Did you exchange?
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage
-Roger Waters Wish You Were Here
I took my Dad out to eat at Blackbeards on the Island last night for his 88th birthday.
I’m not sure what an 88th birthday feels like, but I’m pretty sure I’d be real lucky to see that one….Way too many years of saying “I’d rather be a good liver, than have one….
On the way to the Island, I called the commander to see if they were still going out today to observe the sinking of the Texas Clipper a large former training ship that is being sunk to become an artificial reef about 35 miles offshore. The ‘Clipper will die an indignant , if apropo death about 35 miles east of Port Isabel, her 200 odd feet of steel destined for 90 feet of water where she will adorn the bottom of the mostly deserted continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico.
For many months ESCO marine over in the Port of Brownsville, one of the few big ship dismantlers in the industry labored to reduce the ship to a bare hull. They removed all of the interior, including hazardous waste like asbestos, leaving a gutted out hulk, to be towed out to the station. The University of Texas at Brownsville will monitor the colonization of invertebrates at various points within and outside the vessel. The commander has some involvement in that, although like me, he has done his fair share of deep, cold, ugly water diving and is happy to relegate the majority of grunt work to grad students. Age and rank do sometimes have privileges.
I asked the commander if they were going to go out today, and he told me that the trip had been rescheduled for tomorrow, or maybe Saturday. We had a pretty good cold front move through early this morning, with northeast wind over 35 knots and seas already at ten feet. Not good weather for a lot of folks going out there who normally don’t have much contact with the sea, especially when it’s sort of tempestuous. A real roll-n-puke day, so they decided to wait until a better weather window opened up.
The commander was less than thrilled himself. “You know” he said acerbically, “there’s just something intrinsically wrong with intentionally sinking a boat. I just can’t get into that.”
Neither can I
In fact, I cringe at the very thought of sinking. Recently I have acquired two other pieces of equipment in order to increase our chances of survival in the unlikely event of catastrophic submergence. I have invested in a 406mhz EPIRB and a Katadyn Survivor 06 desalination unit….both spendy, but essential items to be added to the ditch bag, items which give me an increased, if not tenuously enhanced peace of mind and feeling of security.
I guess a lot of this stems from my early years as a commercial fisherman, and seeing how easily boats are devastated and consumed by the sea, often without a trace. In the inimitable words of Captain Ron;
If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen out there.
As children of the oceans we always know in the back of our minds that the worst can, and does happen with some degree of frequency. It’s the nature of the beast. We prepare for it, train for it and learn all that we can so that when something does happen, we’ll be prepared.
We are not overly paranoid, just prudent and careful. We understand the risks and address them accordingly. Because we know that the other side of the equation is freedom, and the sense of feeling, of being alive that is engendered in us each time we untie the dock lines and head “out there”. Like all other things in life it is a proverbial trade off, and as is also universally true, one whose rewards are directly proportional to the risks.
I would not trade the feeling of the wind in my face, the unceasing roll and pitch of the wild ocean, the quiet solitude of engineless travel for a lead role in a cage landlocked existence without the sea. For me, it would be a death sentence.
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