Fish Fry

Traveling with no expectations is traveling at it's best. Spending two weeks of exhaustion in the shipyard has definitely limited my expectations. It's a rare occasion when I'm this busy at work to get off the ship and out of the yard so when I finally did make it to the beach last night every sight, smell, taste and Soca beat was better than I could have imagined.

The yard period began four days ago on a very windy morning in the Florida Straits. We maneuvered around the pilot station for six hours before the Bahamian pilots, obviously keeping strict island time, were ready to board us from a tossing tug. While we were waiting the a small container ship grounded on the beach as we watched and listened to the event unfold on the VHF radio.

The little ship had just left the shipyard the previous day with new paint and was at anchor in a perilous anchorage to windward of a lee shore near the harbor entrance. The heavy current must have caused the anchor to drag resulting in a beached ship and frantic sounding captain who was not the least bit reassured by port control's very laid back emergency response.

We docked in what could be confused for a vacant parking lot along the water and began making preparations for the following day's onslaught of yard superintendents and laborers. Shipyards are when ships get large repairs and maintenance accomplished plus undergo all pending regulatory inspections. It's where the ship gets all the things done to it that normally can not be done with cargo aboard and has therefore been extremely busy and exhausting.

Four day's into the yard I was in bad need of a few hours away from work, sleeping not included. I knew I would be even more tired the following day, and I am, but finding a place to vent stress can become a necessity and I have learned that when given the chance it should not be passed up.

After befriending several of the workers I started to get a sense of the Bahamian identity. There really is no rush on the islands. There is always another day tomorrow when something can be finished up, or if you never got around to it in the first place, it can be started. While this mindset was proving to be a little frustrating in the yard once comfortably zipping down the highway on the left side of the road I was immediately relaxed.

My cab driver, who went by the name of Uncle, Cow or Mikey, spent as much time telling me to be relaxed and that he could "Get you anything you need mon" as he did explaining his life on the island to me. While I wasn't interested in most of the things Uncle could provide me I was curious about the life of a Bahamian, a mere 90 miles from the similar climate but very different world of South Florida USA.

Uncle was the youngest of forty brothers and forty sisters, all of the same father. He therefore new each and every person on Grand Bahamas. "How many people on the island?" I asked. "Only sixty thousand mon", he replied in all seriousness.

Uncle took an immediate liking to me since my destination, the Wednesday night fish fry on Taino Beach, was his destination as well. Knowing that I had never set foot outside the shipyard gate he had to know how I had heard about the biggest local midweek scene on the Island. I explained how the first thing my friends at the shipyard had told me when I inquired about nightlife was the fish fry. So off we went, bombing down the road in a Toyota mini van, Uncle all the while trying to pick up as many sun burnt tourists on the way at three bucks a head.

We pulled up to the beach and not fifteen feet above the high tide line was a bar with thatched roof and rickety wood dance floor but not a door or window in sight. Next to the bar was a smoky kitchen also thatched in palm fronds occupied by the busiest Bahamians I had yet to see. Thirty people waited in a never easing line of hungry tourists and locals. The ladies frying chicken took my order and fried an entire red snapper right in front of me, piled the plate high with rice, black beans, potato bread and mac and cheese. With a Kalik beer I was a just another tourist until Uncle found me an began introducing me to everyone he knew.
We started with the police, a male and female officer in smart blue uniforms with red banded hats in the English style. Next we met numerous cousins who all had businesses or were some way involved in the island economy. He pointed to one well dressed Bahamian and said "He eats fish heads for breakfast."

"What the hell does that mean" I asked. "It's like if instead of eating grits and conch for breakfast you have boiled grouper instead. Like in the States you have eggs and pancakes mon but if you were very well to do than you could eat steak and salmon every morning."

By saying that this gentleman had something expensive and locally regarded as delicious for breakfast, fish heads, he was very well off. Boiled grouper was just about the most decadent thing one could have on the island for breakfast so I acted impressed by the guys status.

Once the sun retired and I had my swim off an abandoned dock down the beach the full moon rose. I went back to the bar and began mingling with the patrons. I was introduced to a coconut rum which when mixed with a little orange juice was far better than any Bahama Mama. The "Gollywash" though was my favorite drink; a simple blend of coconut water, my favorite liquid next to coffee and sleepy time tea, with cheap gin. This went down easily and being mindful of returning to work in a few hours I laid off the hard stuff and spent most of the night working up a sweat dancing to the DJs mix of local and American club tracks.


As the night went on the tourists and Conchi Joes, that is tourists who have become locals, began to wane as the islanders began to dominate the dance floor. The American tunes were fine, though I had gotten my fill of them in Asia this past winter, but when a local musician would come across the amplifiers the crowd would really get going. Uncle didn't dance too much given his prestigious fish head girth but he was always nearby to offer me advice on pick up lines and who to go dance with (Though a few nights later he would prove show up my sophomoric dance moves)

After a couple hours of dancing sore leg muscles loose I retired to the glassless windows and watched the full moon shimmer on a flat calm Bahamas channel. We had passed right by this beach four days earlier and I remembered several times before that when I had looked over at this thin strip of white and green that is the Bahamas and wondered what life was like on this often ignored and a little run down island. Now I was getting to see first hand amongst the locals and that circumferential feeling of getting to know someplace only after navigating around it floored me.

On the way back to the yard Uncle had to ask for ten bucks in addition to the cab fare I paid him for his services. His kids needed five bucks each for school lunches and as we pulled into their driveway it was obvious that he and his wife or girlfriend were no longer together. He slipped the colorful Bahamian bills into the mail slot and then got back in the van. Tired and hungry he drove me back to the gate. He offered to pick me up anytime and that we could go anywhere on the island. Aiming to stimulate the local economy while pleasing visitors was his main mission and he had not let me down.

