The end of voyage 1.

Well, it’s been an interesting last few days. When I left off, I was going to play poker with some of the crew. This was one of the most nautical feeling things I’d ever done. The whole experience felt straight out of a movie. Playing poker with a bunch of Newfoundlanders on a cargo ship sailing into a storm. I had to stifle a grin when the bosun began to play Newfoundland folky fiddle music on his iphone. I spend the next few hours on the wheel. It was pretty hard to get used too at first because I’m used to feeling the pressure of the rudder on the helm. With this, it’s all electronic and when you turn the wheel over, you have to wait for the rudder to catch up. As the wind and waves picked up, it started to get a little harder. The wind was about 30 degrees off our port side and when it pushed on our relatively huge superstructure (the large “building” at the stern where the accommodations and bridge are), it drives the bow into the wind. This is something you have to get used too so you can counter steer. It is pretty amazing to be up on the bridge during a storm. You can see the entire ship, all 600 X 90 feet of it being tossed around in the waves like it's a little bath toy. You can really relate to the stories of how powerful the sea really can be.  I steered for about 2 hours, then went to bed.

That night was wild. We had a gale force wind gusting to hurricane force, which is over sixty knots, and with our cargo 2/3 empty, the ship was rolling like a pig. Fortunately, I stowed my things before I went to sleep and put a bunch on the floor, but this was not enough. As she ship rolled, the shower curtain opened and closed. My bag slid back and forth across the floor. So did my books. And water bottle. Even my mattress slid back and forth over the bed (it is not a tight fit) and loose change banged around inside the desk.  That was quite the wake up at 330 am, but not a huge deal to re stow everything. I took the third mate’s advice and shoved my lifejacket under my mattress to prop it up on an angle and keep me against the wall. This worked for a while, but on one especially big roll, it actually worked as a wedge to fling my mattress half off the bed- and me with it. In the end, I was lucky enough to get around five total hours of sleep, with lots of wake ups along the way. Most of the crew were not so lucky to get even that. However the next day, I started to feel how the six meter ocean swell was different from anything I was used to.

Our work the following day started with cleaning and mopping the officer’s mess, which had basically been completely covered in mustard, V8 juice, peanut butter, and margarine. These experienced sailors had apparently forgotten to properly stow their food and chairs. When the condiments fell on the ground, the chairs chased after them, smashing them to pieces and spreading their contents over the floor and walls.  We still had four meter waves and the ship was rolling heavily, making it a challenge to walk over that slippery floor. Sometimes, you just had to accept that you were about to slide 20 feet over the floor into the wall and there was nothing (save for grabbing onto the table) that you could do about it. Most of the heavy weather I have been in on the St. Lawrence II has resulted in pitching (fore and aft motion) and a fairly steady angle of heel which we would keep by setting a sail as a stabilizer. I am used to being over 30 degrees and staying there. But 30 degrees of roll from side to side every 25-30 seconds is a whole different matter. I progressively started to feel worse and worse. Fortunately, Myles, the bosun noticed and sent me to upstairs, telling me I could take an evening watch instead of finishing my work day then and there. By then, the waves were supposed to die down and I would likely be feeling better. He was right. In fact, we were stopped when I woke up. Just adrift 60 nautical miles (110 km) offshore. The ship’s engine  had been running off only 5/6 cylinders and our speed was down around 7-8 knots instead of the usual 14-15. The engineers were busy repairing the damaged fuel pump and getting us going to full sea speed again, with the engine running at its full 122 rpm.

We got tied up in Portland, Maine around 2330, ship’s time. There was nothing left to do on my 8-12 watch because we couldn’t begin transferring cargo until samples had been taken, and sent to Boston for analysis. I’m told discharging of cargo began around 5am, and we finished eight hours later, but had to complete an intense and thorough annual US coast guard inspection before departure. After that finished, we anchored to take on fuel oil- the heavy, black, high sulphur stuff, and prepared to make the 20 hour trek back to St. John.  It was another rocky night, but not as bad as the one two nights before. We arrived in St. John this morning, passing several anchored super tankers feeding the refinery, and a small pilot boat being tossed about in the three meter swell. On arrival, we promptly attached the cargo hoses to fill our tanks with diesel and gas. We also had to load three weeks worth of food stores, which goes fast when you have most of the crew and the crane helping out. We should be leaving sometime tomorrow, on the first high tide. The next trip will be Charlottown PEI, St. John’s NL, and back. I am looking forward to it quite a bit.