Student Life

Sixteen-foot swells. Nbd.

I think we should take a moment to reflect on all the badass stuff I did on a boat. I should also probably mention the five-day storm that left us hove-to and clinging to our lives for the greater part of a week.

Badass Thing #1: I didn’t see land for four weeks. Standing on the rising and falling bow of our grand ship, I would look back and marvel at its size. It was freaking tiny. Steering this beast was both empowering and belittling, depending on your perspective. On one hand, I was standing at the wheel of a square-rigged tall ship determining her course across the majestic Atlantic ocean. BA. On the other, I was five and a half feet of organism fighting my way across a relatively boundless expanse using a fragile and finite attempt at a shelter-craft which could be effortlessly demolished and forgotten by its surrounding environment. In general, I preferred to focus on the first perspective.

Cat Jenks at the wheel.

Badass Thing #2. I sailed us out of a five-day storm. By about the middle of the trip, students took command of the ship’s business. During each watch, one student took charge of the deck as the Junior Watch Officer (J-WO), and another of the lab as the Junior Lab Officer (J-LO). The J-WO was responsible for all of the making the boat do what we wanted and needed, including navigation, traffic, setting, striking, and trimming sail, etc. The J-LO was responsible for all scientific deployments and data processing. So, for a few brief periods, I was calling the shots aboard the Cramer. I got to shout, “hands to set the ____,” and “hands to strike the ____,” and “on your braces, let go and haul!” and all those good things. My most exciting experience as J-WO came when I got to set the first sail after five days parked.

Furling the jib on the bowsprit.

Also right around the middle of the trip, we experienced a weather phenomenon that plopped a stationary high pressure system right on top of us for five days, meaning persistent winds of up to 35 knots and seas up to 16 feet. This was a difficult time in the trip. You couldn’t walk because you couldn’t stand up. You couldn’t sleep because you couldn’t lie still. You couldn’t eat because the waves keeled the boat over farther than the gimballed tables could correct and dishes flew off the tables and all over the sole (floor). We couldn’t even have field day. It was serious. At the beginning of this “storm” we simply struck most of the sails and lashed the rudder hard left so that we were “hove-to”, which pretty much means “parked”. They rigged up the “student strainer” and additional safety lines to ensure that all humans remained aboard the boat.

I was the J-WO to down-rig the safety lines and set the mains’l and jib and sail us out at the end of those five days of hell (and by that I mean I was the one to give the orders to other people to do all those things). It was a very satisfying and cathartic experience.

I'm up at the course yard (the top thing perpendicular to the mast, from which a sail (the course) would hang) non the left.

Badass Thing #3: Furling sails on the bowsprit and aloft. The bowsprit is the pointy thing at the front (bow) of the ship that sticks out beyond the deck, holding the big wire (stay) to which the front sails (jib and jib tops’l) attach. Climbing out on the net underlying the bowsprit was called “laying on the headrig” and was one of my favorite activities. As the bow dipped toward the water, just a net between you and the sea (and certain death since you would be instantly crushed beneath the hull of the ship if you fell in), the feeling was exhilarating. It was especially cool to watch flying fish from the bowsprit, as they glided and bounced in flocks (well, schools) over the surface.

Being on the bowsprit in the rain was also always a good time. Squalls descend suddenly in the tropics, and bursting onto the headrig to wrestle down a sail in a downpour was probably one of my favorite things. I might have yelled “now THIS is sailing!” the first time it happened.

I also had the opportunity to go aloft to furl the squares’ls (which just means ‘square sails’, the square ones on the foremast). I climbed up the shrouds (the rope ladder-looking things along the outside of the rigging), then shimmied over to the mast. There I clung to the mast ladder rungs with a few limbs and beat the crap out of the sails with my remaining limbs. Sails are made of a rather stiff material and require significant force to finagle and furl. I was up there for over an hour on my first time aloft, and I have to admit every muscle in my body was a bit tense by the time I descended. I’m not one to be afraid of heights, but it takes a certain amount of effort to remain attached to a 1-foot wrung 50 feet in the air and get anything done.

Hiking through The Valley of Desolation with lava on our faces.

Badass Thing #4: After four weeks of not walking more than about 70 feet at a time, I went on a twelve-mile hike through the rainforest mountains of Dominica. “Fat Kids at the Back of the Pack” was the song I composed that day. But really it was quite enjoyable.

Bathing in hotsprings isn't such a bad way to rest during a hike.

