Category Archives: environment

Book: The Gathering Wind

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It’s been a quiet couple of days around here. I’ve been reveling in the fact that I finally found some time to just CHILL!

I wrote yesterday that I didn’t do anything except take my daily walk and cook dinner. Today I got a little bit more done. I did the laundry. 😉

I’ve been reading a good book and thought some of you might like it too. It’s called The Gathering Wind, by Gregory A. Freeman.

It’s all about the tall ship Bounty, (the replica of the one they had the mutiny on). 😉

The Gathering Storm tells the story of the ship, her captain (Robin Walbridge) and crew and how they wound up sinking in the middle of ‘Superstorm Sandy’.

It’s a pretty wild story, especially the heroic attempts by the crew to save their ship and the amazing efforts of the US Coast Guard to save the crew.

It’s a great read, a real page turner. Even tho I knew how it would turn out, it still kept me interested til the end. As a sailor, I kept wondering WHY would they do that? Head out to sea with a hurricane approaching?

The book doesn’t really give a clear answer to that question. It did have a section on the investigation of the sinking, but I would have liked more. I have my own opinion and it mostly has to do with money.

So many of these disasters at sea probably never would have happened if there was a REAL concern for safety, but ‘time is money’ and it gets harder and harder for a seafarer to find employment where the idea of safety is more than just a façade for the insurance companies!

Just a couple of weeks ago, the El Faro went down with all hands, another 33 lives. Lost in another hurricane.

Will the investigation for the El Faro come to the same conclusion? That it was all the captains fault? That only his ‘reckless decision’ was to blame?

Do you really think the captain of the El Faro (or the Bounty) would have taken the risks he did if there were no pressure from the office to ‘make the schedule’? I sure as hell don’t!

With all the new rules and regulations coming out of the IMO and various governmental bodies, I keep wondering when will they get down to the root cause of all this? The people in the OFFICE who run these ships! THEY are the ones who really make the decisions these days, the poor old captain is nothing but a scapegoat for when things go wrong!

There is only so much a captain and crew can do out there! Without the help and support of our employers, we can only do so much! Sailing around a hurricane (or through pirates, or any other extraordinarily dangerous place), is NOT something we should be doing just to save the company a few bucks!

I’m still waiting to see the day when the IMO does something that actually helps the MARINER! Putting at least SOME of the responsibility on those who really make the decisions, and off of the captain who is now only a figurehead would go a long way in fixing a lot of issues out here!

For further discussions of these incidents among the mariners who hang out on Gcaptain, (professional and otherwise), check out these links:

http://www.gcaptain.com/forum/professional-mariner-forum/10134-hms-bounty-hurricane-sandy.html

http://www.gcaptain.com/forum/maritime-news/17656-sea-star-el-faro.html

Explosive!

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How many days do you get to go to work looking forward to blowing something up?

I’m looking forward to blowing up something today!

Really.

Yeah, really. I’m still here on the Mystic Viking. We finally got all our certs so we could leave port, so we loaded up on fuel and got the hell out of town.

We did one quick test job and then moved over here (SP) to do another quick job using explosives. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of old platforms out here in the Gulf that have become obsolete and now need to be removed.

Instead of leaving them alone to continue serving as artificial reefs, the powers that be have decided they must be completely removed, the legs must be cut below the ‘mud line’. Thankfully, that gives us a lot of work, cutting them all up and then putting them on barges to bring them in for scrapping somewhere.

We’ll eventually be working with the Versabar 10,000. They’ll do the heavy lifting after we do the cutting.

For this job we set up a ‘bomb’ in order to blow up the leg of an old oil platform off the coast of Louisiana. The top has already been removed, so we are using the ROV to run the ‘bomb’ down the leg and run the detonation cord up to the ship.

Once we get the thing set up, we have to wait til the turtle watchers can come out and ensure that no turtles are harmed in the explosion. (Yeah, seriously).

I want to see something blow up!

Arrrgh- I Missed It!

