Beer Run, a Christmas Story

The Canadian made the arrangements almost as soon as we arrived. For one pack of cigarettes one of our local friends would drive us to the store selling the cheapest beer. I went along for the ride.
Our friend drove a pickup truck he borrowed from his boss, but it was not a pickup truck in the American sense. As Americans we feel that if your pickup truck can't haul an entire city block up Mount Everest, you're not getting your money's worth.
Our friend's truck was an actual Japanese Toyota, and apparently the Japanese could not disagree more. You could have fit the whole thing in the bed of a Tundra. As we made for the road, we narrowly missed clipping the corner of a shipping container.
Since it was a Japanese Toyota the steering wheel was on the right. I surveyed the cars we passed to see if this was typical, and it turned out that about half were that way and half were the other way. Which raised a new question: which side of the road do you drive on?
Our friend drove on the left almost the whole time, except for one stretch when there were no other cars and there were fewer potholes on the right side. When we drove on the left, the roadsigns (all four of them) faced us encouragingly.
Our friend explained that the road had been built after World War II by British and American soldiers who did not reach an agreement as to which side of the road they would drive on. Instead each army clung stubbornly to the practice of their own nation. And when a British soldier and an American soldier traveling opposite directions encountered eachother on the road...?
"Crash!" explained our friend. "And then fighting."
Today this has obviously been sorted out because we passed other vehicles without incident (regardless of what side their steering wheel was on) though I marvelled at another foreign pickup that somehow managed to carry eight people even though the bed was entirely full of hairy coconuts. Those who could not find room in the cab or atop the coconuts perched on the cab's roof.
The Canadian got his beer and we sped back to the dock, dodging land crabs as we went. As our friend barreled toward the edge of the dock I thought of the near-miss with the shipping container and the 20 foot plunge to the sea.

Voyage by Numbers

For the sake of brevity, I give you Honolulu to Christmas Island by Numbers.

Days at sea: 12
Days I felt sick: 9
Times my schedule changed*: 3
Repairs made to gaff topsail: 7 (at least)
Emergency drills completed: 0
Signs of life (besides us): 2, one ship on radar, too far away to be seen and a bottle of Tide detergent floating by on the endless ocean.

* I was first assigned to the 12-4 watch, and then to daywork, and then to the 8-12 watch.

All of this made me feel as though I was losing my mind, but life had a way of throwing me a rope when I needed it. The most important of these was the radio. Once I was switched to the 8-12 watch, I was in the perfect position to listen to the Captain's nightly call to the Owner.
At first the radio makes noise: beeping and groaning like R2D2 with a cold, then general static, then the garbled sound of everyone speaking every language in the world all mixed together. All I can see from my seat in the wheelhouse is the warm glow of the charthouse light, and I hear the Captain's voice slow and calm, "Deep Water, Deep Water, Deep Water, this is Kwai, Kwai echo-five-whiskey-bravo." Then from hundreds of miles away the Owner's voice.
What's your position?
How's the exchange rate?
How's the weather?
How's your wife?
Sometimes the Owner is loud and clear, like he's standing in the charthouse. Sometimes he sounds like a theramin taught to speak.
Either way, we are not alone.

Safe and Sound...

...At home again.
We're back in Hawaii, and now I have before me the daunting task of trying to update this thing. Updates will occur, as always, at random intervals. I will start at the beginning and proceed in chronological order.

I'm Not Dead

We have safely reached Christmas Island. I was planning many fine updates to be posted on my day off, but my day off was Sunday and the internet cafe was not open. So I have walked in through the open door of a local business and found all the employees out to lunch but the computer on, affording me just enough time to tell you: I'm not dead. You can expect more here, but not anytime soon.

Cargo is King

We spent three days packing the hold full. We hand pack many things, and every single inch of space must be used. For example, you can fit 60 bars of Irish Spring soap inside a medium-sized tire. The hold fills up, and pretty soon you don't need the ladder - you can just climb up the pallet of vienna sausages that's sitting on a 900 pound bale of second-hand clothes. Five of these bales of clothes are for the Man from Christmas. He explained to me how to pick the good ones. "This is no good," he said, tugging at the arm of a sweater. "Too hot." He looked at the next bale down and noticed a clump of athletic shorts. "Very good!" But what will he do with 8000 lbs of clothes? (His son sells them.)
Another piece of cargo is an industrial sized flat bed truck, that we put on top of the cargo hatch and welded to the side of the ship. Says the mate "If you pick up the truck, you pick up the ship." They are one.

Kwai Dirt and Other Love Stories

Kwai, in one of her previous lives, carried gravel. I don't really understand this. Gravel is rocks, and everywhere's got rocks. Everywhere has rocks, including the bilge (bilge= very bottom of the boat, under the floor, like a basement, but only two feet high. Everything eventually ends up there.) The bilge is full of thousands (literally) of pounds of old gravel and sand. The plan is to eventually remove this (I've already hauled a few hundred pounds out of there, as have others.) but Kwai Dirt is special. It cannot be destroyed.
Or so says the crew. Having used the ship's washing machine in daylight now, I'm wondering whether the dirt is as all-powerful as we think. Maybe our weird foreign washing machine (Place clothes in washer, turn on garden hose and add water, add soap, reattach lid...) might not be up to it. Either way, the dirt defines us.

