Happy Birthday “I” and now you are 18. Two more months and you will officially be an adult after you are out of high school. I am proud of you son and keep up the good work. It’s hard to believe that it has been that long when your mother called work and told me to get my butt to the hospital because you were on your way. It was a 40 mile trip to Tooele and I was praying that there would be no obstruction or detours along the way. I do not recall if ranchers were moving sheep through Rush Valley at the intersection where I turned off to head towards Stockton and Tooele. I knew it was not an unfettered trip to the hospital though.
I was there when you came into the world and cheerfully said to your mother “it’s a boy it’s a boy!” Many people who read this blog or on Facebook remember that day well too! One of these days, we should go back to Utah and visit the people we knew there. I think I’ve been good in keeping promises though some were difficult to meet. Instead of Alaska I took you to Samoa. I am sorry to have missed this birthday as well. “L” and I were with you last year and this is one of the unfortunate aspects of this job. If you launch a career in the maritime industry the same will happen to you. But whatever you do son, do your best and do what you like. If you are doing what you like, your heart will be in it, and you will excel, get to the top and be the best in your field. Happy Birthday Son and see you in 17 days.
This day being the 13th I stopped beliefs about silly superstitions associated with that number after my son was born eighteen years ago. He’s a great son so thirteen was no longer unlucky. I started the day doing my daily inspections and the skipper handed me an impeller blade saying that a bird had hit the wind anemometer. He told me it was the starboard one on the flying bridge mast. I went outside and looked and yes it was a bird strike! The anemometer got the worst of it.
The nose broke off as well and the casing cracked
The watch told me he saw what had happened after hearing some noise from the pilot house overhead. Booby birds are one tough creatures and he said all it did was shake its head and put his beak into it the remaining propeller blades. They are not very intelligent but tame as compared to birds you find on land. If you try to chase it away it will squawk at you in defiance. I was irritated at first because these units are not only expensive (one unit at $4200!) but I knew I had to climb the mast to take the propeller off as it was spinning out of balance. The weather has been terrible last couple of days with wind and rain. I did get a break from the rain in the afternoon and put my harness on, climbed the mast and took the propeller off.
The anemometer lost
The day ended on a not so good note either! After getting through technical support of a major navigation software maker, I had thought we could finally replace the computer that was hanging up the software. It is a pain in the neck for the bridge personnel to have to restart the computer every time it does its typical Microsoft characteristics. My day ended with typical Microsoft idiosyncrasy. Luckily it didn’t hang or crash (miracles do happen) but could not import saved files with way points and such! The issues we had several days ago been solved with help from the maker but here we go again!
The weather has been terrible past several days. It was raining and windy. The ship rolled quite a few times and on the transit to Kingman Reef tonight. The conditions outside resembles the Pacific Northwest minus the cold temperatures and no Starbucks Coffee stores competing against each other. Not that I patronize Starbucks anymore ever since founder Howard Schultz sold the Sonics and let it go to Oklahoma City but frequent mom and pop businesses instead. I do not think we are going to see good weather until we get out of the convergence zone on our way to Hawaii in about a week.
No sun at Palmyra!
The ship has a good write up on Facebook as well the blog maintained by the science group (see link below). If you want pictures of diving I recommend going there to see what they have been doing. That is where you will find the Cousteau aspect of the ship’s mission. It is very interesting to see what they do first hand and the passion they have for science is superb. With the way they perform their task you could tell that their heart is into what they do and do it with pride.
Tomorrow is another day and countdown will be down to 16 days! I still have things I want to do as well as preparing for inport work and the turnover. Borrowing a line from the Grateful Dead, what a long strange trip it’s been.
I bid you goodnight from Kingman Reef.
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