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Aye, I’ve been so busy here on this old ship, I totally forgot that yesterday (Sept 19th) was International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Yaaar, I be stuck here on this old ship, but I still could have had some fun with the whole pirate thing. Yeah, even here.

Of course, it would have been a hell of a lot more fun to be off. There are parties all over the world to celebrate and for sure I would have been in attendance!

Next year, I’ll be sure to remember next year.

 

Rum Race #7

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I’ve been busy. You would think things would slow down around here since I’ve been laid off, but nooooo… I’m just as busy as ever!

Saturday I went out with Capt Vic on the Bat Boat (she’s a C&C 38). We were a little late getting underway due to some trouble with the battery (it was dead). We made it to the starting line right on time (actually about 2 minutes early).

It was a gorgeous day, there were lots of boats out sailing. Capt Vic said about 60 were in the race with us. A few different classes of boats. I’m not really sure what they all were, I’ve really only started learning about racing sailboats.

These races are set up through the Galveston Bay Cruising Association. They have all sorts of races, regattas, cruises, etc. I don’t know much at all about how they run these races, just that we were one of the bigger, heavier, slower boats. Not using spinnikers.

The sun was out and the wind was about 10-15 kts for the first part of the race. It slowed waaaay down after we made the turn to head back towards Kemah. We took down the jib and put up the ‘gennaker‘ (the bat sail) and it actually helped a lot in the lighter winds.

We did lose some time, mostly because we were not used to setting that sail and it took us a while to get it working properly. Once we got it set, we had a nice, leisurely sail back towards Kemah. We were doing pretty good in the race til then, but we fell behind while we were messing around with the gennaker. 🙁

We made it to the finish line right before sunset and got to watch the sun go down and the full moon rise over the bay. The sunset was nice, but the moon was absolutely stunning! I wish I could have taken some better pictures, but I was on the wheel at the time and couldn’t concentrate on the camera, I had to pay attention to the traffic in the channel.

It was getting dark by the time we got to the dock. We fought off the mosquitos while folding up the sails up the dock. Once we got everything secured, we could try out the ‘dark and stormies’ we had been hearing about all day. D. came up with some mosquito spray and we had our 1st rewarding rum drinks out in the parking lot.

Not too bad. 😉

We slowly made our way over to the clubhouse for the afterparty. The Rum Races are sponsored by Cruzan Rum and so we had to head up there for the end of the race announcements. We had to see who won (even if we knew we didn’t), we could still enjoy the rewards. Free rum and snacks to go with it. 🙂

It was fun to hang out for a while and talk over the race with the other sailors. Everyone was friendly and in good spirits. The free rum helps with that. 😉

Some of us decided to go out for a more hearty snack from there and we met up at Sam’s Boat for nachos, sliders, chicken wings and more good stuff. 🙂

I made it home about 3 am. Days like that really make me appreciate the life of a sailor. 🙂

Sailing and Snorkeling- Tamarindo

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It wasn’t all work and no play. We had plenty of fun during the blogging workshop. One day we went for a cruise on a nice big catamaran called the Marlin del Rey out of Tamarindo.

waiting for the launch

waiting for the launch

We spent the day sailing, fishing, swimming and snorkeling. It was a ton of fun. There were other people on the cruise too, not just our group. There was a couple on their honeymoon from Texas. There was a group of cute young Italian guys. A couple of pretty young German girls (who got along great with the Italians). A couple of local ladies and a few more.

We took a small launch out to the catamaran and got underway (after the safety briefing). We motored out of the anchorage and then set sail. It was a great day for sailing, good breeze but not rough. We saw whales, and dolphins came up to the boat for a while. We had a couple of trolling lines out, just in case we went through some fish.

checking out the dolphins

checking out the dolphins

We arrived at the snorkeling spot and the crew passed out life jackets and noodles for anyone who wanted them. We all dived in. The water was crystal clear and just a little bit cool when you jumped in, but warm enough once you got wet. 🙂

enjoying a nice swim

enjoying a nice swim

We spent a couple of hours enjoying the ocean. I saw a spotted eagle ray and followed it around for a while. I tried out my new waterproof camera and even got a movie of it. I took a few pictures of the fish there, but was a little disappointed. There really was no coral. Or at least I didn’t find it. There were some rocks, and algae growing on them which attracted a few fish, but nothing like a real coral reef.

