Tears from Heaven

12° 20.509' W by 35° 53.862' N.

Reckoning eastern Atlantic nearing Gibraltar.

Today was a most curious day for yours truly aboard the good ship “Empire
State VI.” My day began early (4:00 am), not from any extra zealotry on
my part to catalog more books on sea disasters, no the problem was…

My bed was wet.

Now let’s pause a moment here before we get involved in some psycho-theory
which would speculate that because of the stress at sea I have devolved to
an infantile state. No, it was nothing so complex, or disgusting.

It seems that above my cabin (C-8), there is a fan room which got flooded..
This then proceeded to come down upon my unsuspecting self drenching my
bed with a cool drip that quickly went right through my water absorbent
blankets directly to me.

I was having a pleasant dream at the time thinking I was a jack tar aboard
a ship of the line blowing through the roaring 40’s and being sprayed with
water. This connection proved a bit too real as I woke.

Now, I laid there and thought… well, is it possible for me to go back to
sleep in this condition? Perhaps all this water will go away by morning?
This lasted for ten seconds as a new vision of the plumbing of an open toilet
dripping on my bed.

I promptly and fully woke up, and headed to the laundry.

Let me take a moment to talk a bit about laundry on the ship and the
difference between cadet’s laundry and crew laundry. The crew can do
their laundry at any time, and there are free washers and dryers to use (I
couldn’t imagine if I had to bring 45 days worth of quarters much less
90). They also supply detergent, but it is a bit weak, so we usually
bring our own. No problems, except when somebody is ‘ahead’ of you in the
laundry, and by that I mean, they leave their clothes in the washer or
dryer and have forgotten about them. The worst of course is when they are
in the washer… what is the correct protocol here? Do you remove the wet
clothes and dry them for the negligent launderer or do you just plop them
somewhere with a big sign that says, “CLEAN BUT WET.”?

This situation occurred to me at about 4:30am as I flipped open the
washing machine and saw a boatload (pun intended) of tighty whiteys. I
decided to surreptitiously put them in the dryer but *not* turn the dryer
on just in case this set of underwear had special drying instructions. I
then quickly stuffed my blanket and bedding into the washer, started and then quickly got out of dodge before Mr. Tighty Whitey bumped into me. I
didn’t want to get involved in laundry wars.

So back to the cadets. It is my understanding that the cadets do their
laundry communally and at certain times. In fact, there is a cadet on
laundry watch duty, where him/her has to make sure that nothing goes awry
in the laundry room. Obviously there must have been some laundry crimes
in the past!

So now of course I have time to kill since I can’t go back to sleep in my
bed. I start wandering down to the library because I know there are two
large couches there I can flop out on.

The ship itself is surreal at that time but there is always activity, and
always somebody doing a watch. The whole ship is a living organism
covered in a steel glove.

So after I got down to the library, I tried to see if I had email and it
was down again. So I laid out on the couch but the seductive twinkle of
fluorescent lights that do not turn off combined with the sultry heat of
the library could not bring me back into the arms of Morpheus.

So I listened to the audio book “H.M.S. Surprise” while waiting for
breakfast to start.

I have found that I have become the chief source of information concerning
email status aboard the ship although I don’t really have more information
than anybody else. This is because the library is at ground zero. Across
from the library is the unmonitored computer lab, and then there is the
library which has email connections. People do not pass by the library.
They come to the library with a purpose in mind, either to (gasp!) study,
read a magazine, borrow a book (or DVD if you are one of the ship’s
officers) or to e-mail.

I have made a whole assortment of regular friends with whom I discuss all
the finer nuances of our email system. This includes cadets as well. The
typical conversation will go like:


Bibliographic Mariner: “Good Morning!”
Cadet: “Mornin’… email up?”
Bibliographic Mariner: “Yes/No.”
Cadet:
Bibliographic Mariner:

In fact, as of today I am the point person as designated by the Captain
himself. How did I get this dubious designation? Well, I was having
lunch with him, Tim the Weatherman, and the Doctor when the Doctor brought
it up in conversation. Apparently the wireless was working, but not the
hardwire. He then asked me why I didn’t tell him. Well I figured (like
everybody else) that somebody had to have told him and that I didn’t want
to bother him with such a thing, when he said, “No, please tell me because
otherwise I won’t know.”

So now I’m the E-mail guy.

So as my day has gone along, it got a bit more disconcerting as that I had
to shut the library down today. Apparently something broke which
intensified the heat driving it from the sub-tropical range, into the
Atacama desert range (but with humidity if this is at all possible). The
doctor in fact came in and told me to leave.

So now I’ve actually been enjoying my afternoon up on the cabin deck
overlooking the water and writing emails and writing this particularly
long blog post. By this time (almost 5pm), I’ve gotten a new mattress,
they fixed the leak, and we still aren’t in sight of Gibraltar yet, but we
should be passing through tomorrow night. On Friday I’ll post up
pictures.

So if anybody feels like meeting me in Malaga for a few cervecas. Please
let me know!

Fair Winds and Following Seas,
Joe
: 87° Speed: 15.1 knots