The Slop Chest

This saltwater pump, nicknamed Geronimo, got its name after a...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500

This saltwater pump, nicknamed Geronimo, got its name after a little bout with gravity. Listen to the “science minute” below to find out more.

Another science minute. Here’s another “science...

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Another science minute.

Here’s another “science minute” from Harvard Marine Biologist Geoff Dilly. In this clip, Dilly describes how he keeps track of his equipment while conducting science experiments at sea.

These short audio clips are inspired by “science minutes” produced by the Cape and Islands NPR station, WCAI.

Lobstering with Dad I’m home from sea on a much needed...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:25:30 -0500

Lobstering with Dad

I’m home from sea on a much needed break. One of the first things I did after getting off the ship (besides catching up with my boyfriend and family over a few beers!) was to produce this video on iMovie. I used a flip HD camera to film my father out lobstering on a gorgeous day last summer, and whipped up the video to learn how iMovie works for future projects.

Enjoy!

When sailors get resourceful

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:09:39 -0400

Happy Halloween!

What do you do if you’re miles out to sea and don’t have a pumpkin to carve on Halloween?

Try watermelon! Our creative Third Mate, Kami, came up with the idea and put her skills to work (after first carefully scooping out all the flesh for tomorrow’s breakfast!) and carved up our very own wat-o-lantern.

Instead of a candle, our resourceful sailor used expired glow sticks normally found on our life preservers (she assured me she had replaced them with brand new ones). Soon, our green gourd glowed with a green, toothy smile in the darkened galley.

Our wat-o-lantern did a great job scaring everyone at dinner last night, but unlike pumpkins, he quickly began to collapse in on himself, and I found him lying on his back in a puddle of his own juice, smiling up at the stainless-steel ceiling this morning. It was fun while it lasted, though.

Kami, the ship’s Third Mate, gets creative with a watermelon and some expired life jacket glow sticks.

TV time

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

(Image from: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheMuppetShow)

Put a 63 inch flat-screen plasma TV in a room and fill it with men who sail for a living. What do you think they’ll put on to watch?

That’s right! The Muppet Show!

Tonight at dinner I heard some strange classical music coming from the media lounge next door, so I went over to take a look. The room was darkened and completely packed with guys—sailors and scientists alike. They were quiet, absorbed in the images on the TV screen. They were watching a huge puppet, something that looks straight out of “Where the Wild Things Are” dance with a beautiful ballerina around a stage. I looked at the screen, then looked around the room. Then I looked at the screen again, and looked back around the room. I must have made a face because then everyone burst out laughing—as if I had caught them in some guilty pleasure—it’s like they collectively realized how silly the whole situation was. The bosun especially got a kick out of it; his eyes were still twinkling as he dropped his ice cream dish off at the dish window a few minutes later.

A bunch of crusty guys watching a children’s show! It was still on when I passed by the lounge just now at 7pm.

It’s time to play the music,
It’s time to light the lights,
It’s time to meet the Muppets
On the Muppet Show tonight!

It’s time to put on make-up,
It’s time to dress up right,
It’s time to raise the curtain
On the Muppet Show tonight!

The RV Roger Revelle, the sister-ship to the Atlantis, is...

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:55:25 -0400

The RV Roger Revelle, the sister-ship to the Atlantis, is featured in a special display at the San Diego Maritime Museum.

***

While in San Diego, the third engineer and I took a couple afternoons to visit the city’s maritime museum. Instead of viewing exhibits ashore in a building, museum-goers can tramp about on at least five different vessels, including American and a Russian submarines, two tall ships—including the ship used in the movie Master and Commander— and a steam ferry. Each vessel has unique exhibits and artifacts describing life at sea, the development of American maritime trade, and more.

One exhibit, highlighting famous literary works about the sea, had us both scribbling down quotes furiously in our pocket notebooks. Here are two gems I took with me that sum up both life at sea and working well together with your shipmates:

“There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting and enslaving than a life at sea.” —from Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad, 1900

“Now my men, we have begun a long voyage. If we get along well together we shall have a comfortable time. If we don’t, we shall have hell afloat. All you have got to do is obey your orders and do your duty like men—then you will fare well enough, I can tell you. If we pull together, you will find me a clever fellow, if we don’t you will find me a bloody rascal.”—from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, 1840

Names

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

(written in September)

Apparently I had a nickname—or still HAVE a nickname—in the galley (depending on the cooks I’m working with. The other day the cook took me aside and told me he had something to tell me. “We have a special name for you,” he told me. Uh oh, I’m thinking. This can’t be good.

“When we saw ‘K.Eident’ appear on the schedule before you arrived, we had no idea who that may be. We thought the name could be Kenneth or Kevin, or even your name, Katie,” he said. “But we couldn’t decide if you were a guy or a girl. So we settled on ‘Klinkerton.’ We thought it was a nice, ambiguous name, and you’ve been called Klinkerton ever since.

