Boat Check with Sydney

Ahoy! And welcome aboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans, which is currently positioned at around 11 degrees N and 158 degrees W on track to our “Aloha 2” waypoint at Swordfish Seamount. I’m currently serving as JWO (Junior Watch Officer) on afternoon watch from 13:00 to 19:00, and I’m responsible for conducting the hourly boat checks we do 24/7 to make sure salad dressing isn’t spilled, the boat isn’t on fire, and that all machinery is in working order.

I start off on the quarterdeck, which is the mustering and community space on deck where we spend most of our time outside. Drive is on helm steering a course ordered of 355 degrees and we’re motor sailing upwind, and North, on a starboard tack.

Barb is camping out by the fishing lines, hoping to catch the famed blue marlin, a mahi mahi, or a yellowfin tuna. Diego’s reading on top of the navigational space on the boat, also called the doghouse or charthouse, and Jan’s laying against the emergency life raft with a cup of coffee in his hand.

We’re sailing at about 8 knots, which is relatively fast for a boat our size. Combined with the rolls and waves of the open ocean, it’s pretty hard to walk, and I stumble around the quarterdeck holding onto the various emergency water jugs, handrails, and poles I can reach. Nothing seems out of the ordinary on the quarterdeck, so I venture down the stairs at the back of the boat to the science deck, the location of the wet and dry lab. The science team has just completed a CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) hydrocast, and I notice that my fellow B-watchmates are drawing water into glass bottles to measure the pH of a water sample that has been taken from 400m deep in the open ocean! My teammates alert me that all is as normal in the science lab, so I continue walking to the bow of the ship.

Here, Lilah, Jessie, and Regina are getting their workout in, braving waves that crash into the hull of the boat and splash over the railing. I step around their dumbbells and resistance bands to check in with our lookout, Kelly. Kelly stands clipped in at the very front of the Seamans, scanning the horizon for other boats, squalls on the horizon, and fishing buoys. Bow lookout on the Seamans offers an almost-perfect 360 degree view of the open oceanic desert we’re passing through, and is also one of the best places on the boat to sing your heart out. Kelly describes the schools of flying fish she saw to me, and as I make my way back to the quarterdeck, I can hear her rendition of Justin Bieber’s “Baby” behind me.

Everything seems to be normal on deck, so I make my way downstairs, through the charthouse, and into the salon. The salon, or dining space, on the Seamans is simultaneously the place we eat, do project work, take meetings, and socialize on the boat. Maitri, Karthik, Mia, and Chinmay play anagrams in the corner of the salon on top of a gimbled table that tilts up and down depending on the rolls of the boat. Bread sits proofing on the largest table, a sign that we’ll be having a delicious dinner later that night. I check in with Ashley, the boat’s steward, in the galley, and then remove the hatch from the chores closet and climb down into the dry stores room. I’ve been sent to retrieve two cans of potatoes, as we’re starting to run out of fresh produce at the end of our voyage.

As I throw up two large cans of potatoes from the ladder, Jenny’s hands meet mine and she takes the cans back to galley. Everyone on the boat feels a sense of mutual responsibility to keep the ship in order and work as a team to help each other. After closing up the dry stores, I walk into the focsle of the Seamans, aka the zero-gravity part of the ship, and the location of my bunk. After looking around the focsle, nothing seems out of the ordinary, so I walk back through the salon to the aft cabin and sleeping quarters of the ship. I slip into the engineering room to complete my engine room check, the last component of a boat check.

The engine room is one of the only places on the Seamans where you can get any semblance of alone time, and it’s mostly because it’s extremely hot and very loud. Nate and JP, the boat’s engineers sit in the front engine room. After a short conversation about mycelium, I put on a pair of earmuffs to protect my ears and enter the machinery space carrying a grease pencil and a laminated board. I collect data related to the ship’s engine, the fuel tank, the water makers, refrigeration system, and sewage system, and log it all into the logbook. Although the engine’s RPM is a little high, nothing seems out of the ordinary, so I head back to the quarterdeck and report to my head watch officer. This is where my boat check ends, and each boat check takes around 20-30 minutes to do.