The swim was nice anyway and when we got back onboard they had a nice lunch spread out for us. Chicken, rice, beans, potato chips, doritos, Cheetos, and even chocolate chip cookies. Of course, the drinks were free and flowing all day. Excellent pina coladas!

We set sail again just as the sun was setting and watched as it turned the sky brilliant colors of orange and red. We even managed to catch a fish on the way in!

When we got back to the anchorage, it was a subdued group that loaded back into the launch for the ride back to the beach. Yeah, I would definitely do it again! 🙂

Got in Late

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Today was another busy day. I made it to Costa Rica yesterday in time to start the blogging workshop I’ve been so excited about. We had our first class session yesterday and had a chance to meet everyone.

This morning we all left our hotel at 0700 for a day at the Rincon de la Vieja National Park. It took a couple of hours to get there and another couple to get back to our hotel. We spent all day there so I didn’t get a chance to get any photos online yet.

I got all mixed up when we got there. I thought we were going to take a ‘short walk’ through the forest to a waterfall for photos and then a horseback ride. Well, I took a walk, but it was NOT a short one!

Somehow I got off ahead of everyone else, thinking they were all ahead of me! I kept on walking and walking, thinking ‘damn! how the HELL did they all get so far ahead of me??’.

It was a really beautiful walk. It was really breezy up there (up the slopes of the volcano) and so it was pretty cool. Lots of interesting plant life. Huge trees with buttress roots and all kinds of bugs (but no mosquitos- too windy). 🙂

I didn’t see many animals (maybe because I was making too much noise huffing and puffing up the slopes?). The others saw some monkeys.

I did see some gorgeous big metallic blue butterflies, blue dragonflies and lots of other butterflies. Also some pretty birds and some big lizards (I think collared lizards but they ran away before I could tell for sure).

I saw a couple of pretty waterfalls, a few fumaroles (hot, steamy, sulfer-smelling volcanic vents) and a bunch of bubbling mud pots. After seeing 3-4 of them, I quit turning off the trail to check them out. The photos I took didn’t seem to do them justice. Plus, I was starting to worry about the others I was with worrying about me. I was trying to hurry up and get back to the beginning of the trail.

Every time I saw someone on the trail I asked ‘how much further is it to the exit?’, they would say ‘not far’, something like 300 meters. So, I kept on going. The longest 300 meters I’ve ever walked!

I did finally make it to the end of the trail. Thank goodness it was a loop! Seems like I didn’t hold them up too long after all. Glad of that, since we still had lunch waiting and the promised horseback riding after that. 🙂

One Word Photo Challenge: Foggy

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I like to enter these photography challenges when I can. They’re always interesting. I like to see what other people are doing too. This is for Jennifers One Word Photo Challenge: Foggy. I took these one night in New Orleans. I love New Orleans! 🙂

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LOVE IT

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I get so discouraged working out here sometimes. I used to love coming to work offshore. I actually looked forward to it and was eager and excited to come back to work. I wanted to go places, to catch up with old friends and meet new ones.

I loved working outside on deck, where I could enjoy the weather. I loved the feeling of the wind in my hair and the sun on my skin (even tho I sunburn easily). I loved looking out and seeing nothing but the blue, blue water all the way to the horizon.

I loved to see the beautiful constantly changing seascape. I loved to watch the waves and clouds. I looked for signs of life around me. Birds: pelicans, sea gulls, terns, herons. Fish: mahi-mahi, ling cod, tuna, sharks, and dolphins (mammals, not fish). Even things like seaweed and jellyfish were of interest. I loved to watch the intense colors of the sky when the sun rose or set.

