Ivan also gave me the brief tour he hadn't had time for when I arrived early yesterday, and I found the room with the television and the videos, and a library by the swimming pool (black water in a huge deep tank) where there are even a few books in English.
It's a mistake to keep hoping for a contact with home, though I would have loved a brief conversation with Nick on his 17th birthday.
(Wait a minute - a zither version of the Helston Furry Dance on the radio.)
Each turning on of the phone and search drags you back to places you would rather be. The same is probably true of the hiss from the radio - the predominant sound of this trip so far is white noise, though in the morning I could still get Sounds of the Sixties on VHF. They played Little Tin Soldier, perhaps another motif for this trip. Funny kind of fire I jumped into.
Ivan (Chief Steward) took me to the bridge after lunch. The Captain was there, very friendly, and showed me the radar, the screen completely empty of contacts. We have diverted to the north of the traffic lanes to keep clear of a storm off Galicia . I got a position and plotted it on my chart. Clear of the western approaches, already well out into nothing, about to move over the Porcupine Abyssal Plain - 5000m deep, nearly 20,000 feet! The sea changed to mark this. The Captain confirmed that I can go the bridge any time.
After dinner we bought a box of three different kinds of lager from Ivan in a complex deal I didn't understand, and gave up on the hi-fi in the deserted Officers' Mess. In these circumstances everything seems doomy and gloomy, especially Mike Oldfield and some weird opera singer, but also even reggae and Lou Reed, courtesy of Tom. Peter demanded Metallica but blessedly there is none.
We took our booze cruise up to the video room and watched Fargo and The Bourne Legacy. The clocks went back again at 2300 but nevertheless the day wore to a boozy close.
Still couldn't sleep.
1300 9/10/04
40 degs 32' N
8 deg 26' W
17 Kn. steer 250
Depression off NW Spain
The problem with projects in other people's holidays:
I am bored
I look at the calendar
4 weeks minus two days before Dover and I think
how can I pass this time?
Will I find novelty here
in the passing of weather
and changing skies
smell of islands
as once again we pass by?
The ship was instantly familiar
as a place of work
How is it all so expected to me?
Each time I smell the fuel oil
I immediately think 'museum'
this to me is a very big tractor
a great big bus
something I would do and go home
and the boredom is peppered with fear
a heart-attacking combination
not fear of the seas or the unknown
but the fear of myself so under-employed.
In Le Havre there was the constant awareness of an issue -
stay or go
But that voice died when we cast off
I miss my home and my wife and family -
today is my eldest son's 17th birthday
But usually there is business
to keep it all at bay
here there is not
here it is easy for me
something I have never learned to cope with.
Later the First Officer gave us lifeboat and life jacket instructions on the Bridge. He told us we can't go forward in these seas without a crew escort. I already have been, and round the stern.
Two of the crew have been repairing the external door next to my cabin all day, which the wind had ripped from its hinges.
But somewhere in this very long day I came to the conclusion that I am going to have to grind away at work. Then at least other things can creep in as displacement activities.
The first full day at sea - my first for 20 years.
Sleep is easily lost. I was grateful to find I had three full hours under my belt after drinking to help bring it about. Then long hours worrying about the rolling - as if worrying will right the ship. Then drowsy early hours. Meals and attempts to work but nothing of significance happening.
These empty days are going to have to be filled.
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