Every day aboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans, 24 boat checks are completed by our 40 crew members to ensure the safe passage of our vessel. Day or night, in squalls or sunshine, underway or at anchor, these boat checks are always completed. All around the boat, if you look closely, you’ll see the words “Love and Gratitude” written on machinery and other fun spaces by engineer Nate. That’s exactly what I feel for my watchmates, my bunkmates, and the wonderful crew of this ship as we’ve learned to work together, depend on each other, and care for each other over these last 4 weeks.

In the spirit of love and gratitude, thank you to my wonderful friends and family for checking my emails, picking up my belongings from Hopkins, and supporting my dreams of studying the ocean! Thank you for the sweet cards, I just opened them! Although I’ve loved being without the Internet for the past month, I miss chatting with you all a lot <3  --Sydney

Love and Gratitude

Every hour of every day, someone onboard the RCS completes a boat check, where they ensure each of the ship’s critical systems are running smoothly. While doing the boat check, you spend lots of time amongst the humming and whirring machinery of the engine rooms. On the watermakers, the generators, the marine sewage device, and scribbled all about the engineering spaces, you can see someone has inscribed 3 simple words in black sharpie Love and Gratitude.

For the past four weeks I’ve been wondering about the story behind all of these notes. Why were they written all over the engineering spaces?

We should start by asking who the scribbler is. Obvious to anyone onboard, the scribbles belong to our beloved Nate Bears. Nate, a lifelong marine engineer and practitioner of mindfulness and martial arts, is the lifeblood of this vessel. Quite literally, he is the one that keeps the generators running, the refrigerator cool, and the poop pumping. I could write a whole blog about Nate, his self-made shoes, and his qigong lessons, but I want to focus on his mantra: Love and Gratitude.

Today I spent my watch as the assistant engineer, so Nate and the other engineer JP spent the morning teaching me about daily and weekly system checks, how to care for a big diesel engine, and how we can fix half of the world’s problems with 21^st-century toilets. After we finished the work for the morning, I was able to ask Nate the story behind Love and Gratitude. He explained that there were lots of reasons why it’s written all over. He says that giving the machines love and gratitude will make them run smoother and last longer. I know that every time I go into the forward machinery space, the notes remind me that love and gratitude should be at the center of my thoughts as I move throughout the day. No matter what your interpretation is, out here in the middle of the ocean, there is so much to love and so much to be grateful for.

I love the way Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn are aligned in the eastern sky before the crescent moon is chased above the horizon by the rising sun. I love laughing with my watchmates in the main salon at 0045 while cramming in midnight snacks in preparation for dawn watch. I loved lying on top of the jib and the JT on the bow sprit with my best friends in Palmyra, learning the constellations as they rotated through the clear equatorial sky.

I’m grateful for my mates and scientists, who have taught me so much about sail handling, celestial navigation, CTD deployments, and how to titrate for alkalinity in 10-foot waves. I’m so grateful for the amazing and unexpected friends that I have made on this insane journey. Most importantly, I’m grateful for my friends and family back home in Florida, who have supported my dreams of becoming an ocean scientist for all these years.

With Love and Gratitude,

-Mark Leone

Breathe

 

Its been simple life.
No essence of time, days, weeks.
I just am.
Me & Ocean

It has just been our crew and the ocean for days without an end. Wherever we look out on deck we can only see a sparkling blue ocean filled with magic and mystery, surrounding us 360 degrees. This blue ocean constantly reflects our universe, our sky, our land, ourselves. We have been tasked to learn about this constantly changing body of water since the first day of Stanford at Sea to engender change and conserve its beauty. We have learnt about the ocean through all kinds of scientific research methodologies, such as hydro casts, transects, videos, meter net toes, etc. However, through my endless staring competition with the blue body of water and my deep gazing trying to understand all of its layers, I certainly have grown my curiosity and my ambition to understand: Who are we? Why are we here? What is our place in this world? Why have we become out of touch with our ocean and land?