I loved the fact that my job depended only how well I did my job. It didn’t matter what I looked like, how I talked, my level of formal education, how much money I had in the bank, what kind of car I drove, how I dressed. I loved being able to work dressed in an old pair of shorts, t-shirt and a pair of flip-flops.

I loved slow days offshore when we would throw a line over and catch a few fish. We always caught something. Mahi-mahi, ling cod, rainbow runners, sharks, kingfish, snapper, grouper, catfish, etc. Sometimes we kept them to eat, sometimes we threw them back.

I loved standing lookout at night and seeing the stars so blazingly bright at sea when there was nothing around for hundreds of miles to blot out their light. I loved watching the dolphins play in the bow wake when we were underway and seeing them pass by at the rig. Continue reading →

Share Your World

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I always like to see Cee’s interesting questions and answers for her Share Your World Challenges. She also has some really great photography challenges going on every week. Here’s my response to the challenge for week 27.

What is your favorite month of the year? I really had to think about this one for a while. It depends on my location. Here’s my perspective from living in SE Texas. I really don’t like the summer months. From May until at least September, it’s just too damn hot, muggy and buggy (pesky mosquitos!) to enjoy being outside at all. The winter months from November- February are’nt usually too cold, but then we have a lot of really dull, dreary, rainy, and still muggy weather. The days when the Northers have blown through and the skies are clear and bright blue and the air is fresh and crisp are beautiful, but there aren’t enough of them.

I do like the fall, the weather is starting to cool off again where it’s nice to spend time outside and there’s Halloween to look forward to. I also love March-April. The weather is still cool, the air is fresh and clean, the plants are all starting to grow again and I look forward to checking my ‘garden’ every morning. I look forward to seeing the flowers start blooming. Lots of my neighbors let the bluebonnets take over their yards.Texas wildflowers are just stunningly beautiful in the Spring! I guess my favorite month would have to be March. For all the reasons I mentioned for spring, AND we have St Patricks Day to celebrate in Surfside! 🙂

Irish pirates

Irish pirates

Do you drink coffee at all? I’m not a big fan of coffee. I don’t really see what the big deal is all about. I can’t understand the admiration for all the expensive, fancy drinks at places like Starbucks. I almost never drink coffee at home, I usually wake up and have a cup of hot tea and then drink iced tea all day long. When I’m on the ship, I’ll drink coffee. Just because it’s there.

What was one of your first moneymaking jobs (other than babysitting or newspaper delivery)? I worked for my father around his rental properties and on the boat. He paid me $3 per hour. He’d have me clean up between tenants, paint, plumbing (unclogging sinks and toilets), pulling weeds and taking care of the plants, etc. During school breaks, he would take me out fishing with him and I would cut bait, bait the hooks and help gut and ice down the fish. I got out of that as soon as I could!

My first ‘real’ job was down the street on the party boats. I got hired on as a ‘galley girl’. I could only go out on the weekends. We made 2 trips a day. I would tend the galley selling drinks and microwave sandwiches. When nobody was interested in food, I would help the deckhands baiting hooks, cutting bait, untangling lines, getting fish off hooks and putting them up on the ice for the passengers til we got to the dock. Then we would filet the fish for tips and clean up the boat at the end of the day and get it ready to go out again in the morning. I had another job washing dishes at a little Greek restaurant down the street after school too. I kept busy. 😉

We lived across from Dons Dock on the finger bay.

We lived across from Dons Dock on the finger bay.