Our trek took us through The Valley of Desolation, named for its boiling sulfur and lava vents, and ended at one of the two boiling sulfur lakes in the world. It smelled bad, but it was beautiful. Along the way, our guide smeared lava paste on our faces, let us bathe in some hotsprings, and took us to swim in a cold-water cave system with a waterfall jumping pool. It was pretty badass.

Badass Thing #5. Titrating for oxygen levels. On a boat. Enough said.

Note: aboard the Cramer they call titrating “Winkling” and it requires “winkle gear”.

Winkle gear.

As promised yesterday, some insights into my time at sea.

The Good List:

None of these pictures really relate to the content of the blog, but you need to see pictures.

1. As a general introduction to the overall theme of life aboard the Cramer, I offer you this shortcut. To translate anything from land-life to sea-life just add ‘EXTREME’ before your gerunds.

EXTREME CLEANING: Field day, which occurred every Saturday, featured an all-hands cleaning frenzy. Every single item was fire-lined out of the galley to the deck; ALL surfaces, including bulkheads and overheads, were scrubbed with 2×4 sponges, which required some exciting ninja-ing about and suspending oneself over active fire-lines; crevasses between any two solids were to be excavated using “mung knives” (mung defined as a state of matter somewhere between liquid and solid consisting mostly of dark green and human funk); and to top it all off, you have under two hours to complete this task and these surfaces will not remain in a consistent orientation related to the gravity which controls your body, i.e. the boat is rocking.

EXTREME COOKING: Cook for 30 people, extracting food from all corners of the ship and the abyss of two huge and ominous cold storage holds. Oh, and the boat is rocking. One evening I found myself in the galley gimballing a gallon of boiling barbeque sauce over a 500-degree stove for nearly an hour during 16-ft swells. And you can’t really stand up.

EXTREME SHOWERING: Cold water. Navy shower. Good luck standing up.

Amelia and I in the lab. Doing science on a boat. Nbd. Note: microscopes at sea are pretty much a guaranteed puke-jerker. Also, you thought Analytical Chemistry was hard? Try titrating on a boat.

This extremism counts as one of my first three good things about the trip because I realized this gerund modifier early in the trip and just turned every otherwise-ordinary task into a game. I took that cleaning madness to heart and always worked up a sweat and ninja-ed as much as I could during field day. I cooked my butt off in the galley and accepted its test of my skills as a culinary defense artist. Showering didn’t make a very good game, but I did it anyway.

2. . Bioluminescence. This was probably my favorite part of the trip. In addition to the bioluminescent copepods and dinoflagellates I mentioned earlier, whilst anchored just off St Thomas, we saw bioluminescent squid. They gathered near the stern of the ship just after darkness descended on our final swizzle–a surf and turf feast–dotting the calm water with glowing puddles that tricked the eye. I could never really tell how large the squid were, but they left a glowing slick of at least a few feet. This biological wonder helped to remind me of my purpose at sea; I was there because I love the ocean and the magic that it contains. The eery glow never ceased to excited and inspire me, distracting me on bow watch and catching my attention through portholes at night.

That's me putting a harbor furl in the tops'ls. It was my first time aloft and I stayed there for over an hour as the top student on the mast. One of my favorite experiences.

3. As you may have gleaned from my last post, my time aboard the Cramer was a bit more of a challenge than I had expected. I’ll go more into the details of said challenge shortly, but what occurred in response to the challenge deserves a spot on the good list. As I found myself in an unfamiliar place and unusual state, my person sought some coping mechanisms, and what it found was the capacity to create.

I began writing songs, sowing things out of sail clothe, painting, coloring, writing, doing puzzles, drawing on myself in pen. Many of these are things I do on land, but on steroids. I composed a five-verse song with a completely original melody on bow watch one morning, and performed it with two shipmates and a ukulele at an all-hands party. I fashioned a draw-string slip cover for the lab’s jumbo wire cutters which featured a strategically-placed footprint on sail clothe. I covered most of my left leg in a maze of blue pen double-lined squiggle, which lasted pretty long since we didn’t shower often. I co-authored an all-student theater production in summary of the staff aboard the Cramer for our final party.

Of course, I also spent some time leaking tears and snot on the deck, and cowering in my bunk, but a few of my emotional outlets ended up as productive expressions of my creative power. I did things I didn’t know I could. It was pretty cool.

Some shipmates, including Logger Cat Jenks.

I should also point out that my song was a hit and plagued the Cramer Crew for at least a week after its debut. That must be how Katy Perry feels.

That’s not my top three Good Things, but it’s a start. More to come.

My hair was kind of curly at sea. I think it was the salt and human grime.