Standing night watch during a storm is like riding a bull blindfolded. Wedge yourself in somewhere and hang on. For four hours. With no visible moon, stars, or horizon, the unchanging view out of the pilot house is a big ball of black, an odd sensation, as my eyes tell me that I am not moving, but my inner ear assures me that I am. Over the last two days, the seas have been high but predictable, allowing a certain surety of rhythm. As anyone who lived through the nineties and was exposed to all the boy bands knows, however, just because something has rhythm doesn’t make it tolerable.
Night watch during high seas is not nearly as fun as when it is calm. There’s no chatting with Mike the Mechanic. No working out or stretching. No bowl of ice cream and iPod under the stars. No ocean breeze gently moving through the open doors of the pilothouse. No watching the clouds shift or the moon rise. There is only wedging myself into a half sitting, half standing, all braced position in a corner, trying vainly to anticipate the next jarring crash as the boat wallows through crests and troughs like a sketchy carnival ride. There is the sultry heat of an un-airconditioned room heated by a dash full of electronic equipment and the tangy nervous sweat of two grown men cowering from the elements behind doors closed to keep the ocean, twenty five feet below on a good day, out as it rears up and knocks insistently. There is a radar screen that shows nothing but a mass of patchy green, the microwaves sent out and bounced back dutifully reporting the stormy impenetrable soup ahead and behind. There are cabinets duct taped shut to keep their contents from flying all over the confined space. There is the disconcerting black nothingness of zero visibility out the front windshield.
The Odyssey was built as a small cruise ship to ply the somewhat protected waters of Fiji, offering luxury and a smooth ride to its passengers. Part of that smooth ride was obtained by giving the boat a well rounded bottom that lacked a sharp or deep keel. The effect is a gentle ride in gentle waters, without a lot of snap or roll.
Well, add big open ocean swells and she wallows like a pig. It is crazy to sit in the wheelhouse and feel the waves lift and tilt the boat at the same time, the hull not really biting deeply into the water. I can hear one prop cavitate as it moves close to the water’s surface, then the other as the boat slides down the other face of the wave, an unnerving change of pitch in what is supposed to be the monotonous thrum of power transferred from engines to water.
Rain squalls come and go, forcing us to lock down the wheelhouse and stifle inside, listening to the rain shellacking the boat. The radar screen and assorted electronics cast a ghostly glow throughout the wheelhouse that are comforting when the doors are open but seem sickly when we are shut up inside. The squalls pass and we can open the doors and peer over the side, watching in the dim reflection of the mess hall lights as the boat jacks up on the waves and seems ten feet taller than it usually is, making the fall down to the water thirty feet. I hold on when I do this.
Doing space checks during a storm is interesting if for no other reason than moving from area to area on the boat is like riding an amusement park ride without a seatbelt. As I move from room to room, peering in holds and hatches, I find one question going through my mind again and again: “Where the hell is this water coming from?”
I make it sound like this is all miserable, but it isn’t. The Odyssey is a fine, seaworthy vessel who does her job well, and the tragically misnomered Pacific Ocean has been nothing but good to me. An occasional reminder of nature’s power keeps me humble and cautious. Too long at the top of the food chain, master’s of our environment, makes us soft and complacent, and some comparatively small waves are a pretty painless way to shake things up a bit, put me in my place.