List:  If you play video/computer games list 5 games you like? I don’t play many games on the computer. I’m not very good at games where you have to be quick. 😉 I do like a couple of them. One of my all time favorites is a game I used to play with the crew on one of my old ships ‘the Performer’. If I remember right, it was called VGA Planets. It was cool. The goal was to ‘take over the universe’. You chose which alien race you wanted to play as. Each one had its own special abilities. You started out from your home world with certain assets. So many spaceships, so much population, so many cities, etc. You chose a strategy to carry out your goal of conquering the universe. Trade or war, shifting alliances with the other players, etc. It would take us a day or so between moves when the controller would roll over the computer so we could make our next move. A game would usually last an entire hitch (maybe more). We worked 5 weeks on, 5 weeks off there. 😉

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up? I’ve been on the ship at work since the end of May, so not a lot happening with my life here. I am grateful to still have a job since so many in this industry have been laid off already with the plunge in the price of oil. I’m grateful that this type of work allows me more time off than most so I can spend time doing the things I really enjoy. I’m looking forward to getting off here soon (tho not as soon as next week) and attending a blogging workshop in Costa Rica. I’ll spend a couple of weeks exploring down that way after the class.

Sunday Stills: White

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I found a new challenge in my reader today. It’s Ed’s Sunday Stills. There are some really nice photos by people participating. Here’s my entry. 🙂 I actually posted this picture before, I took it when I was sailing as captain of a tuna boat out in the South Pacific.

The Truth About “Organic” And “Certification”

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Sad that so many people STILL believe the lie that the government is there to help them. If that was EVER true, it sure as hell is not any more!

Sunday Stills: Multiple Flowers

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I found a new challenge in my reader today. It’s Ed’s Sunday Stills. There are some really nice photos by people participating. Here’s my entry. 🙂

I took it in Korea when I was there for a weeklong class in travel writing and photography. I stayed over on my own for a couple of extra weeks and spent the time exploring from Incheon down to Geoji. It was a very interesting and friendly place. Sorry it was also a very sad time (ferry sank the day before I left home). I’d like to go back again when people are back to normal and not in mourning.

Ships Rigs: Schooner

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I wrote an earlier post about how sailing ships are rigged. I figured I would start with the biggest and most unusual to see today, and work my way down to the more common types you’ll see around you every day.

So the first post was about a ‘ship’ rig. Today’s post will be about a ‘schooner’ rig. I mentioned before that sailing ships rigs are first classified by how the sails are set. Either fore-and-aft or square rigged. A ‘ship’ is set with square rigged sails, a ‘schooner’ is set with fore-and-aft rigged sails.

I saw a nice one in the news the other day. The Juan Sebastian de Elcano was in Pensacola a couple of weeks ago and was open for tours by the locals. She’s in Charleston now. Check it out if you can. Here’s a picture of her. She’s a real beauty!

 

She’s got 4 masts, all rigged fore-and-aft and also square rigged on the foremast. So technically, she’s a brig-schooner. Or she could be called a topsail schooner. Whatever you call her, she’s a beautiful ship and I imagine must be a dream to sail on. 🙂

She’s very similar to the Ariadne. The ship I was privileged to sail on during my younger days. The difference is that the Ariadne was a little smaller, only had 3 masts and didn’t have the square sails. I actually got to go to high school aboard the Ariadne and the brigantine Phoenix! I was SO lucky! That experience definitely changed my life for the better. Here’s a picture of her.

The Ariadne was a true schooner. She had 3 masts, all fore-and-aft rigged. The Juan Sebastian de Elcano is a brig-schooner which means she has square sails on her fore mast. There are all kinds of variations to the main 2 types of sail plans (fore-and-aft or square rigged). There are ships, schooner, brigs, brigantines, barques, barquentines, in the larger class of vessels and then a few more in the smaller class. I’ll write more about them later. 🙂

Too Busy

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I’ve been pretty busy out here the last few days. Too busy to spend much time online, so haven’t been able to post.

I was busy with work.The big project was to move the rig. We finished up one well and moved the rig over to start another one. You wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork we have to complete in order to move this ship a couple of miles!

Checklists, checklists and more checklists! It really gets crazy.

Once we get the paperwork done so we can depart, we immediately start on the paperwork so we can arrive. We didn’t actually finish the arrival paperwork until halfway through the next day.

