunately, moments afterwards and more importantly, before I get my camera up, they're gone. Rats!

Sunset at sea, take I

During the night, Ashikin and I have the 8-to-midnight watch. To entertain us, there are three or four big oil rigs out there lit up light giant Christmas trees in the night. They're beautiful -- and huge! When we start off the watch, Ken gives us a course that should take us past them at a respectable distance. Nevertheless, as the night progresses, we see a light at the distance that we at first can't explain. It seems to be too far away to be seen on the radar, but it's slowly moving to our left. Then the speed starts picking up. It doesn't look like a ship and there is nothing out there on our chart that could explain it, not according to our projected course at least. Very puzzling. Then I see it -- it's a buoy -- and it's really close now, only a couple of ship lengths away! Back to the chart again. Yes, there is a buoy out there but it's far from where we're supposed to be.  Supposed, yes... Let's check those coordinates again. Uhm, somehow, it looks like we've managed to mis-plot the last couple of fixes that we made including the one Ken handed off to us. Ugh.  It's a good thing that there isn't much out here. With the updated data I plot a new course and adjust our heading a few degrees to the west.