False Alarm

What could be more exciting than a general alarm? How about a general alarm in the middle of the night when you are in a sleep so deep that once the blaring siren four feet above your bed wakes you up you're left wondering how long it's been going off. Seconds? Minutes? Longer? Hard to tell as you're jumping into a pair of crumpled jeans and slipping on steel toed boots while simultaneously reaching for a flashlight.

With the siren still ringing the urgency of the situation becomes clear even if your vision has not. "Please let this be a false alarm" is all I'm thinking as the stairs come rushing up to my feet three at a time. The damage control locker, where 4 sets of turnout gear, 4 self contained breathing apparatus and other emergency equipment is stowed, is only half full of the normal faces.

Rather than the alertness seen at drills everyone is pale, red eyed and confused. I tell the boson to take a muster, which I don't think he ever did, and then carry on down ten decks to the lowest hold on the ship straining to hear the radio until the siren is silenced by the captain on the bridge.

I arrive in the lower hold where the other two mates are and hear on the UHF that the fire panel was misread and that the activated detector is actually in the lower engine room. Now at a sprint I'm really hoping this isn't the real thing. My heart is pounding having been fully reclined two minutes ago and I'm pondering the chance of having a heart attack from such sudden exertion.

Entering the engine room I find the second assistant confusedly bouncing from detector head to detector head amongst lime green generators and purifiers looking for a little red L.E.D. This is a good sign; no smoke, no fire, no panic besides the captain's urgent request that the suspect detector is located.

Does this mean I don't have to race back up the ladder praying that the fire team has fitted themselves out in three minutes flat which is very unlikely? A few moments later the detector is located with no flame in sight. It's a false alarm and I'm a little older and exhausted for it. Five minutes later I'm back in bed sound asleep. How often do you get to go to work for ten minutes at a time in what could potentially be a life or death situation?

Becoming the dust

Allow me paint a picture for you. It's zero six hundred in the morning and the sun is slow to rise. I am dead tired from the last two days in port working my first cargo discharge on this ship. Despite six hours of STCW mandated rest the only brace I have against fatigue is the deliciously French pressed coffee I sip as the Gulf of Mexico slowly comes to life with supply vessels, fishing boats and birds.

As the sun rises and my weariness begins to give way to the caffeine I ask the new AB, a Yemeni from Dearborn Michigan, to take care of his sanitary duties on the bridge. With an emphatic "Yes Sir!" he takes up a push broom and in five minutes I'm almost doubled over from laughter in the corner where he can't see me. His sweeping methodology is akin to snow shoveling. His back heaves in the vertical plane in between horizontal thrusts after which he grinds the corn husk broom into the deck breaking straws and flinging dirt and dust bunnies haphazardly into the air.

I'm amazed that this Able Bodied Seaman, not much younger than myself, who has sailed on the Great Lakes since 2003, is completely incapable of effectively sweeping the bridge. I'm even more surprised because yesterday as a new crew member he stood out as a skilled quartermaster manning the helm for the narrowest and windiest parts of the Sabine River.

According to my new watch partner in his Great Lakes experience no one ever took the time to sweep the bridge well or much less paint the ship neatly, something else he confessed as not being able to do but was very interested in learning. "Deep Sea is so different" he told me as he explained that on the Great Lakes getting as much cargo on board and to the next port as quickly as possible, the longest run he ever had was 17 hours, were more important than all else, sanitary included.

Our conversation led into a half hour, one on one lesson about sweeping. I had never contemplated the possibility having to teach someone how to sweep. It had come naturally to me at a young age by a story my mother had told me about a skilled deck hand that would sweep her boat from stem to stern in the smallest successive sweeping motions imaginable. So I thought that if I could learn to sweep at the age of six than it would come naturally to most other seamen as well but here I was at sunrise, in the ocean, at work, instructing a seasoned Great Lakes mariner on how to do it.

We began on the port side behind the chart desk and and worked to the other end of the bridge brushing every square inch of shiny blue linoleum. In the gentle light I demonstrated half a dozen times how to make short small strokes without lifting the bristles too far and why using bulkheads is vital for corralling the dust. "You must think like the dust, you must become the dust" I waxed as we progressed finding each corner and nook in which the undo-er of electronics and clean freak mates resided.

Each time he would revert to his original method I would take the broom away and show him again. I explained how sweeping and painting were very similar and it was the paying of attention to detail that would make him great at both. His eagerness made me feel like I was doing an Outward Bound course all over again and for a moment I remembered that the thrill of seeing enlightenment in progress from your own instruction is one of the things that really sustains me in life.

The lesson also gave me cause to stop and ask myself, "Is this real? Am I actually teaching someone how to sweep the deck when steering a 70,000 dead weight tonne ship is part of their expected skill set. Yes, yes I am."

There will be a lot of learning with the 4 to 8 AB. Just yesterday I fielded two telling questions. The first was if we, as in mankind, could stop volcanoes from erupting. The second was asked after I had secured the mast head light early this morning to step out on the bridge wing and look at the night stars. I noticed basketball sized pulses of bio-luminescence in the wake and showed the AB. In amazement we then looked up at the night sky which was casting the palest of starlight on our faces unpolluted by land. I showed my new friend from Yemen the white cloud of stars that comprises the milky way and in all seriousness he asked me "Is that a rainbow?"

The sun was three hours from rising and as it turns out, Deep Sea sailing is a different place indeed. This week we'll be learning how to determine the direction from where the wind is blowing and how hard. It's Ocean Classroom all over again.