I still haven’t caught up with everything and probably won’t any time soon. We’re only drilling a ‘tophole’ at this location. A tophole is where the drillers just start the process of drilling a well, they won’t try to drill all the way down to the oil, they only drill down a short distance. They ‘spud in’.

I still don’t know much about what they do on the drilling side here, but here’s a simple explanation of what I think is going on. They basically just stab a big pipe (casing) down into the mud, jet it down to a certain depth, run some more pipe down inside that and then cement it up. They’ll set a well head on it that sticks up from the sea floor a few meters when they’re finished. Then somebody can come back later, stick a BOP (blow out preventer) on the well head, drill through all the cement, and actually drill down through the rocks to the target reservoir (and hopefully find some oil).

We’ll be going through the whole process again in just a couple more days when we’re due to move on to the next one. Oh joy. 🙁

Surprise!

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I was online last night trying to remember what kind of beer they had in Kiribati for an article I’ve been working on. I wanted to write a little bit about when I was working on the tuna boat out there. I googled Kiribati beer and up popped this blog post https://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Kiribati/Tarawa/blog-429394.html

I was reading the post, checking out the pictures and what a surprise, I realized she was writing about me!

I should probably write more about my time on the tuna boat. I did really enjoy it and especially loved visiting all those out of the way islands. I do hope I can go back to doing that kind of sailing again. Where it’s an adventure, not just a paycheck.

World Oceans Day

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World Oceans Day is coming up on Monday (June 8). This years theme is ‘healthy oceans, healthy planet’. It really is just common sense. The oceans cover over 70% of the earth. We all ultimately rely on the ocean for our own health and well being. It’s important to take care of it, if only for our own good. Monday will be a day to remember all the reasons we should respect and care for the oceans, it’s a day to celebrate and get involved too.

The oceans are a major source of food for people (and animals): fish, shellfish, seaweed, plankton, krill, etc. They also help to regulate the climate and keep some of the Northern areas warm in the winter and Southern places cooler in the summer (N hemisphere). The oceans are also extremely important for connecting people around the world. In the USA, 90% of our trade is by sea.

A lot of people make their living directly from the sea like I do. I’ve worked on the water from the time I was a kid. Fishing, recreation (cruising), and transporting cargo from one place to another (a ship is much more efficient than any other form of transport). Now, I work in the offshore oil fields, exploring for and extracting resources from the sea bottom.

If you live near the ocean, like I do, you already know how important it is for your ‘soul’, your mental health, your attitude. I can sit by the sea, listen and watch the waves roll in and it immediately calms me. I like to swim, snorkel, sail, SCUBA dive, surf (not very well), fish, and any other activity that gets me out on the water. 😉

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to think about how you benefit from it and what life would be like without a healthy ocean. Check out a few of the links. Get involved in some of the events if you can. If you can’t get out to any of the events on Monday, remember it doesn’t have to stop on Monday!

There are plenty of things you can do every day to help make things better. Even simple things like talking to people about World Oceans Day, disposing of your trash properly, using as little plastic as possible, not letting balloons fly away loose, etc. It all helps. 🙂 PS- none of the pictures in this post are mine, I got them all of the internet.

Songs of the Sea: Fishing With Seminole Winds

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I found this video the other day when I was fiddling around looking for something else by this band. I really love Donna the Buffalo. I have a couple of their albums at home. I just got a new ipod (since I lost my old one somewhere) and I don’t have any music or anything on it yet. I was trying to find some good stuff to play.

I love this song. The words, the music, the story, and the video too. I saw that video and it reminded me so much of home. Not where I live now, but where I grew up in Florida. It was filmed in Marathon, down in the keys. My dad took the Island Girl down that way for a few years and I stayed there one summer with him.

I had a blast! The video brought back a lot of good memories. Fishing, diving, hanging out at the Dockside bar, sailing, hanging out watching the sunset with so many interesting fun characters.

