Marina has moved!

Owing to the much greater ease of uploading photos, I have moved my blog to wordpress. All but the comments (sadly) have been transfered. Please check out my new blog at http://earthlyescapades.wordpress.com/

After the Wall

The post below brings me back into the present, which has caught up with me and prevented me from finishing my stories of the ship. Rest assured, they will make their appearance some day soon.

Following two exhausting red-eye flights back-to-back and a sacrifice of nine hours, I arrived in Berlin with the group on Tuesday afternoon. In the lazy German sunshine we drove to the hotel, put our things in our rooms, and headed back outside for a walk to what would be the first of many, many memorials.

We have thus far typically had free time for lunch and in the evenings, in which my non-verbal communication abilities have been very much put to the test. My range of German is limited to little more than hallo, bitte, and danke. Otherwise the trip has been bursting at the seams with highly educational tours and lectures, and in this three day immersion crash course I now know a lot about 20th century Germany and Europe in general.

As a student of political science (among other things), I hear frequently about the importance of November, 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall. I had heard about the event my whole life, but as I was only six months old when it happened, I never really knew what it was about before high school. I knew only that there was once a wall in Berlin (wherever that was) and that now some people had pieces of it like souvenirs. Later of course I learned all about the wall dividing East and West Berlin, the Western powers from the Soviets, freedom from communism, and how it was intended to imprison East Berliners behind the Iron Curtain. Or that was the standard line anyway, colored with old propaganda but based in truth.

I always expected there to be more nuance, and nuance I have found. Life was not all bad in the GDR, and most people did not want to leave. There were many students who wanted to change the system from within. There were many people (e.g. career women who could now make as much money and hold as much respect as their male colleagues, which they in fact are presently having trouble with) who liked things the way they were. The deeds of the Stasi (the now infamous secret security of the former GDR) were kept indeed secret, and the extent of its intelligence and its prisons was known only to those on the inside. In fact, there is a fair amount of nostalgia for old East Berlin at present. We got quite a large picture, talking with former prisoners, learning about the history, hanging out around the modern city, etc. The architecture is beautiful, save for the remnants of Nazi construction, which is certainly impressive but hardly attractive. It’s hard to believe that the city is so young, comparable to the United States.

Yesterday we spent almost ten hours on the bus, mostly caught in a traffic jam, making our way from Berlin to Wroclaw, Poland. I will have more to write on this small, surprisingly medieval and remarkably multicultural city at another time.

Out on the Pacific, Part 2 of 3

The stories from the second half of the trip are considerably longer, so I have split them up once more. Here's some of the best—

7/9/09 – 17:51 – quarter deck

Just got back from going aloft! A bunch of the A-Watch girls and I went up to the foretop (a small platform above the course yard on the foremast, not to be confused with a crow’s nest, which is sheltered and usually on the mainmast, and which we don’t have), and took turns climbing up to the very top. We spent about an hour out there, taking in the view, sighting plastic, singing and yarning. It’s obvious why there’s a sailing tradition of yarning up in the yards! We couldn’t actually go out on the yards this time, however, because we have all the squares and the Rafee set, which comes out in a light running wind. Even though we’re not going very fast, we look fantastic.

It’s just incredible how much plastic there is out here. And even if it’s not the solid island of garbage that Charles Moore and Oprah try to portray, it’s still disgusting.

I am going to miss this so much. This is an experience everyone should have. The skills I’ve learned—community before self, the courage to make friends with new people right away, awareness of my environment, the ability to exist completely in the moment—all these I have picked up in such a short time, out on a tall ship in the middle of the ocean.

7/11/09 – 13:45 – quarter deck

We played a game called fax machine at our last watch meeting with Nick and Rachel. I tried to write the start of a murder mystery and it turned into something about Zack clogging the head and Carolyn having to deal with it.

JWO (Junior Watch Officer) phase starts this evening with Sam in charge of deck and me in charge of lab.