“We even promoted you before we met you. We called you Corporal Klinkerton, among other things” he added. “We still refer to you as Klinkerton when you’re not around.” Today he called me “Klink” as he dropped dishes off in the scullery. Tehee.

Whales

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:45:00 -0400

(written in September)

Today the transit to the next science station turned into an informal whale watch.

I just happened to be in in the galley (shock!) when it occurred. As I was placing a clean, steaming hot pan on the counter to air dry, I saw a spout of water burst up through the waves outside my porthole. Then I saw another. Today was a crystal-clear sunny day, but the sea is slightly riled with a small rolling swell and some whitecaps, so at first I did not think much of the occasional spouts I was seeing. I looked down, busy with the work at hand, then looked out again, this time seeing clearly the distinct black curve of a fin. Whales!

I ran outside, pausing to yell to the cook, “A pod of whales on the starboard side! I’m going out!”, thinking I was the first to see this wonderment. As soon as I stepped over the watertight threshold, however, I heard the oohing and ahhing of various crew and science members clustered on the bow and the upper deck.

Some, like the chief engineer, had brought out sophisticated photography equipment to capture the sight—brandishing telescopic lenses on cameras I think the pros use. Others had their convenient, handy point-and-shoot cameras. I simply had my wrinkled dish-pan hands, just recently removed from my now-famous lime green gloves I use while washing dishes, but that was OK with me.

There must have been 50 whales. They were huge, and hovering near the surface of the water, feeding on some delight they discovered while traveling along, I suppose. Birds whirled above them, hoping for fragments of whatever the whales were munching on, and groups of seals frisked about, dwarfed by the whales and the waves of the open ocean.

Every few seconds a whale would spout, “PFOOOOOSSSSH!”, water rushing into the air out of its blow hole, and then the whale would sink slowly above the waterline. Once I even saw a long, curvy, black whale dive slowly down, waving its black and white, barnacle-encrusted tail at us before disappearing entirely.

The seals, which seem so loud and fat and big when they are lazing about on the piers of San Francisco, were comical in their smallness at sea. As the ship cautiously drew closer to them, they would dive away en mass, throwing their chubby, round little bodies up and through the waves. Only when they were a safe distance away would they stop and feed, their little brown heads barely visible above the water. The whales never seemed to mind us, though. They kept on blowing, and hovering, then swimming laconically, as the ship sailed by. It was amazing.

Later a scientist I had oohed and ahhhed with at the bow stopped by the dish window to tell me that we had seen rare blue whales in addition to the black-colored whales we had spotted. I have never seen a whale at sea before, never mind 50 of them! Watching them swim and feed was beautiful and awe inspiring.

Behind the window

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:36:56 -0400

An engineer on the Oceanus once said the galley is the heart of the ship. It’s true; any room that centers on food will naturally be the place of warmth and community in a home, including a ship.

The messdeck is not only a place to eat, it is a place to get to know your shipmates, hear the daily gossip, pick up the now well-worn and out-dated newspaper that never seems to get too old to read, play Texas Hold ‘em or Scrabble, or even watch the Alvin dive on the closed-circuit TV. The messdeck is the room you cruise through to see who’s hanging out, what’s cooking for the next meal, and if the pot of coffee is new or needs to be refilled (and grumble about it, while you’re at it).

The galley can be the ship’s eyes and ears, too.

From my position behind the dish window in the scullery, a room attached to the main cooking area, I see everyone on board, some of them multiple times a day. Calculate the number of smiles I must give, with three meals per day for 56 people, plus snacks and other clean up, and how often do I smile? Suffice to say I wear a smile a lot—even when I don’t particularly feel like it (I learned long ago that honey goes MUCH further than vinegar, and my days are tedious enough as it is without the added drama of a snubbed shipmate).

As I lean over a particularly greasy pan, scrubbing at burnt food and trying not to splash myself, I see the ordinary seaman making faces behind a goofy scientist while he waits to deposit his dishes. I see the Bos’n (deck boss) reprimand a seaman for not stowing a tool away correctly. I see two scientists who seem to have hit it off, sharing a moment they think is private (but then they have forgotten they are on a ship—there are no secrets here!). I see shipmates who’ve just woken up, eyes all puffy and hair askew; I see the Captain absent-mindedly drop his dishes in the wash bucket, his mind off in some bureaucratic plane, reminding himself to double-check the arrangements with the agent for the next port stop.