It’s a sad song too, and all too true. Florida is not much like it was when I grew up there. “Progress came”…

Seminole Winds 
by John Anderson
Ever since the days of old men would search for wealth untold
They dig for silver and for gold and leave the empty holes
And way down south in the Everglades
Where the black water rolls and the Saw grass waves
The eagles fly and the otters play in the land of the Seminole

 
So blow blow Seminole wind blow like your never gonna blow again
I’m calling to you like a long lost friend but I know who you are
And blow blow from the Okeechobee  all the way up to Micanopy
Blow cross the home of the Seminole the alligators and the gar

 
Progress came and took its toll and in the name of flood control
They make their plans and they drained the land
Now the glades are going dry
And the last time I walked in the swamp I sat upon a cypress stump
I listened close and I heard the ghost of Osceola cry

Repeat #2

Kids Love “land shrimp”?

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In which I feed my children “land shrimp” | Grist.

I see this more and more. Media promoting bug eating as a great idea to save the planet.

Yeah, if we’ll all just substitute a few giant roaches, beetles, or crickets instead of a nice juicy rib-eye, we can reverse climate change, save more wilderness, feed the starving children and as a bonus we would even lose a few pounds!

I suppose if I had nothing else to eat, for a loooong time, I would eventually eat the bugs. It’s just the whole idea of it that makes me squirmy. And I really don’t like the insinuation that we all really ought to switch to bugs over steaks, to lower our standards of living, to help ‘save the planet’.

Why the hell can’t we seriously discuss limiting the human population for a change. Just get people to use birth control for a while! Try something that would be GOOD for everyone here already AND the planet, AND would actually help!

I’ve tried them (bugs) before. Would you do it?

What do you think about lowering your living standards so that we can just keep on having more and more people live on the earth (and nothing else)? Do you think it’s a better idea to try and get everyone here already to ‘live light’ (eating bugs, no cars, serious restrictions on ALL energy use, etc), or get the people here already to limit their childbearing so that eventually we can reduce the human population so that everyone here can have a GOOD life, and still have room for wilderness and all the other creatures that depend on it?

Me? I’m 100% for the birth control!

Weather Worked Out

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Just got home from a day out on the bay. We lucked out and had a great day out sailing. The weather co-operated and we didn’t get rained on. Only a couple of small sprinkles. 🙂

I’ll write more later (and post photos). I’m beat!

Saturday Sail

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I’m going sailing again tomorrow. I signed up to go a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to get at least a couple of sails in while I was home this time. My time off work is running out way too fast. I hope the weather holds!

Last I checked, it’s supposed to rain. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping it doesn’t. The wind should be just about perfect for a day out on the bay. I’m not going to quit if we get a little sprinkle, but I don’t really enjoy being outside in a hard rain either.

I really hate it when my glasses get wet and fogged up and I can’t see!

I’d better get to sleep soon. I wish I didn’t have to get up so early to do these trips! To be on time at the dock, I’ll need to get out of the house by no later than 0900. That’s cutting it close.

So, I ought to get up at 0600 to get everything done before I leave. Ugh! 🙁

Saturday Sails

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I got to go out sailing again yesterday! I signed up for next Saturday too. 🙂

Some people think I must be nuts. They wonder how I can spend all my time at work on various vessels, at sea somewhere, and then come home and I can’t wait to get back out on another boat to go sailing?

All I can say is: those people just aren’t sailors!

Norms Thursday Doors

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Norm does a photo challenge on ‘doors’ every Thursday. I like to get into these things when I can.

Here’s my ‘door’ picture for this week. I took it outside the ‘Little Hollywood Land” Movie Set Museum in Kanab, Utah.

I had taken a trip to Las Vegas for the Freedom Fest a couple of years ago and when it was finished, I rented a car and drove up to do some sightseeing. I went to Grand Canyon (North Rim), Bryce Canyon and Zion  National Parks.

I had a great time wandering around, hiking through the gorgeous scenery and finding quirky little places like this to stop. 🙂

Intricate

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Here’s a picture for the Daily Posts’ Photo Challenge.