7/12/09 – 19:21 – library

We were sitting up on the quarterdeck — me with my fiddle, Madelyn with her guitar, Kat Caroline, and Landes — having a singing party. We were alternating between singing sea shanties a cappella and jamming on some nice folk tunes. As we were singing a sweet harmony of “Leave her Johnny, Leave her,” Capt. Chris came up on deck and joined us in song. At the end, and it was a long shanty, he told us, “Very nice,” and we segued into “Haul Away Joe.”

Half way through the first verse he yanked the life ring pole out of the port side and chucked it out to sea. Landes was the quickest to react, jumping up and yelling “Man Overboard!” We quickly joined in the pointing and shouting, then Kat disappeared, Madelyn dropped the guitar and went up in the shrouds, and Caroline made for the rescue boat. I was still holding my bow and fiddle, trying to decide in those first few seconds whether I could delay doing my job long enough to put my fiddle in its case. On the one hand, it was just a drill, and if I just set my fiddle down it was bound to get broken or lost in the frenzy on deck of getting the ship stopped and the rescue boat deployed. On the other hand, it’s imperative to treat drills like the real thing, and a person in the water is far more important than my instrument.

I agonized for several very long seconds, then stored my bow and fiddle in the case as fast as I could, skipping the neck strap and not bothering to zip the outside, and I left it by the laz hatch right where I had been standing. I then saw where Kat, Madelyn, and Caroline really were—trying to get the starboard side life ring and pole into the water. Noting Andrew going for a life vest, I decided to do the same, and as he tossed his off port I tossed mine off starboard. Nick gave me an exasperated look. I then went straight for the rescue boat, and everyone who had been below was just arriving. Poor Pamela, who goes out in the rescue boat with Adam, had been in bed under a down comforter. When she came up she was just in shorts and a tank top with a rubber jacket. Needless to say, at dinner that evening she was in full cold weather gear!

The rest of the drill went really smoothly, the best yet, and no one ever noticed my poor little fiddle.

We had our first big JWO stare this morning (head back, mouth open, vacant eyes aimed at the sails, silence). A good twenty minutes with all of us trying to figure out what on earth was wrong with the Fish. Good times.

I cannot start an outboard motor.

Note to certain other students: No futzing around in the engine room when you’re supposed to be at Maritime Studies discussion.

A cute moment which is now written up on the saloon white board: last night when we pulled up the hydrocast, we (Giora, Murph, me, Talia, and Zack) decided at Giora’s prompting to test the temperature of each water depth in the different bottles, trying to “feel” where the thermocline was. We had a little too much fun. Here’s what on the board—

Excited student at Carousel:
Carolyn: It’s just water, do they know it’s just water?
Lil: Shhh don’t tell them, they might freak out!

7/14/09 – 17:24 – saloon

Yesterday I experienced the most intense watch ever. I was in lab for afternoon, but we were called to deck after class. Bryce was calling the shots, which was odd because Jon was JWO. He had us get our tethers from the lab, and then explained what we had in store. Now that we are in the California Current the winds have picked way up, and NOAA was forecasting gales. As we were the on-duty watch, we needed to storm furl the squares’ls so they wouldn’t come loose from their brails and blow out to leeward. At our watch mtg that morning Zora had said she still wanted to go aloft, and now we were being sent up, not to the platform of the foretop but along the mast itself, in near gale force winds. But we were excited to do it.

Ian and Murph went up to the tops’l yard (where there are footl’ns and a yard to lean on!) and Zora and I had the next spot down, with me to leeward. It turned out to be one of the scariest things I have ever done. We clipped in a couple rungs up, but it was too low to actually hang by the harness. So we held on with one arm, mine outstretched, Zora clutching the opposite rung at chest height, and attempted to work the sail with one hand each. I quickly found I had chosen the worse side, for with my feet barely planted on one narrow rung and my weight supported by one hand, I swung wildly from side to side, hanging below the keeled mast. Our hands grew weak as we shook feebly at the sail, trying desperately to work the center skin outboard.

