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'Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we've got our brave Captain to thank'
(So the crew would protest) `that he's bought us the best--
A perfect and absolute blank!'"The Hunting of the Snark," Lewis Carroll
The Adventuress--the ship--was quite impressive. It was a big ship with big sails and lots of lines. If you're going to be on a ship day in and day out, you should make sure it's a pretty one, and things were looking well taken care of in that regard.
As crew and passengers mustered in a circle on the deck of the Adventuress, I thought of that line of poetry, "A perfect and absolute blank." All of these people were white. I started to get some bad Idaho flashbacks, but I shook them off. Everything was going to be fine, just fine.
I don't want to give the impression that I think I would have gotten along with people better if they hadn't all been white. I get along okay with white people. I didn't have any problem with the ship's crew, and they were all white. Some of my best friends are white people.
Still, it was a danger sign, and I should have paid more attention.
Sunday night, I spent an hour on anchor watch. Everyone else was asleep, but I was on deck, making sure that we weren't dragging our anchor loose and about to crunch into an island. There were some watch chores to take care of--taking bearings, reading the depth meter, checking the bilge, noting the wind.
Mostly, it was just looking up into a night sky full of stars. I suppose that they were all stars that I'd seen before. I was further North now than where I usually am when I look at the sky. And I have been known to get away from city lights occasionally, to look up and see a sky full of stars. I don't know why this felt so special.
Maybe it was having a long period of time uninterrupted to just stand and stare. Maybe it was the quiet lapping of the water. Maybe it was feeling snug in a warm jacket. Maybe it was the feeling of purposefulness--the Adventuress was under my watch, I wasn't just goofing around.
It was lovely.
All of the passengers were divided into three parts: A-Watch, B-Watch, and C-Watch. I was in C-Watch. Two members of the crew, Nancy and Felipe, were our watch leaders. We'd introduced ourselves. Sunday afternoon, the professional crew had motored us out of Friday Harbor to Park's Bay. We'd figured out bunks, had slept.
The next day, there was breakfast. My watch swabbed the deck while other watches took care of other ship chores. And then it was time to sail.
The Sound Experience crew taught me well. When sailing, you spend a lot of time working with rope--hauling lines, easing lines, tying knots. Sometimes there's a lot of tension on these lines, sometimes there are sudden slacks and jerks. On previous sails, I'd had some close calls, occasions when my fingers had gotten close to being crushed between a line and a cleat. Each time, my paranoid attitude and quick reflexes had saved me. Still, I wondered about those people who were able to handle ropes with their hands while looking up to see the effects of their rope-handling upon sails. I always had to look down to make sure I wasn't about to get pulled into the works.
I learned to handle ropes while keeping my hands and digits far from those devices which would mangle them. No cowboy, I learned to grab loops of rope and toss them over a cleat from a distance instead of directly placing with my fragile hands. It doesn't sound that important, maybe, but it helped a lot.
I'm not going to have much to say about the sailing on this voyage. In past travelogs, I've had more to say, generally about those parts of sailing which caused me concern--the nervousness of a first sail, retrieving the halyard, getting an anchor line caught, an anxious cliffside anchor watch, getting a foot caught between the boat and the dock, maneuvering amongst scary rocks while being menaced by a bee--that sort of thing. But this crew kept me safe.
They watched what people were doing, made little corrections, gave just the right advice. Things didn't go wrong. Things occasionally went slow, but things didn't go wrong. I emerged from this trip rather short of anecdotes. (Sorry.) It was amazing--we were pulling off some rather complicated (by my standards) maneuvers involving many lines and many sails, but no crises emerged. They weren't just competetent--they were gentle, funny.
The crew was great. Most of the passengers were fine.
The C-Watch had gathered to figure some things out. We had to figure out who would take anchor watch. And we had to figure out the official name of our watch group.
I piped up: "I say we go with what ---- and ------ said earlier. Let's be 'the Cool Watch'."
I'm not going to give people's names. Well, I'll give some. I mentioned Nancy and Felipe earlier. I'm going to stay vague about the names of passengers, though. Most of them were fine, some of them were great. Some of them were really irritating, though. I don't want to name names; I'm hoping to go on a trip like this next year. Hopefully, the irritating people won't come back. I got the impression that they weren't having much fun. They complained about things, often the very things I was most enjoying.
Still, if I give the names of the people who drove me up the wall, word might get back to them. And if I'm on a little ship with them next year, if they come back despite their misgivings, then things could get awkward.
So I'm not going to name any of the passengers. ---- and ------, who I mentioned above, weren't irritating. But if I give the names of only the non-irritating people, it won't be that hard for my fellow passengers to figure out who the irritating people were.