I took this one at a temple in Bali. The people make figures out of rice and other grains. They represent gods and demons.

I saw these offerings all over the island (most were smaller). The amount of time and effort they put into art on that island is amazing. It’s a beautiful place!

 

Intricate

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Here’s a picture for the Daily Posts’ Photo Challenge.

This is a photo of the underside of a starfish (I took it at the aquarium). Their little ‘feet’ are very intricate. 🙂

Intricate

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Here’s a picture for the Daily Posts’ Photo Challenge.

I took it a few years ago on an Irish Beach. I thought the patterns the flowing water made through the sand were really interesting.

Yeah, I know I’m weird. 😉

Motion: County Fair

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Here’s a photo I took at the fair last year. I think it’s a good one for this challenge (Motion) from the Daily Post. I always try to go when I’m home from the ship. I don’t usually go on the rides anymore, but I love to see all the people wandering around, listen to the music, and pig out on the junk food! 😉

Motion

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Here’s a photo I took in New Orleans. I think it’s a good one for this challenge (Motion) from the Daily Post. I loved watching this couple dance and listen to the band play in the street. New Orleans is really great for this kind of thing. 🙂

It’s not really blurry, but I hope you can get the idea of motion anyway. The couple was really dancing up a storm (swing, jitterbug, etc.), the musicians were all tapping their toes and swaying to the music and everyone was having a great time.

I didn’t think to buy a CD from this band, I wish I remembered their name. But I did get one from another one that was playing further up the street. Here’s a post I did about that one. Check it out, the music’s worth a listen. 😉

Tarawa Sunrise

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Here’s a sunrise for the Daily Posts Weekly Photography Challenge. This week, the challenge is to show a photo “taken in the early morning light”. Be an “early bird“.

I’m most definitely NOT an early bird! Last time I can remember really enjoying early morning was as a kid getting up for Saturday morning cartoons. 🙂

I was always a night owl. I used to stay up ’til 2-3 in the morning. I used to go out partying a lot. Or, I might stay at home reading a good book. Sometimes I just couldn’t put it down ’til I finished.

I’ve cut back a lot on keeping those kinds of hours now a days. Mostly because I have too much to do now. Things that have to be taken care of during normal business hours (9-5). Now I try to get to sleep by midnight (and it really isn’t too hard to do anymore). 😉

I only see the sunrise when I’m working the midnight to noon watch like I am now. I haven’t seen many good sunrises (or sunsets) this trip yet. Since we made arrival off Congo, it has been overcast. It clouded up a few days before we got here and hasn’t cleared up yet.

I took this photo while I was working on the tuna boat a couple of years ago. We were coming into the lagoon at Tarawa. The sunrise was just stunning. I had to run and get my camera.

This is one of my all time favorite ‘sun’ pictures. I keep one of my others as my header.

Weekly Photo Challenge: My Home- Afloat

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Here’s my entry for the Daily Posts Weekly Photo Challenge: Afloat. I have LOTs of good pictures for this one. I’ve spent most of my life at sea. I’ve already posted a few photos, here are some of my latest ‘home’ afloat.

These photos are from my latest ship, the Ocean Rig Apollo. I’m actually aboard right now. We’re delivering the ship from the shipyard in Korea to it’s first job offshore Congo. I joined the ship with the rest of the crew onboard right now in Mauritius about 3 weeks ago.

These are some pictures from our voyage. The first one is our departure from Port Louis, Mauritius, the ‘cliffs’ are the coastline of South Africa, after we passed Cape Town (I was asleep for that so missed getting any pictures from there).

Weekly Photo Challenge: Afloat

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Here’s my entry for the Daily Posts Weekly Photo Challenge: Afloat. I have LOTs of good pictures for this one. Here are some pictures of the kinds of ships I see daily while I’m at work.

supply boats
3- odd number of boats
DSV Global Orion

Yeah, they’re all afloat, tho I sure don’t know how a couple of them manage it. 😉