Suddenly we heard someone sing out “Whale!” We paused for a moment, then Ian called from above, “There she blows!” The deck was quickly a frenzy of sailors trying to reach the port bow to get a peak. I shifted my grip and swung around the tops’l to see, and there was the giant spout, less than two miles off. But she held little excitement for me, as I was still unconvinced I would survive this furl. But lo when the topsail was furled, Bryce had Zora and I return to deck to work the brails so we could rest our hands. We made it down safely, and carried out the rest of the storm furling with ease. I could barely feel my arms by the end of it!

Out on the Pacific, Part 1

With four days until I head off for Europe, I've finally gotten a chance to type up some of the best excerpts from my ship journal. I didn't want it to be too long, so I have only included the first half of the trip here, and I will post the second later. Enjoy the small window into the most amazing experience ever.

6/21/09 – 14:06 – Waikiki

Liz is coming!! I emailed in my paper this morning and got an auto-response that Liz had shipped out and would be sailing with Class 224. I told Meg and Melanie but I think it’s supposed to be a surprise.

16:02 – at the hostel

Caroline got the auto-response too and texted Clara to tell everyone so now the surprise is spoiled.

I can’t believe I’ve only known this group for a month. A month ago yesterday was when we all first met. I feel like these are the kids I’ve gone to school with my whole life.

6/22/09 – 22:13 – Robert C. Seamans, Pier 36, Honolulu Harbor

I am in bunk #4, in the foc’s’le! My bunk is under Madelyn, and across from Caroline who is under Kim. Together we occupy the forward-most racks in the ship. The crewman who showed us this space remarked that this is where all our dreams will involve flying. I really hope I don’t spend all my time seasick!

My watch officers are Chief Mate Pamela and 2nd Scientist Adam. Captain Chris called Adam “Dr. Feel-Good,” as he dishes out the seasickness meds. A-Watch had our first meeting on the starboard foredeck, where we had to go around the circle and share our goals. What I told the group was: I’ve been in activities before, be it colorguard or bluegrass, where there is no individual success, but only the success of all the individual parts working perfectly within the whole. What I am most looking forward to is getting to that point here, where I know I am competent and I know everyone else is too, and together we can make the ship do amazing things.

The box with the J-Frame driving controls in it — need to find out what it’s called — has two controls: one for J-Frame out/in, the other for wire raise/lower. The inside of the cover has “POOP?” written on it to remind us to turn off the poop pump before we do deployments so we don’t collect our own refuse. And to turn it back on when we’re done!

We got to practice sweating a line with Bryce by hoisting Liz into the air on the gantl’n. The process: Two-Six-Heave!

We have to wake up at 0520. Ugh.

6/24/09 – 16:54 – between Molokai and Lana’i

Yesterday was a mess.

After lunch we cast off from the deck and set sail in Force 5 (20 knot) winds. Once the four lowers were set, and we had spent some time watching Oahu disappear to the north, Pamela told us to go get some rest before dinner and evening watch. At this point, four people had vomited over the leeward rail.

Caroline, Zack and I headed down to our bunks in the foc’s’le and lied down to nap. The up-and-down motion of the bow made it literally hard to keep my head on the pillow. I rolled over. Bad idea. My head started spinning, my heart and breath quickened, and my mouth filled with saliva. I got out of my bunk, but I was too weak to get my shoes out of the drawer. I made it to the top of the lobby, but the doors were closed to keep out the high waves and I couldn’t get one open. I called for help and Zack came up, opened the door, put his harness on me, and clipped me to the rail just forward of the rescue boat so I wouldn’t tumble into the sea. The fresh wind cured me long enough to be moved up to the quarterdeck with all the other sickies. In all I hurled four times. Most of that evening is a blur.