The blue magical waves have been a constant reminder of how we have complicated our lives as humans and have not had a moment to just stand still and respect our planet Earth. On land there are moments where life gets so busy that we forget the essentials of life. We have become dependent to our advanced technological tools and have lost ourselves within it. We have become numb to the beautiful and dark parts of our world, where we have never been satisfied with what we have and who we are. We have quickly lost touch of our planet earth to a point where we have even forgotten to just breathe. However, on day 28 I am reminded once again by our ocean to stand still on this rocking vessel and just breathe, slowly, becoming one with the moving water.

I steered the boat at the helm sailing across the Pacific Ocean at a course order of 005 at 7 knots. I marked the ·2000· nautical mile that the Robert C. Seamans has traveled throughout the Pacific Ocean during our Stanford at Sea journey. We all cheered as we reached this great milestone, making it feel like the change of the 20^th to the 21^st century. This was a mark of change where we have been growing into a new skin, as scientists, sailors, and inhabitants of this planet. We have been facing many ups and downs literally and figuratively where at the end of the day all that we have is us and the sea, leaving us to think about a lot of things.

To sail the open seas, we constantly interact and think about the wind, the water, the sun, the moon, the currents, the birds, and marine animals. This constant state of consciousness, brings us back to our center, connects us to nature and our emotions, helps us find our balance, but most importantly it creates a state of love and gratitude–as Nate (the chief engineer) would say–it is the essence of life. I am reminded that we are part of nature and that we must find balance with ourselves once again. We have been able to connect with ourselves and with each other by getting grounded to our roots and respecting where we came from: the ocean.

We have begun to live in the moment on this boat, free of technology and other external stresses making us appreciate the little things. Truly creating time a verb that is relative, that stays us away from living in the moment. I have finally fallen in love with simplicity and being timeless, letting go my necessity to be busy all the time. But then…. there was gally. Oh, “what a day!” The sensation of simplicity quickly went away.

I had been looking forward to this day since the day that I got slightly homesick, as my mother, Yésica, is really the best cook. Yésica can magically make everyone fall in love with food, turning any bloomy day into a heavenly day. I was woken up at 5:15 am to prep for our cream of wheat breakfast with slices of a few apples–our last fresh produce. Ashley, our hero on the boat, quickly warned me of the busy day we had ahead of us, since we had to feed 40 mouths with 3 meals and 3 different snacks. Ashley taught me how to make the most out of every produce, grain of salt, and drop of oil we had access to. I learnt how to efficiently create a delicious meal, balancing speed and quality. Most importantly, I learnt the magic of cooking: how one can puzzle together random broken parts of a recipe into a sublime masterpiece. Everything was going quite smooth for us in the morning until dinner came around.

We caught a fish the day before to learn about the anatomy, realizing nature is the true teacher to any engineering mystery. We decided to use what was left from the fish to create a delicious Asian meal. However, this quickly became one of the most hectic days at sea. We had five cooks, Ashley, Dr. Barb, Shaili, Tanvi and myself in a 3x3 meter kitchen with less than an hour to provide a delicious and nutritious meal for forty people. We all had to move quickly around the kitchen and be on the same wavelength with every cooking motion. The pressure was on. We all had different visions on how to marinate the fish and the salad, so we all had to swiftly come to a compromise. We were able to quickly get our acts together and work as a moving team. I sprinkled out all of my mom’s special Asian recipes to create a sesame aioli, a soy dressing for the salad, and a marinating sauce for the fish. We became silly as we grilled and chopped, laughing together as Barb transformed the skin of the fish into an artful wearable fashion piece. At the end of cooking this meal I rang the bell for dinner, dancing my way across the boat singing for people to reunite for our Asian fusion dinner. I had a permanent smile on my face, since my favorite part about the day was to gather and talk to everyone (we never really get the chance to be all together and chat due to our standing watch rotation).

