Like this:

1910 – Some days are tougher than others. This morning we wake up to dirty, muddy baskets packed to the tops with the garbage of the ocean. We shimmy down the hatches into solid darkness – not a shimmer of sunshine is seeping through the materials stuck to the screens. My companion and I each emit a deep sigh, ‘it’s going to be a long morning’, and we start plucking away at the plants, ropes, wires, nets and other odd things that have entwined themselves around the grates. It’s only after we’ve been plucking and chucking away at the debris for two or three hours that we hear the nerve-testing news. We’ve taken so long to clear the baskets, that we’ve missed the time for flushing and dumping through the bottom hatch… Instead, we have to haul all our trash into garbage bags, pass them up through the hatches and chuck them onto the deck. Sighs X two. Angels appear in the form of our two deckhands who jump in the baskets with us and help the production line of trash make it to the deck. By the time the job is done and we’ve hosed ourselves free of mud, it’s time for lunch. It feels good to sit down; it feels good not to be covered in mud.

 It’s amazing how some fresh air can turn your day around… some fresh sea air and a spectacular sunset. The hazy horizon provides a wonderful array of colors. As the clouds of orange and purple mesh into the sky, the sun drops behind the haze. Moments later, a pink plate of sun reappears in front of the haze and slowly sinks below the horizon line, taking with it the stresses of a day at sea.

 Tuesday 1 March 2011

 1547 – I’m jolted awake! The doors, cabinets and even the wall-mounted phone are rattling anxiously. I feel like a straw in a hotdog bun… bouncing around my bed between my side rails. BANG! Rattle. THUD! Shakity-shake?! What in the world is going on? I feel like I’ve been relocated to that classic scene of Jurassic Park where you can see and feel the vibrations of the T-Rex before it comes to claim it’s victims… No, no, this is no T-Rex and I’ve only been asleep for thirty minutes, so maybe I can just roll over and ignore this persistent banging…

 1616 – Sleep is useless. The banging has yet to stop and I decide to get dressed and see what the fuss is about. Upstairs on the bridge there’s an eerie quiet and I can sense the tension as I ascend the stairway. My companion signals me to be quiet, as only the Captain is around, looking serious and talking away on the phone. She fills me in that we’ve been having winds of over 25 knots an hour causing or vessel to slam into the barge that we’re currently pumping our beach quality loads through. It’s becoming dangerous and eventually, we stop. There’s a change of course: we’re heading to drop the rest of the load at the offshore site – a blissfully barge-less location – and then we’re off to pump the wonderful sulfurous mud that we’ve only just had a 24 hour break from.

Advertisement