I also hear things, too. In the morning as the Chief Mate pours his coffee, he plants little seeds of rumors, telling me “Did you hear we might get in [to port] a day early?” I hear Alvinites (the guys who maintain and drive the sub) grumbling to each other about how the dive went yesterday, or which Alvinite forgot to charge a battery. I listen (though I may not understand), as a group of scientists talk excitedly about some theory they are applying to their latest experiment.

Often as a rumor spreads, a shipmate caught in the throes of channel fever will stick her head in the dish window wanting to know if I’ve heard any news, who I’ve heard it from, and if I’ve bothered to confirm this story with anyone else of a good-standing reputation (ie: not the mid-to-six oiler!). Most of the time I have no news of substance, only whisperings, and this sorry shipmate will eventually wander off, muttering to herself just exactly how many days are left on this trip until she can go home (eight and a wakeup! six and a wake-up! ONE and a wake-up! We’re going in today!)

If you do not know what channel fever is, let me explain. It is a terrible malady, an illness for which there is no cure but to come alongside the dock as soon as possible and find the nearest beer. This is an illness whereby a person can not WAIT to go ashore, and results from spending too much time on a ship at sea. It’s a common affliction at WHOI, especially for those in jobs where there is no one to relieve them, requiring them to stay on board for seemingly endless months at a time without going home. There are a few of my fellow shipmates suffering from this affliction at this very moment.

So it is with a certain sense of responsibility that I wash the ship’s dishes, listen to the ship’s rumors and do my best to assuage my shipmates’ channel fever.

(image from the National Weather Service) We were scheduled to...

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:04:30 -0400

(image from the National Weather Service)

We were scheduled to leave today for sea, but will be here for atleast another day. Hurricane Rick, a category 5 rager, has forced us to stay lashed to the dock in San Diego to avoid high winds and huge seas. Had we sailed today as planned, we would collide with the storm at the bottom of the Baja peninsula as we turned to enter the Sea of Cortez on Tuesday or Wednesday (if weather predictions are accurate).

After a two-week maintenance period, I’m ready to get out of here. Now it looks as if we may be encountering some angry seas as we sail south.

Marine biologist Geoff Dilly.

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Marine biologist Geoff Dilly.

A science minute Listen to marine biologist Geoff Dilly as he...

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

A science minute

Listen to marine biologist Geoff Dilly as he talks about his work studying worms found on hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Dilly recently completed a nearly three-week trip on the Atlantis, diving in the ship’s sub, HOV Alvin, to study the worms in their natural habitat and gather specimens to examine back home at Harvard University.

This is the first of what I hope will become a series of minute-long pieces modeled after the “science minutes” produced and aired on the Cape and Islands’ NPR station, WCAI-FM.

A typical day

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

What is my life like now that I have returned to being a sailor? Much more tedious than the romantics ashore would allow!

I was used to waking up at the late hour of 8:30 or 9 a.m. as an intrepid (and late working) reporter; now I must get used to being sharp and ready for work at 5 a.m. Not being a morning person, it is a mighty feat to not hit the snooze button one more time, keep my earplugs in (it’s loud on a ship) and simply roll over. But I don’t—instead, I twist my body around so that I may shimmy out of my bunk, my feet outstretched searching for the little metal ladder that assists me from narrow bed to floor, I sleepily (and usually grumpily) climb into my clothes and, Voila! Five minutes (or so) later, dressed and with iPod in hand, I am in the mess deck.

I work from 5 am til 9 or 9:30, cleaning, prepping fruits for breakfast and produce for the lunch time salad bar, restockall juices, milks, coffees and all the other assorted sundries we completely take for granted when we are ashore and our pantries are right next to us—not three floors down. We have a cargo elevator on board, so each morning I make a list, venture to the lower decks and roam the jungles of dry stores and the “reefers” (huge, walk-in refrigerators) to load up for the day. With nearly 60 people on board, items that you’d think would take months to drain, condiments like ketchup and tea, may be gone in mere hours!

After a break from 9:30-11, I work until 1 or 1:30, doing pretty much the same thing.

Then comes a three hour break which to some, may sound like a fabulous gift. THREE HOURS in the MIDDLE of the DAY? Alas, not when you’re the actively-imaginative Katie, trapped on a ship at sea with not much to do. It’s always a challenge to keep myself stimulated and occupied—actually one of the hardest parts about being out here is too much time to myself. I usually use this time to catch up on email, read a little or sit in the sun on deck. The ship has a “gym” (if you can call it that) with an ancient stationary bike and a treadmill, but if the ship rolls just a little bit you can find yourself on the floor instead of the exercise machine—and that is usually excuse enough for me to avoid it altogether!

Once dinnertime arrives, I’m in my prime and I kick it into high gear. Let’s get science in and out of the mess deck! Let’s get these dishes done and put away, let’s get the trash thrown over board, and let’s GET OUT OF HERE! Evenings are my favorite time of day; I am exhausted and another day is checked off. I shower, I may go outside to watch a glorious sunset, or simply lie in my bunk, taking a load of my weary self, and read a book.