The washing machine is located above a ladder leading up from deck, and below a ladder leading to the thing called Monkey Island. Kwai is in a transitional period and has not lost all the architecture of her life before us. This means that towards the back of the ship is a tall white tower (you can see it in the picture behind the sails.) This tower contains some normal stuff (the galley and the mate's cabin are on the first level) but above that it gets wild. Up the ladder on the Port side is the Dwarf Castle, a home-made cabin constucted of tarps and plywood now used for storage. On starboard is a secret storage space called the Noodle Hatch (currently contains mattresses.) The Monkey Island is the very top. (While I was getting used to the ship I spent a lot of time going "Wait, WHERE??")

Below all this madness is the perfect little cabin that Nate and I share. It is fabulously luxurious, containing such ammenities as an outlet, several clothes hooks, and a porthole. Nate has strategically placed fans so that fresh air is drawn directly toward the top bunk, which is big enough for us to comfortably share. The best thing though is the book shelf. Unlike many boat book shelves, its selection is not comprised solely of discarded spy novels and boring historical dramas involving boats. Sure, there's a copy of "Sail Tall Ships!" What boat doesn't have at least three copies? But besides that the space is filled by real writers like JD Salinger, Jack Kerouac, Joseph Heller, and (hurray!) John Steinbeck.

How to Make a Profit on a Tall Ship (Part 2 in a Series)
Do everything yourself.
So now I'm the ship's sailmaker.
Help.

Contemporary Art

I said this about Picton Castle, and I'll say it again: Being registered to the Cook Islands is awesome! It's difficult, if not impossible, for anyone other than Americans to get paid work on American-flagged vessels, but the Cook Islands enforces no such restrictions. Our crew at present consists of five Americans (the Owner, the Captain, the Cook, Nate and Myself) one Canadian, one German, two I-Kiribati, one Brit, and one Spaniard. On Sunday we had the day off and use of an old Honda mini van, so all of us (minus the Owner, the Captain, and the Cook) piled in. We dropped off the Brit (our Mate) and the Spaniard(our Super Cargo) at the ship's other car, and the rest of us embarked on Island Tour.
The purpose of Island Tour is to pack as many people in the van as want to come, and once this is accomplished rules are as follows:
1. Sponteneity is encouraged.
2. Start drinking early.
3. When the alcohol runs out, pull over immediately and buy more.
4. Anyone can shout a suggestion for a destination or activity/demand a smoke break at anytime.
5. The driver holds veto power and does not have to pay any of the parking fees.

In the course of our Island Tour we:
1. Visited the Maritime Museum
2. Got Vietnamese food
3. Picked up a local professor of contemporary art (the German's girlfriend)
4. Stopped at a scenic overlook
5. Went to the beach
6. Discussed contemporary art at length

Island Tour is a lot like Kwai: It's barely-controlled chaos, but everyone's happy.

When Boats Fly

A Travel Lift is a device with which many sailors are familiar. Basically, it looks like the outline of an enormous cube made from large steel beems and put on wheels (two huge tires per bottom corner) in between the upper sides of the cube are slings, which, with the assistance of a scuba diver, are positioned underneath the ship. The operater of the Travel Lift can then use the machine to take up on the slings by means of giant wire pulleys. In this way a boat is lifted from the water, and the machine carries the ship inland.
I stood on the aft deck of the Kwai facing away from the Travel Lift and watched the pavement move smoothly underneath the ship as if we were flying.

(The purpose of this is to be able to do work on the hull.)

How to Make a Profit on a Tall Ship (Part One of a Series):
The Owner (very hands-on) looks dumpster and pulls out a large metal pipe with a wheel attached. "Why did this get thrown out?" he asks. The question is directed at no one in particular.
I look at the piece. It's obviously a part of something, and it's big, too big to have gotten wrapped up in some other garbage and thrown out by mistake. Besides, no one would be so careless.
"Oh, it's broken," the Owner continues. "But it's worth $5 in scrap."

This Is a Test

A lot of times I think blogs are like masturbation: super-fun for the person doing it but awkward for other people to view. So why am I here, staring down my ancient laptop, trying to pick the rust from my long-neglected writing skills? (My fellow sailors know rust-busting is a violent process that involves a sharp hammer.) Because I will be on the Kwai sailing around the South Pacific delivering cargo to tiny islands where my phone will not work. (Everybody is strongly encouraged to leave comments!)

A common motto among tall ship sailors is "Semper Gumby", meaning Always Flexible. Keep this in mind when you read the following schedule.
1. Next week in Hawaii, loading cargo
2. Then a five to six week trip to Kiribati* and back
3. Then another month on Hawaii, reloading
4. And then two months (round trip) delivering cargo to the Cook Islands and maybe American Samoa.

*It's a country, but I'd never heard of it either. As an American, geography is generally a problem.

And speaking of problems with being an American, on Tuesday I discovered that nobody in the registrar's office has actually read the election code. I called them up to ask for help with my absentee ballot (because it has no hope of reaching me in the middle of the pacific ocean- or in Kiribati.) They told me they would mail the absentee ballots on October 6, and all I could do was hope mine reached me. Luckily, the nice people at www.overseasvotefoundation.org HAVE read the election code, are aware of the options availble to people who are not simply going to be spending a long weekend in Vegas, and will even provide the forms. This is good, because it means I get to vote. (For OBAMA!)

Where am I? Third floor, my mom's townhouse, South Pasadena, CA