Dance of the wild dolphins!

Uncanny isn't it! Akshi talks about spotting dolphins and right the next day there's literally dozens of them off the ship's stern!!! :D Yes, I tried to take pictures, no, none of them turned out decent enough to post, thanks to low light :(.

But what a sight! It's well into the night and the ship is standing still in the calm waters of the anchorage. All around there are the enclosing islands and outcrops off the mainland, glittering with marker buoys, lights from houses, the dock in the distance... And there's this huge bunch of flying fish attracted to the backdeck lights playing near the gundeck ramp. And attracted to this plentiful supply of food, there are the dolphins and large flocks of these birds:
It was a real treat to watch the dolphins chase the fish around, which were often resorting to flight! But not to be outdone, the dolphins, more often than not, managed to snatch the flying fish right out of the air!!! And the resulting leaps out of the water totally made my otherwise shitty day :D. The sunset, almost over land, was a nice change too :).--
The ship's engines are off and it's unusually quiet.

The only part life that has seemed so perfect till now was suddenly going all wrong. The feeling could probably be most accurately described as choking. But it was just for a little bit, and then it was all back in step. Makes me wonder, is happiness just a fragile illusion, or is it an elaborate defence mechanism?

I love meals where I don't have to look at what I'm eating. Like ice-cream and jello, mixed, but not too thoroughly. While I'm reading of "hooked fingers and sudden smiles", a sudden, unexpected excess of jello... life's back to good, and I'm back to smiling :).

Current mood: precariously happy
Listening to: U2 - All I want is you

Arghhh :(

After a full shift of back-deck work I find that we are not in fact going to port in Dampier, but merely into anchorage!! I mean c'mon!!! You can actually see land, but can't get to it! Because some nutcases decide there's not enough space!! Totally feeling like killing someone or something. Or would have felt like it if I were a little less tired :(. There goes my kangaroo :-<.

Well, back deck wasn't that terrible actually:

Rigs spotted with massive flares visible with the naked eye over 20 miles away : 1
Rigs spotted lit up like a christmas tree in the night: 1
Water snakes seen slithering sideways in the ocean: at least 15
Flying fish seen gliding for over 100 m: 4
Birds seen trying to perch on incoming streamer (despite Richie trying very hard to make it fly away so I couldn't take a pic): 1
Times I pissed Richie off by speaking animatedly with another crew-mate in Hindi while he tried very hard to figure out if we were dissing him: too many :P
Times I hit my head on the fairleads (huge thingies on the back-deck that I keep hitting) to Richie's (and pretty much everyone else's) intense amusement: 12 :|

Heh! Of course I took the pic :D. It's a little shaky tho, thanks to somebody pushing me, no prizes for guessing who.

Right, now to sleep.

ps. Richie is my boss :D.

Feeling: amazed at the number of cuts, scratches etc that have appeared on my hands in just 12 hours!
Listening to: Elliot Smith - Angels

Whoooshh! II

A lot closer to the water, a lot scarier, 'cos from here the waves look really big! And practically hundreds of flying fish :). Squadrons of gliding fins glittering in the stark lamps. And if you looked closely enough, a shiny fleet slipping sliding just under the skin of water.

The rest of the guys were trying to figure out how to best disentangle a couple of gunstrings (let's not get into what those are, please). I, on the other hand, satisfied that there was no point in further adding to the already monumental tension, chose to enjoy the summersaults, backflips, high jumps and other such acrobatics in miniature that were so conveniently on display barely 3 metres away. Was tempted to jump in and catch one. Very briefly, before I noticed once again that the waves were taller than me standing on my feet, and remembered that the water was a kilometer deep :|.

Looks like this trip's going to be more sailing around than expected. Given the steadily worsening weather we will soon be heading back to shore to pick up supplies, Dampier in north west Australia to be precise. While that means more back deck work, it also means another chance for me to meet some kangaroos!! :D
Listening to Elliot Smith after a very very long time. Such a shame that he died so young. What a waste :(.

Have realised suddenly, and not because I was knocked on the head by one, that I have no respect for doors...

Maybe I should read a bit. The bookmark hasn't moved in a week.

Feeling: lazy :P
Listening to: Elliot Smith - Clementine

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The one-day delay in posting's thanks to the vessel net choosing to crash last night :(.

Whoooshh. . .

Seas always turn out so different from each other! Of course I only have the rather meagre experience of sailing on four, and one might argue that the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean don't count as different. But while the former, with it's overly calm weather, struck me much like a pond (a hugeass pond no doubt, but still), the stretch of water I'm in now could almost dupe you into believing you were at the beach! Just that it would be a bloody tiny island. And it would be floating. But that wasn't the point. The rolling waves rushing in, only to break forcefully into a million pieces and then slipping back into the inky black. It's so like gazing over Worli seaface at night!!

The best part is watching the white heads rear up from the complete darkness all around and thrash against the ship's side. The shudder it sends through the entire ship, and through me as I lean over the stern, the huge froth of spray that goes shooting back into the sea, instant extacy :). It's fun to try and predict the next big burst too! You go ballistic when you are right to the split second, turn as if there was someone you could say "I knew that would happen" to, grow just a little sadder when nobody's there.

But then there was suddenly a different, erratic, out of place bunch of splashes in the heaving water. It took me a while to realise that the streaking spot of silver was the old flying fish from my Mayanmese trip! A huge big bunch of them actually :D. If you tried to see them you couldn't find even one, but when you weren't looking, you'd catch one bounding from one wave to another in the corner of your eye :). Caught up with another acquiantance today, spotted the Milky Way in the clear moonless sky. Then of course there had to be the big gull type thing that swung out of the night and scared the living daylights out of me!!! Didn't they say that birds don't fly at night? And this was no owl in the middle of the ocean :|.

Tchah! I'm terrible at this shit ain't I?! I'm sure I couldn't get across even an iota of the magic of my evening leaning off the back-deck :(. That's why I like pictures, you don't need so many words... Then again there are times when I look at an old picture, only to have the real shatter the wonderful image of memories laced with a dash of euphoria and a pinch of optimistic imagination :-<.

Feeling: optimistic :D
Listening to: Silk Route - Dooba dooba

Settling back into the schedule, getting used to the hours, the bunk, the rolling... the customary just-missed-the-sunset pic. Two days and now it feels like I never even got off the ship!

And excitement presented itself today in the form of the great humpbacked whale that chose to appear right when I was on the bridge on whale watch :D. Did I neglect to mention that I tend to be insanely lucky in these vague kind of ways more often than I can remember? And guess what, I had my camera right there, in the pocket of my coveralls. But sadly, the 3x zoom my baby offers would have given me nothing more than a grey blur and a whole lot of whooshing spray :(. (Another reason for me to buy that Canon Eos I've been dying to buy for a while now, 12x optical!!!!) So I chose to watch Pico (my name for my first whale, don't ask me why) with the best binocs they have up in the bridge. Pico gave me absolutely fabulous company for all of half an hour, when I remembered that my watch should actually have been only 10 minutes long :P.

The greatest and most welcome change this trip is the brilliant food that the new Aussie galley staff are serving up each and every meal! Might even put fight to wake up for breakfast one of these days!

--
And in business news today, Schlumberger has finally realised, about half a decade too late that they should buy all of WesternGeco. Would have saved me the trouble of trying to explain the whole 30% - 70% malarkey like a million n a half times since I got the job :-<.

Feeling: sleepy (becoming a regular thing, this)
Listening to: Beethoven - Fur Elise