recent saltyanigans.

Passed the skinnies of Singapore Strait, zigzagged through fishing boats in the South China Sea, and we're now in the East China Sea/Yellow Sea, a few days out of Pyeongtaek, South Korea. In the meantime, here's what went down.

 Ol' boy in his Maersk boxship thought that passing me with 500' to spare on my starboard side was cool.

 

Whirlpools just to the port of our track. The ship started to get sucked down a little bit when we passed them, but luckily we were doing Full Ahead, so we were able to power right out of it.

Landlubbers, be glad that one of your tasks at work does not involve preventing your office from sailing into a big tornado/ waterspout. Be happy when your boss asks you to remember to use the new coversheets for your TPS reports, and not "ya ya....keep 1 mile from that fucking tornado, ya?"

Had a good 5 days of trolling jigs. Watched a big wahoo pile on top of this here green machine daisy chain with a bird teaser. missed his ass.

This hoss of a skipjack did not fare so well though. Pretty sure this is the new IGFA 400lb line class record. Nevermind that it was on a handline. Ended up with a few mahi, skipjack, and many wahoo biteoffs for the few days trolling.

My mug.

I have the best coffee mug on earth.

     Shipping out has turned me into a bean junkie. I won't touch the stuff during my 10 weeks on land, but at sea, I dare you to find me without this here mug in my paw, pipin' hot beansteam coming out the top. No cargo can be safely and efficiently carried without the appropriate vessel, the cargo being coffee, and the vessel being this here mug. A few points in no particular order:

1) Build quality

    - This is a solid piece right here. If I knew anything about pottery or crockery, I would banter off a few things, but I don't. It's just a solid piece. I've dropped it 3 times, once while being 95% full, and she still hasn't a scratch. Made in Norway.

2) Graphics

    - Being Norwegian myself, it's nice to have a little piece of my heritage warming me up on these cool 92 degree mornings near the equator, and also to keep me from blinking for 3 hours at a time. "Norge" (or "Norway" if you speak Engelsk) is prominently displayed above and below the moose, who by the way is named Buford. The crisp tops of some Norwegian mountaintops, perhaps atop Narvik in the north, displayed as a beautiful backdrop behind Buford, as he hunts for his next meal in a savage, cold, barren Norwegian winter, nuts and berries being very sparse. Notice Bufords' moosefoot-prints, 4 on each side, marking his territory. The 2 tone browns are neutral in color, which always leaves me with a nice, hearty feeling.

3) Volume

    - With this tank taking the shape of a perfect cylinder on the inside, the volume of coffee can be easily calculated. I'm gonna speak metric here for a minute. V=pi x R2 x h. With the radius being 4.3 cm, height being 8.1 cm (Thats at 95% fill level, international regulations require 5% of the tank height to be left for sloshing effects), the volume of a full mug of bean is 470 cubic cm.

    - Using a specific gravity of 1.037 for coffee (calculated by Mike Conkey using his hydrometer), that equates to 1.07 American pounds of coffee in each mug. That's right, each mug has over 1 pound of scalding hot bean, depending on your mix. Just sayin. This also equates to 2436 carats, enough to keep her happy.

      

Somalian Jack Sparrow

welp. Seeing as how our loading port is smack in the middle of the Yemeni coast, it's time to dodge the skinnies in the Gulf of Aden. The SW monsoon is still crankin, so I doubt them little buggers are gonna get on here without flipping that little skiff of theirs upside down and sinking into Davey Jones' locker.

      Slim chance of getting on our boat, bub. If they can try and board at 20kts (23mph) in 8-12' swell, theyre going to have to avoid the giant mooring line we are towing behind the ship, somehow get a gigantic 30ft+ ladder secured to the poop deck, avoid getting blasted in the face from the 1,000 firehoses that are secured to the railings, RAMBO over a plethora of barbed wire...and then once they get onto ye olde' poop deck, they're gonna be pissed when they see that all of our ladders were heaved up onto the main deck. sorry, brah! by that point, we're all going to be locked down in the engine room eatin cookies and sippin coffee, hopefully with the NAVY on it's way to gettem.

                                                                                                

US Aircraft Carrier in the Arabian Sea.

    

        As much rubbish as I may speak on the NAVY and their lack of ability to follow the "Rules of the Road" when it comes to not hitting other ships, it is nice to have em around. Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, Dutch, German, Italian, US, British, etc navies are all on patrol in the Gulf of Aden and way out into the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. Basically you wanna call these dudes up when them little dark skinned guys get onboard, lock yourself down somewhere, and wait till they get there and send some dudes on.

      Until that point, only other thing to do is to slap bulletproof gear on our Filipino lookouts, juice the RADARs up to little boat spottin mode, and hold on!

Manila commando

Wahooooo

Usually trolling some handlines on the ship if the speed is right. Had this 40+lb wahoo smash a jig while just off the grand banks last fall. Tamayo hauled him on up deck during his lunchbreak. stoked!

Marina Bay

National Singapore Day at Marina Bay. Somethin to be said for places that let you slam beers on the street.