I suppose they may have figured that out for themselves.
Anyhow, I said, "I say we go with what ---- and ------ said earlier. Let's be 'the Cool Watch'."
Someone else made another suggestion. I said it would be nice if the watch name was something which would be recognizable if yelled out from a distance. Something like "Cool Watch."
Really, I wasn't insisting on Cool Watch. Just something easy to hear and not too embarassing. There were some ideas nudged around that I liked besides "Cool Watch." I happily endorsed them.
As for how we ended up with the name "Celestial Watch"... that was a little strange. For this travelog, I wrote up a description of how it happened, but I have since deleted it. It would be a little too clear which members of my watch group fell under the category of "irritating."
Somehow, we had ended up with a name that was at once difficult to hear and embarassing. "Could we just be 'Celeste' for short?" I asked, but the fight had long since gone out of me.
I'd seen how our watch functioned as a group. I'd figured out who to avoid; I'd figured out who to stand by. I was a bit dismayed to find that a third of my watch was unpleasant, but I decided to focus on the other two thirds.
The name wasn't a disaster. Maybe it's hard to hear someone yell the word "Celestial." But when our watch leaders needed us to gather in a hurry, they just called out for "C-Watch." And we knew what they meant.
By the end of Tuesday, I'd figured out the situation I was in. My first approximation at a solution wasn't working, though.
Tuesday, The Adventuress motored into Deer Harbor to pump out. The crew had asked that the passengers stay out of their way during pumpout. I wouldn't have minded a chance to learn more about the proper way to pump out, after having seen some of the things that could go wrong. Nor was I going to insist, though. I'm not sure what I would think about someone who insisted on helping out on a pumpout.
At Deer Harbor, there were showers. From my previous week-long sail, I knew that showers were great luxuries. The crew, staunch people that they were, believed in water conservation and were bound and determined to go without a shower for the whole week. I scoffed.
I walked onto land, into the Men's shower area. I showered. I towelled off in my little stall while some of my fellow men passengers talked by the sinks. They were talking about their investments, which was boring. Some of these investments were in things that sounded bad for the planet, which was discouraging. I didn't know what level of enlightenment I expected from Sierra Club members. I'd expected more than this, though.
Tuesday afternoon, sailing was glorious. In the middle of the day, I was doing things right. I didn't have a lot of muscle or speed, but I was functioning as part of the group, staying calm, making the right decisions, doing the right things with line.
The wind was good, and we didn't have far to go. So we just sailed back and forth. And it was wonderful.
Some other ships came out to play with us, our paths weaving together. Photographers ran about, taking photos. Crew were tossing treats and snacks from ship to ship, doing trades.
We were going really, really fast; We were going faster than I'd ever sailed before. When I was doing things with sails, when I was watching the water, the islands, the other ships, these were happy times.
| |
+---+---+ +---+---+
| By | | By |
+ Bin- +-----+ Bin- +
/| nacle | | nacle |\
/ +---+---+ +---+---+ \
/ | | \
+-----+-+ +--+----+ +----+--+ +-
| By | | Aft | | Aft | |
| The +--+ Bench | | Bench +--+
| Bench | | 1 | | 2 | |
+---+---+ +-------+ +-------+ +-
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+---+---+ +-
| By | |
| Big + +
| Table |\ /|
+---+---+ \ / +-
| \ /I'd figured out the problem, as I mentioned. The problem was that there were some obnoxious people on board. They were a minority, but there were enough of them to ruin a lot. Five obnoxious people isn't many, until you figure that there's only 30 people on the boat.
The solution, I decided, was to be in places where the obnoxious people weren't. When done with chores and popping up on deck, I would quickly scan the deck. I had already divided the deck up into a system of interconnected nodes, had figured out how to get from point A to point B while seemingly nonchalantly avoiding obnoxious creep C at point D in the middle.
It was a brilliant application of Graph Theory, the study of ways of getting around systems of interconnected nodes.
I'd scan the deck for a location which
I would then attempt to make conversation.
It was a brilliant plan, but it didn't work. The obnoxious people were drawn to conversations like moths to flame. But, unlike moths, they weren't destroyed by the thing that drew them; rather the reverse.
It was going to take more than graph theory to solve this one.
It was a bad situation. Tuesday night, the crew put on a short, wacky play. This, I could have told them, was a bad move. There had been little skits on previous evenings, and the grouchier passengers had been complaining about these to anyone who would listen--that is, anyone who couldn't find a place to hide--that is, anyone.
And then the crew started up some "freeze tag" improv. They wanted the audience to jump in, too. Audience members were muttering.
I didn't participate in the freeze tag improv. I wasn't sure I could face those grumblers after extending what appeared to be quite an ordeal for them.
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