Tonight I’m on galley clean-up during mid-watch (2300-0300). That should be lovely. If anything makes me vomit again, it’ll be cleaning nasty food below decks.

6/25/09 – 19:28 – north of Oahu

Land is no longer visible.

I had to vomit two or three times during mid-watch galley clean-up last night. It’s hard because I want to be selfish and just go lay on deck when I feel that miserable, but I am on watch and I have to keep doing my job.

Tomorrow I will finally get to take a shower.

6/26/09 – 16:37 – Pacific Ocean

I got a haiku from Meg and Alex (both in B-Watch) on my bunk. B House love. It reads:
Hershey’s chocolate
It’s good going in and out
Clean the heads thour’ly
I absolutely love it. I miss B House. I miss the nice 24-hour schedule. I miss chillin’ in our common room. I miss going to Pie in the Sky and Coffee O. I miss bike rides and walks to the beach. I miss having a house that we ran all by ourselves, not with a big crew more experienced than us, making sure we do everthing exactly one way.

I bet I’ll miss the ship though. It’s a ton of work, I never feel totally relaxed, and I’ve spent far more time sick than I’m ok with. But I don’t have to think about anything more than the very immediate future, and I’m surrounded by a great group of people out on the Pacific Ocean. Time passes fast because of the strange watch schedule, but for now it’s a pretty sweet life.

6/27/09 – 19:35 – bunk

No seasickness today! Hopefully it’s over for good.

6/28/09 – 21:00 – bunk

I am so happy right now. It’s amazing how my fiddle can do that. Just holding it puts me in a good mood.

The winds died down quite a bit today. And we’re heading them up pretty hard. Which means rather than speeding to San Francisco, we are crawling toward Japan. But the forestays’l has been fixed so we can set that now and unreef the main, which should help carry us through the doldrums.

Things are starting to feel routine, which means time is passing faster. Tomorrow marks one week on board the ship.

6/29/09 – 13:32 – quarter deck

Swim call!! This afternoon Capt. Chris let us go swimming. We scrambled into swim suits, mustered on the lab deck, and after a safety talk jumped overboard. That was one of the coolest things I have ever done. Crystal clear cobalt blue water below and the horizon stretching in every direction. Beautiful.

The wind is dead. It’s funny, anywhere else we would consider this perfect weather, but as sailors we think it’s terrible. Dawn, however, was absolutely gorgeous. Jon and I had to stop to admire it. The water was like glass, the clouds the perfect fluffy kind radiating out from the horizon, the sky a full palette of colors – coral pink, tangerine orange, sweet lime green, and lavender lining the bright white clouds. Just stunning.

7/3/09 – 13:55 – quarterdeck, North Pacific Subtropical Gyre

It’s been more than a full rotation since the last time I got a chance to write. Since then we have changed watch officers and changed course. And I think my outlook has changed a bit too.

For one thing, I am a helm junkie. At first I loathed taking the wheel, because she would never go the direction I wanted. I was convinced I wouldn’t ever get the hang of steering, and that I would be personally responsible for the ship going wildly off course. But after only about two times at the helm I figured her out, and now I am a pretty darn good helmsman if I do say so myself. At this point steering the ship is my favorite thing to do. Especially by the stars.

We’re motor-sailing straight through the gyre because of the weird weather systems. There are pieces of plastic floating by once a minute. We get hundreds of particulate plastic pieces in our surface tows. It’s ridiculous and horrifying.

7/5/09 – 17:32 – quarter deck

Happy Independence Day, America. We officially rescheduled the Fourth for the 5th on the ship, and our great swizzle, themed “As American as Apple Pie” just ended about half an hour ago. The primary activity of the swizzle was singing, which I love. I keep getting complimented on my singing voice, and I know I owe a lot of that to Patrick. I’m going to miss all my music groups next year!

I’ve decided I love it on the ship. I love living in this small community where everyone knows each other really well and sees each other every day. It’s like having a huge family. I love working on a sailing ship, I love doing the science, I love being on the water. It’s so chill, and so healthy, and everything we do has a real impact on our community.