And with that, my day is done. I fall into a deep sleep, only to be awakened again at 4:45 a.m. to do it all over again. We often joke that going to sea is like signing up for three months of Mondays, or that life out here is like the movie, “Groundhog Day“—the same thing over and over without relent.

When not being used, sailors call them ropes, but when in use...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

When not being used, sailors call them ropes, but when in use they are called lines. A seaman must be able to tie a variety of knots in a line and coil ropes so they will not tangle. These ropes have been coiled and hung in an easily-accessible nook on the ship’s main deck.

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my..."

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul;
whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses,
and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet;
and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me,
that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street,
and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to
sea
as soon as I can.”

- Moby Dick by Herman Mellville

What's she building in there?

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400

I am at sea on the research vessel Atlantis, a ship belonging to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. I’m a member of the marine crew, and I work in the galley (kitchen), as a messman, which means I prep food, keep the dining area clean and wash a lot of dishes.

I also happen to hold a Masters degree in Journalism from Boston University, and have worked as a reporter on a series of web sites produced by the Boston Globe.

So how did I end up out here?

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It starts with a memory—or a collection of memories now all tumbled together—of standing on a dock.

It was always in the winter, when my family would go down to Taylor Point in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, to wait for my father to return from sea. As we waited there, shivering in the raw wind on the dock of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, we were surrounded by hundreds of other eager onlookers waiting to see the school’s huge, 550-foot training ship slowly make its way up the Cape Cod Canal. As the ship approached, its decks teeming with excited cadets, the thrill and excitement would make me forget how numb my fingers were, or how my feet hurt from standing. In the exhilaration of those homecomings, I would wonder what it would be like to be the one coming home, the one watching the land grow from a faint outline to a black mass to finally a shoreline filled with loved ones waiting to welcome me ashore.

The feeling would intensify when Dad would come home from a voyage on one of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s (WHOI) ships. I’ll never forget the feeling of the gangway as we gingerly made our way from the dock to the ship, and the smell of salt and diesel and steel and cooking that hit us as we went inside. The ship was like a new, exotic world filled with new sights and smells and sounds. I marveled at how my father could live in a room the size of a closet, how he could work in such a hot, smelly engine room, and eat in such a crowded messdeck.

One of my favorite memories is of waiting for the R/V Oceanus to dock in what seemed to me like the middle of the night, though it probably was much earlier. I couldn’t have been older than 10. Together with my mother and two younger brothers, we waited in the car as deckhands threw the lines and the dock rats tied up the ship. The deck glowed with lights as we climbed aboard to see Dad and welcome him home to Woods Hole. In the galley, the cook gave us donuts, which were such a special, sinful treat to have in the middle of the night. Years later, that memory would come flooding back as I entered the mess deck on my first day of work on the very same ship.

And Dad’s stories! How he could hardly stay in his bunk the time the ship rolled and pitched through a storm. How the scientists would go out on missions to discover what lay beneath the ocean’s surface—from hydrothermal vents to the lost ship, Titanic. How the ship arrived and departed from distant and exotic ports. It all seemed so enthralling and so romantic to me.

But when it came time to choose for myself, I decided a sailor’s life was not for me. Dad’s Alma mater and employer, Mass. Maritime, was not even a contender on my list of schools as I applied to colleges. Instead I went to the land-locked University of Massachusetts Amherst, and turned my back on the wonderment of the sea.

But the salt never really leaves the blood, and five years later, I found myself packing a sea bag for a trip around the Caribbean Sea on the tall ship Corwith Cramer. Out of school and unsure of what to do next, I had impulsively applied to the Sea Education Association’s winter sea term and won a scholarship to learn navigation and scientific skills at sea.

Returning triumphantly from a seven-week trip, I knew I wanted to go back to sea, and soon. I got my merchant mariner’s documents as quickly as I could, and called WHOI to see if they had any openings. Within a month, I found myself again on the open ocean, resuming an on-again, off-again relationship both with WHOI and the sea.

Now it’s my turn to tell sea stories, including my accounts and experiences, and the feelings and work of others who’ve also made sailing a part of their lives. Through short written pieces, audio clips and interviews, videos and slide shows, I hope to paint a picture of what life is like lived at sea. Why it’s at once such an alluring and yet so difficult a career and lifestyle, and why it takes a unique person to be successful and happy out here.

So, enjoy! Please feel free to comment or offer suggestions.

Fair Winds…

Kathryn Eident is a journalist who occasionally finds herself...

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:06:00 -0400

Kathryn Eident is a journalist who occasionally finds herself washing dishes on research ships far out to sea.