The day has finally come and as with any day, it will pass. A new day arrives and then we start the next chapter. The sailing season is over for this year. It started in Bellingham transiting the ship back to Honolulu and ended with an educational outreach cruise to the other islands in the main Hawaiian Island chain.
It has been five days since I updated this blog. I have been busy with turnover issues and taking down, packing and shipping sensors to be sent back to the manufacturers for annual PM (preventive maintenance) and calibration. I cleaned up the shop and stateroom in preparation for my partner to take over the helm for winter in port maintenance. In order for me to fall asleep during the flight, I intentionally stayed up late and slept for a few hours before the 05:30 alarm rang.
I am not sure if the next season will start on the Ka’imimoana sailing to Western Samoa or fly to Pago Pago in American Samoa to meet my regular ship, Hi’ialakai. First issue is a medical one. I have a doctor’s appointment on Thursday to see if there are any consequences from blood in the urine last month. I am hoping they find nothing and it was only an isolated incident. My back has been sore since this cruise started and despite exercising often, I seem to lack the energy to burn. There is always aches and pain somewhere on the body. Over the counter painkillers, do me no good. If I do not take the Ka’imimoana cruise in January then I will have three months in Seattle with “L,” who was the objective of my trips to Samoa in the past. I realize sailing is my job and “L” does too. However, my job is to be her husband as well.
If a bureaucrat or politician gets a wild hair in their nose, they always try to find legal ways to fire me (career civil servants) or force me to take a job with a contractor doing the same work for half the pay. The contractor profits handsomely by charging Uncle Sam five to six times what they are paying me but I certainly wind up on the losing end. Therefore, I point out to “L” where she is more important than my job. My job can always be stripped from me while someone else above always holds the key to progress, but my devotion to “L” does not change unless she decides otherwise. I will see how I feel in two months. I do like being underway and it certainly beats sitting in port waiting for the next cruise to start.
New port call for this cruise was Saipan. I wrote a piece in the Notes section of my Facebook page last May on the personal importance of the trip to Saipan along with my job. For those who do not have Facebook, or missed it altogether, here it is again;
“300 Nautical Miles East of Saipan, Western Pacific, May 11, 2009”
“We are one-day sailing time east of Saipan. I was glad to have made it to Saipan, as there is much family history on my Japanese side tied to there. Unfortunately, the history is not happy. My grandmother lived there as a young woman when her father worked at the sugar mill. She became deaf when a Marine threw a grenade into the cave she and other civilians were hiding. She was in the back and that is what saved her as people in front of her died in the explosion. When Americans had discovered the survivors, a Navy Corpsman treated them and bandaged her ears to stop the bleeding. He offered her a piece of chocolate. Thinking it was poisoned she refused until the young sailor took a bite himself to prove he was not out to kill her. She was going to jump off one the cliffs in the mass suicides that happened there but talked out of it by a Japanese speaking American. Which event came first, I do not know and she does not talk about it to any of us who did not live during that era. My grandmother is in her 90's and living in a home in Numazu. In reality, she is my step grandmother but she is the only one I knew as my mother’s mother had passed away in 1941.
My late grandfather lost most of his classmates in the Battle of Saipan. He was drafted in the Imperial Army. By then in 1944, he and his mates were in the late 30's and early 40's. He was discharged because he was a widower (my biological grandmother passed away in 1941) with five children, the youngest being four at the time. Unfortunately, his friends were not as lucky and never came back from Saipan. The only time he talked about them was when the Emperor was shown on state television or after he drank more sake than he needed to and started to reminisce. The headstones of his friends are in Numazu at the same place where he is entombed. I saw their headstones every time I went to make a grave visit when I was in Japan. All these years hearing about it, I was glad to have an opportunity to see the island. However, the family history tied to the island is very tragic. I did offer silent prayers at both cliffs while there. Some of the Japanese who were there thought it was odd that I would be offering prayers while not looking exactly like them (bearded with a tall nose but the Japanese eyes). If only they knew the real story. I did go to the food festival at the American Memorial Park but the one day I was in Saipan was like a spiritual journey to represent my grandparents whose lives tragically altered by the unfortunate events there. When we sailed by the northern part of the island to head east to the open seas, I looked back at the mountains and the cliffs and hours later took one last look at the tallest mountain on Saipan as it and the memories of this visit faded into the haze.”
I did not forget the visit to Saipan and we are due to return there in 2011. I will make another visit to the cliffs again. I will be back in Hawaii either in January or April of next year.
One more hour until I go to the airport. Flight time is under six hours. I should be home around eleven or eleven thirty tonight. It will be good to be back and then a period of readjustment begins.
Aloha from Hawaii and next time I wrote something here I will be in rainy cold Seattle, regardless, it is still home.
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