7/7/09 – 19:35 – saloon

I’m in a great mood right now. I was “it” today for afternoon watch and everything went really well. I kept up a quick rotation, sent off the report to the Nat’l Weather Service, pre-computed stars for evening twilight, and — wait for it — trimmed the sails! The wind has shifted to NNE, force 3, and we’re sailing full-and-by under all sails fore and aft, due east to San Francisco. We’re barely making 5 kts, but it’s a beautiful thing.

It goes fast

I'm sitting at gate C16 at Boston Logan airport right now waiting for my flight home. I have another 90 minutes or so, then it's off to California for two days before making the trip to Hawaii. Once I leave for Honolulu I will no longer have cell phone or internet access. I do intend to keep a journal for the whole month-long voyage from Honolulu to San Francisco and post some excerpts from that when I get back on land. But for the next month or so I will not be posting anything. If you are interested in updates from the Robert C. Seamans, you can find out about our current position at http://sea.edu/voyages/index.asp or look for daily tweets at http://twitter.com/sea_seamans (I loathe twitter but luckily I'm not the one updating it!).

The past four weeks have been amazing. In a very short time I have greatly expanded my field of knowledge into fascinating areas I never thought I would study, challenged myself with exciting field work and research projects, and made an incredible group of friends that I know will only become closer as we all become shipmates in less than a week. Despite the schmooey weather Cape Cod was beautiful, and I am sad to be leaving the quirky little town of Woods Hole. Dean Paul Joyce advised us all when we first arrived, "It goes fast." He was right.

One of the highlights of the experience was the exceptional faculty. We had three professors, each of whom was always passionate and excited about both their subject and their students. Sadly, our Maritime Studies professor, Liz Fisher, told us from the start that she would not be sailing with us because she needed to finish her dissertation this summer. Monday we tried to take this into our own hands. In Liz's lecture on pirates that morning we learned about the means for pirate crews to address grievances on their ships—the Round Robin. Rather than drawing up a standard linear petition, the crew would sign their names in a circle around the statement so as to disguise who signed first and ensure that the message was coming from the people as a whole. That afternoon we decided to adopt this strategy, and we drew up a Round Robin requesting the presence of Liz Fisher on our cruise, signed by the whole class.

Liz had joked that morning that she had thought about talking to her boss about coming with us, so we presented our petition to Paul. He said he would absolutely support her coming, and that SEA would even buy the plane ticket. So we took our petition to Liz herself, and told her that we didn't want to pressure her if it would jeopardize the work she needed to do, but we wanted her to know that the whole class would love to have her come with us.

At our final meeting this morning President Bullard told us that the unprecedented act of a class presenting a grievance in a historically accurate manner had brought the matter to the attention of the highest level. We were given no confirmation one way or the other, but we all have our fingers crossed to see Liz in Hawaii.

The duties I am about to embark on include setting and striking sail, deploying science equipment and analyzing samples collected, navigating across the Pacific by celestial navigation, serving as assistant in the galley and engine room, and being as helpful and encouraging a shipmate as I can be. The experience is guaranteed to be unforgettable. I am ridiculously excited to get on the ship.

Field Trip

Wednesday we went down to the MBL dock and went out on a boat into Vineyard Sound to do a bottom trawl and a plankton trawl. Under the guidance of Bob the biologist, we dropped the heavy bottom trawl net into the water and motored on at about two knots for a few minutes before raising it back up. Bob intentionally suggested that it might be too hard for the women to pull back in, so of course it ended up being only women who did. When we got it on deck I was shocked at how much was in it—a hundred or so sea urchins, a couple dozen spider crabs and lady crabs, a handful of starfish and brittle stars, and couple sea cucumbers and hermit crabs. The crabs weren't too happy with us. We examined a few, tossed some back in the water, and kept most for the research tanks (no one got injured).

