I think that was Shakespeare or something. And here we go. Once more. Allegedly, we're leaving at 1800, or 6.00p. We'll see about that. Yesterday was the Chinese fire drill you'd expect a day before going out to sea with over half new people, so I expect the powers at least think we're leaving today. Yesterday was particularly exciting for me. It started at six am with the dogs and began to slow around five pm when I jumped off the pier into the water. Salt water tastes great and is less filling.
So I got done with night watch and made my way to bed around 0530. Right about the time I felt the welcome heaviness behind my eyelids, I heard a commotion in the hallway. It woke me. And here are the dogs. They were only looking for bed bugs, but they woke me up all the same. I thought up a new scene for the movie.
A guy on the boat sees the dogs coming and gets uneasy. He grabs his bags and storms out into the halls and yells out, "Nobody move!" and looks side to side. Then he backs out of the hall to the bow through the hatch and says conversationally, "just take it easy everyone". The whole time, people are not even remotely worried, but just a little confused about what this guy is up to. He gets on the bow and jumps overboard. A thud is heard because he jumped off the side the dock is on. Everyone goes about their business like nothing happened and the dog guy consults his clipboard saying, "Ok, so we're gonna spray 402." The guy who jumped off was worried about them being drug dogs because he had drugs with him. But then he gets back on the boat with a stiff neck from the fall like nothing happened. His bunk mate asks "what was that about?" all calm while looking at the newspaper or something. The guy says he was scared the dogs would smell him. Bunkmate says they were just dogs for the bed bugs and it flashes to drug guy dumping a couple bricks of drugs into the sound. Bunk mate starts laughing and pulls out his own stash and says "Pfft. No one cares if you have drugs here. Ha." Something like that.
So I was up again and around eleven I went back to bed, but shortly after that, June came into the room and told me we were doing crew up etc. Well, I wasn't thrilled about that either, but I got up, again right as I was about to fall asleep, and went to the galley. Finally a few hours later I had all my paper work filled out and Serena said, "go get some sleep Corey." I asked, "So I'm done?" She nodded. I went back to my room and read until my eyes got heavy.
In the dark, having turned the reading light off, I rolled over toward the wall. Had the blanket stuffed between my legs and everything. I was preparing for hypersleep. And after all of the interruptions, and heavy petting and teases I was now alone in my room. And sleep was setting in. Then I heard a jiggle on the door handle. I ignored it. I deserve this sleep. I will fight for this sleep! We must protect this sleep! I heard a little voice, "Watts". Fuck! My foreman Otto was standing there, silhouetted by the hallway light, beckoning my presence...somewhere. I put up a bit of a fight. He was unmoved. Well, one thing I won't do is tell a foreman no. So up I got.
He sounded sympathetic to my situation, but offered no solution. Other than walk to the end of the pier and jump into the water. Now understand, jumping into the water off the boat or pier is something that could be fun at a different time. Under these circumstance, it was like being offered a dinner at a fancy restaurant after eating twenty dollars worth of McDonalds. Just no way to enjoy it. So I walked over there.
They told me to get into a life suit. These things suck. They may have their purpose while stuck in the water in the open sea. Without that kind of motivator, they only sucked. And they were hot. And we weren't ready to jump for a good ten minutes. I put my suit on and walked to the edge and fortunately asked if I could jump and get it over with. No, I could not. He asked us, once we were ready to go if we would jump off the pier or if we wanted to go down closer to the water. We all opted for the top. One of the guys had a heart attack out of fright.
Everyone jumped. I was last. As I left, I heard the guys at the top yell something. I thought I was gonna maybe land on something. That is really a bad time to yell. I landed a near perfect preacher and felt the bass on my face. Nice. Then we got in our little star thing and were practically immobile in the suits. The life raft may have been easier if I A; didn't have to go to the bathroom and B; had slept in the last two days. As it was I got in with as little grace as was possible. And nearly fell asleep. It was kinda nice in there. I could be stranded at sea for a few days in that thing. And I'll maybe be glad for the drill if the time does come to abandon ship. I was not happy about it yesterday.
So I get to go to sleep now right? Wrong. There was stuff to do like get all the life suits back on the boat. I saw the safety guy and other dude who were yelling and asked, "Were you guys trying to tell me something on my way down?" They said I was at a funny angle. Duh. You think I'm gonna make a leap form there without doing a splash? Crazy talk. The splash, if you're curious was first of all the biggest of the day. Secondly, it was higher than the pier which was a good twenty feet over the water. I win.
Then I got on the boat and couldn't sleep. I mixed company with the degenerates on this thing. We talked about silly stuff that I can't bring myself to talk about here. I really can't. I need to shave. I need some more sleep. I'll end up lugging stuff around all day. Then I'll sleep. I'm actually looking forward to putting the freezer suit on and getting in the hold. Seriously. And I can't talk about what we were talking about.
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