As a teenager, author Scott Thybony signed on as a deckhand on a survey ship in Alaska. In this month’s Canyon Commentary, he remembers the trip and the value of reflecting on the past to learn valuable lessons.
Between an overcast sky and the gray ocean, I leaned on the ship’s railing staring at an empty horizon. A few weeks before I had left Arizona to sign on as a deckhand with a ship named the Pathfinder. I was 18 years old and unfamiliar with all things nautical. But the work fit my plan to not let a year pass without having something interesting to show for it. Sailing out of Kodiak, Alaska, might give me that chance.
The Coast and Geodetic Survey ship had the mission to rechart the ocean floor and coastlines after a massive earthquake. A key responsibility of the deck crew was to set up camps on remote islands for field parties to conduct triangulation surveys. In between we chipped paint and scrubbed the decks with holystones. An experienced hand gave me some advice on how to keep the monotony from driving me crazy. “Concentrate on the doing of the job,” he said, “not on getting it done.”
Storms often drew me topside. I would hold the rail in the rolling sea as waves crashed across the bow and the wind-driven spray lashed the deck. And when the weather really set in an able-bodied seaman taught us how to tie knots down in the forecastle. I became proficient at tying a one-handed bowline, thinking it might prove useful some day. It never did.
After we completed a near-shore survey, rough weather overtook us as we were returning to the ship. The motor launch collided with each wave sending up a drenching spray. We boarded the ship soaking wet as the steward handed each of us a ration of brandy in a nip bottle. Thought to prevent hypothermia at one time, it was now a tradition rather than a medical treatment.
Near the end of my days as an ordinary seaman, the officers decided to have some fun with me. I was assigned bridge watch on a day when the ship was closing on a mountainous shore. Unknown to me, we were heading for a narrow passage undetectable from our angle of approach. My job as helmsman was to take the handles of the ship’s wheel and steer a true course. The only instruction I received before reporting for duty was to not whistle on the bridge. Bad luck. The rest I had to figure out on my own.
A veteran helmsman stepped away from the wheel, and I took his place. The ship was heading straight for the mountain, dark and ominous, as half-a-dozen officers stood by. I noticed a slight smile when one of them glanced my way. The captain, elbows jutting out, viewed the approach through a pair of binoculars. The officer of the watch had command of the bridge and called out a heading. I turned the wheel to match it. Nothing happened, so I turned it several more notches. The lumbering ship, 229 feet long, took time to respond. And when it hit the right bearing it kept going. I swung the wheel back, and each time over-corrected. As we neared the mountain the officers kept waiting for me to tap out and ask to be relieved. Unaware that was an option, I kept the ship on a collision course. The mountain mass loomed before us.
At the last minute the officer ordered the experienced helmsman to take over and dismissed me. “Go back to the fantail,” he said, “and take a look at the wake.”
Spreading out behind the ship, traces of foam swung back and forth like the stagger of a drunken sailor. It was a watery record of the course I had steered. And a lesson. To learn from my mistakes it was necessary to pay attention to the past. Sooner or later each of us has to stand on the fantail and read the wake.
Scott Thybony is a Flagstaff-based writer. His Canyon Commentaries are produced by KNAU Arizona Public Radio and air on the last Friday of each month.
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