It was a great boat ride. We learned how to take ranges by watching for when two buoys pass one directly in front of the other as we go by. And we got some nice views of Woods Hole and the east side of the Cape. When we got back we went over to the MBL lab and took a tour from Ed. He was one of those folks who absolutely loves what they do, and loves to talk about it even more. He let us hold a squid, a sack of squid eggs, a lobster, several horseshoe crabs, and live clams. Then went to the large squid tank and watched the males chase around and fight for the females. When the tour was over we went upstairs where a neuroscientist to whom we have subsequently as Einstein (on account of his hair) showed us several different types of zooplankton (mainly copepods) with the projector microscope. Apparently ours was the first class to go on this field trip, and it was really fun.

Last night a bunch of us went to the Woods Hole contradance. There were a lot of beginners, but it was still a blast. Everyone in our group stayed pretty high energy the whole time, and I managed to teach a couple of the guys to swing and waltz. The band, which I believe was the Woods Hole Folk Music Society, was amazing. They played a lot of tunes I don't know and the main fiddler was great.

And today was the first real day of summer. It was sunny and beautiful, and I now have a lovely sunburn owing to me being outside for literally the whole day. We had breakfast sitting outside at Cape Cod Bagel Co. It wasn't Absolute, but they were pretty good. Then I did some work outside at the picnic tables back on campus. Then we went out to the beach and went swimming along the crystal clear water of the sand bar, where I realized how much I love being salty. Then we migrated to Coffee Obsession in the village and sat out on the deck doing some more studying, followed by some gymnastics and antics on the grass on the water. It was wonderful.

An update for those who were concerned: Oscar got a bigger bowl! We've been trying to take care of him as best as our google searches tell us how. But apparently you're supposed to have 10 gallons of water per goldfish...

Saving the World

Almost every conversation I have had since I arrived on the Cape has been about something deep. We've talked about the origin of inequality, the applicability of academia to the modern world, and most of all, what the feasible solutions are to the impending global climate change.

Earlier this year I went to one of Columbia's World Leaders Forums with President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, currently holding the rotating presidency of the EU. A fierce capitalist, Pres. Klaus made a point of expressing his conviction that "Global Warming" is little more than a scare tactic used by socialists to justify inappropriate government interventionism. While I certainly don't subscribe to his absolutist faith in the market, I do recognize the politicization of the phenomenon of global warming, and the perils of greenwashing. However, as has been further emphasized by the oceanography class we are currently taking here, serious changes need to be made.

The other night when were meeting with our research groups, I showed everyone the Story of Stuff (seriously, click the link and take 20 minutes to watch it). The basic reality, which the video does a wonderful job of presenting, is that we have turned the world into a linear consumer-based system, which by definition cannot be sustainable. Ever since the days of Nixon's kitchen debate with Krushchev, the American economy (at least) has been based on turning resources into consumer goods into junk. Sure, it's way more complicated than that, but the fact of the matter is that the Earth survives by operating in cycles, and our use of resources is not cyclical; it's a one-way street. The global climate "crisis" is the inheritance of our generation.

This afternoon we all went to a climate change lecture with Dr. George Woodwell held by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). It was full of good science, but I think it left us all rather disappointed. We know things need to change, we just don't know how to go about it. We keep debating whether the priority should be individual or governmental action, whether fossil fuels should be replaced by more sophisticated technology or by a return to a self-sufficient small community lifestyle that doesn't require them, whether investments in carbon offset technology are helpful or simply distracting us from the root of the problem. We are not all in agreement about where to go from here, but we are all in agreement that we are fed up with the way things are.

This past Saturday we were all at Dylan's house party for most of the day. It was really fun—we chilled on the beach singing Disney songs and sea chanteys, made giant brownie sundaes, and got psyched for our sailing expedition by watching Pirates of the Caribbean. And, as is our recurrent activity, we debated how to save the world.