Sitting down to eat with my everyone quickly got rid of every inch of my homesickness I had been dragging, as we laughed about the smallest things and were present with each other. It was love and gratitude present in the air, making everyone feel blessed to be together in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I was reminded once again the value of cooking that mi madre always alluded to: bringing people together. It was again, the simple things that brought us joy.

This vessel has been a place of challenges, transformation, and growth; however, most importantly it has been a place filled with pure magic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean allowing us to grow in every direction. The ocean and I have slowly become one as the days have gone by.

I have embraced the simple life.

I just am.

Finally breathing once again.

Stop.

Breathe.

P.S.

1. Acknowledgment: This blog was inspired from many of my beautiful conversations with Nate Bears, our chief engineer. He kept reminding me throughout this sea journey to get in touch with oneself, appreciate every moment, find harmony with nature, and to stop and breathe. But most importantly be filled with love and gratitude.

2. Thank you to all 39 members who have pushed my growing and helped me grow into Anna@Sea. Thank you for becoming my home away from home.

3. Feliz Cumpleaños mami. Te extraño muchísimo. Estoy pensando en ti cada día y soñando en abrazarte pronto. Agradecida cada día de tenerte en mi vida.

Full Circle

“Camille, take this moment in, you’ll likely never be here again” is a phrase I often said to myself 9 years ago. And yet, someway, somehow, I am magically “here” again. I am aboard the SSV Robert C Seamans once more. Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean - I stopped trying to keep track since we left Palmyra. But, this time, for the first time in my life, I am no longer a student. I am Dr., with a soon to be fully conferred PhD and a postdoc at Stanford. Most importantly, a teacher and a mentor to a pretty remarkable group of students. 

It’s been a little surreal. From the moment I stepped aboard, the memories started flowing in. Life aboard the Bobby C hasn’t changed much since my last residence. It was pretty entertaining watching the students discover what I now remember so vividly. Despite my last time on this ship being the best 6.5 consecutive weeks of my life, this is no pleasure cruise. We are the crew, the scientists, the janitors, etc. aboard this ship. There’s always something that needs to be done to ensure that Bobby, your shipmates and yourself are in working order.

No longer at the whims of the watch maker, I am an “Other”, free of standing watch in the middle of the night, but expected to set my own schedule except for a 6 am wakeup call I have been promptly ignoring since day 5. With this “otherhood” comes a “promotion” to what I am calling the “Sweat Cabin.” A bunk in a stateroom, hanging from the ceiling, with no rail to keep me in… Every night is an adventure. I have to fight the tack to just get into my bunk and hope that the heat doesn’t melt me. Barb did warn me – she says she has measured 92 deg F in that bunk. As a Canadian and religious follower of the metric system, I have no idea how hot that is, but I know it’s too hot for a human to live. Yes, for a Canadian who once wore gloves on a beach in the Caribbean because she was cold, I have finally found a temperature that is too hot.

Most of my days consist of insuring that students have everything they need to complete their research projects. We have 9 different projects ongoing. Each unique in its scope, the students’ and their projects have challenged me to draw knowledge from my now completed education in oceanography. I am pulling out old textbooks and lecture notes from classes I took 6 years ago to try to help them explain the phenomenon they are observing. I am amazed every day at the quality of the research being done by students, many of whom had never taken an ocean science course only 9 weeks ago! I am very proud of all of them and can’t wait to see the final products this Saturday and Sunday.

While most of my time aboard has been spent reminiscing, I have been able to remedy my only regret from my student experience. While I had the privilege to sail Bobby from San Diego to Tahiti as a student, there’s another sailing vessel that I never had a chance to take out. Gene.

