This is the last full day of sailing on the Ka’imimoana and it is Day Fifteen. Last seeing the navigation program we are about 175 nautical miles northeast of Samoa. Tomorrow this time I will probably be driving to the village with the sister-in-law, niece, stepson and the kids. I am going to have to get some cash so to buy some of the daily necessities such as bottled water and mosquito coil as well as pay the deposit for the rental car. I will take a shower on the ship as it will be my last warm shower for three weeks.
It was a joy to sail on the KA again. I know I said it before. She is a good ship but rarely receives the recognition which she deserves. This is the only ship in NOAA that deploys and maintains buoys used in El Nino/La Nina data collection. The Ka’imimoana also deploys and maintains tsunami buoys if it is located near any of the TAO arrays. Unlike other ships I have sailed, the work performed by the deck crew and the buoy technicians is long and arduous under tropical conditions. I have seen them work during rain squalls at which the raindrops are not cold but warm and steam rising off the wet decks. The buoy techs ride the small boat to each site to conduct component repairs or check conditions for retrieval. I never rode the small boat to the buoys or participated in deck operations for deployment. I believe I would be a liability instead of an asset to the crew.
Interesting circumstances of this trip include a tuna seiner who approached and sailed by one of our newly deployed buoys north of the equator. This was done prior to our ship getting close to inspect and do a fly by the buoy. Aside from that there was not any excitement and in many ways that is a blessing. It means no one was hurt or injured and the job was done.
Last night I went to bed early after talking to the wife. I looked at the clock and it was eleven o’clock. I should get at least eight hours of sleep. When you work on a ship Murphy is a real person and at 03:45 in the morning, I was awakening by the ship’s foghorn blaring at different intervals. It was either massive amounts of rainfall or steamy fog you associate with the tropics. I talked to the third mate and he said it was the latter. I found it hard to fall asleep so I got on-line to check e-mails; looked at Facebook and chatted with a friend I have not talk to in some time. Around 05:00 I put on earplugs and lay back in bed. I fell asleep and gained two and a half more hours of sleep. I woke up in time to start my shift with three minutes to spare!
I volunteered to give a presentation about Samoa to the crew. I did not find the power point presentation from two years ago so I had to make a new one. I forgot one subject, fafafiniis or what we call in America “shemales.” Fafafiniis are boys raised as girls. The reason for that varies from having an all male offspring and needing a female to do house chores. Or females are so adored that a father who has all boys will pick the youngest son to be raised as a girl. After seeing the way women were generally treated, I found that hard to believe. We have one in the village who is now 17. It is hard to explain to people who have never been to Polynesia about Fafafiniis. It goes back to the days when the pre-Christian religions required human sacrifices and only males were allowed to be killed. In order to save at least one male heir, to carry on family name and tradition one boy was selected to be a “female.” Females were not considered worthy to be sacrificed. The missionaries put an end to that nonsense and the only aspect of the pre-Christian religion left is a shaman. There is one in the village that I know of. But on the topic of Fafafiniis, if one of the crewmembers has too much to drink and on a Friday or Saturday night and they see a tall leggy girl they find attractive. They could find out for themselves.
Tomorrow I start living my “other life” for three weeks. So I will enjoy my potatoes and eggs as well as apples and take my last warm shower on Friday. My stepson and his uncle went lobster fishing tonight for my dinner tomorrow night. I am sort of embarrassed at the “celebration” they are putting together for my return. My relationship with that family has matured since the first day “L” and I pulled up in a cab to the front yard and to her family’s bewilderment, I was not the “palangi” (Caucasian) that they envisioned.
It is time to hit the rack and get ready to greet the pilot (“L”s cousin) and set for sea and anchor detail. I do not know if I will update this blog on Thursday night as I plan to be at the village. I will have something on Friday.
Manuia-po from the South Pacific
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