A two sail, single mast, sailboat that lives starboard, midships on Bobby, Gene is named after Bobby’s wife. Most of the time, she is a storage container for the laundry buckets, fishing rods, tagging mats, cinderblocks, rope and buoys. Her use blocked by the rescue boat that sits on top of her. But at Palmyra, Gene came off the deck and was placed into the water.

After letting some students get the first spin, I finally got my chance. I asked Kanoe, one of the two student “captains” along with Sydney, which one of them would provide a safe time and which one of them would provide a fun time. Kanoe didn’t hesitate. Neither of them would guarantee a safe passage, but both would ensure a fun time. And what ensued was certainly fun.

**--Dear Parents, reading this – there is a happy ending to this story, no one was ever in grave danger and all souls are safe.--**

Kanoe, Kelly and I boarded Gene one late afternoon in Palmyra. All of the small boats powered by motors were away on snorkeling missions. The captain of Bobby, Greg, gave us permission to go out for a sail on Gene. He handed us a radio and told us not to go far. A squall (i.e., a storm at sea) was coming in. With our captain Kanoe forward, Kelly in the middle on the staysail sheets and me aft in charge of both the tiler and the mainsail sheet, we set sail around Bobby in Palmyra.

It took a little bit to get used to. I, at 5’7”, am a little too tall and have to get completely horizontal on the floor of Gene to pass sails to change directions. But eventually, we were flying, picking up speed, jibing, tacking. Nothing could stop us. We made circles around Bobby. We were having the time of our lives. An hour and a half in, Kelly and I changed roles. We continued to fly, until we got what we thought was a brilliant idea…

With so many incredible research projects, there were never enough boats to do science. We all wondered, given our excellent seamanship so far, could we use Gene to do science? Could we stop Gene on a station, do a CTD cast and get back underway? Surely, if we wanted to do this, we would need to be able to demonstrate our abilities. We all agreed to try. Let’s douse (i.e., bring down) all the sails. And stay on “station” and put them back up. We were doing great. Nothing would stop us now. We tried over the radio to tell the crew on Bobby what we were attempting to do. No answer. Oh well. Let’s move Gene to be in view of Bobby when we experiment to make sure that we could be saved if anything were to happen.

We doused the sails. Success! We were kind of staying in the same location! We got a call over the radio asking us if everything was alright. We answered that this was all part of the plan. The small boats came back and passed us on the way to returning our shipmates from their snorkeling. We told them all that we are ok. That everything was under control… We were so proud of ourselves that we hadn’t noticed that we had started to drift! We were approaching the shore! We scrambled to put the sails back up and turn…

SCRATCH SCRATCH SCRATCH

It was certainly not a pleasant sound as the bottom of Gene touched something. We tried desperately to stop Gene’s momentum by dousing the sails and using the oars with no success. Kanoe hoped out to stop her. At last, Gene had stopped and we were now in the middle of a shallow, ankle deep sand/coral flat. We all hoped out and walked Gene back to deeper waters, where our expert tow by Heather (1^st mate) and Nate (chief engineer) was waiting for us.

Most of the quarterdeck of the Seamans was filled with observers, enjoying our little adventure. We got the tow of shame back to the Seamans. And there’s photographic evidence…

To all those reading, all souls are accounted for, including Gene’s. She fine. Barely a mark on her. Now back midships on Bobby and back to being a storage locker. We made apology cards for all of our rescuers and most importantly, for Gene herself. Gene received a variety of apology haikus from KCK (Kanoe, Camille & Kelly).

After much discussion amongst ourselves and the professional crew of the Seamans upon our return, we learned where we went wrong and a hell of a lot about sailing. With this experience, I’ve finally come full circle with my time aboard the RCS.

Now, with our final few days of S-303 approaching, I find myself saying again, “Camille, take this moment in, you’ll never be here again.”

Dr. Coconut Camille (S-250, S-303)