Escapes from the jaws

Note: I originally wrote this post in mid-September 2012. The events described took place in late March 2012. 

How many near-death experiences have you had?

I've had so many, I barely remember most of them.

Of course, there are varying degrees.

There are moments when one could have died, had a car been a few inches or feet closer to the right, or when one feels like death was a near miss, because of a slippery footing while climbing something. It's hard to know how valid those feelings are. Sometimes one would have just broken a limb or been horribly maimed, and not killed at all. Sometimes one is merely being dramatic.

However, there are at least a few moments I've had in my life where I had to step back and appreciate the fragility of life.

One of the most potent and effective such lessons I had recently while I was working on my boat.

1. The Hawaiian Chieftain is a big pretty steel sailboat. She has a 75 foot steel mast, that doubles as the diesel engines’ exhaust pipes, and 13 sails, including several large squares that crew must scale the mast (via shrouds/ rope ladder thingies) to unfurl and furl.

She is usually crewed by 9-15 people, though sometimes crew counts go as low as 6 or 7 and as high as 17. Usually at least half the crew are untrained "newbies" two-weekers who've come out to learn to sail. There are 7 paid officer positions, and everyone else on board lends their services at the low low price of free, in exchange for bed, lodging, travel, knowledge, skills, confidence and adventure.  Not a bad deal, really.

The Officers, in the order of the Station Bill

1. Captain -drives the boat, buck stops here, generally oversees the boats activity, sets tone for crew morale

2. First Mate -right hand man to Cap'n. helps organize and schedule crew chore bill, days off, etc. oversees safety onboard, and should help with crew management and morale as well. (look out for crew when Cap'n isn't, be a bridge between forces, fill gaps, etc.) head of training trainees.

3. Bosun - in charge of everything above-decks. How the boat looks--the wood rails, paint jobs, tarring, rig tuning, rig repairs, quality of coils, aloft training, overall boat prettiness.

4. Engineer- in charge of everything below-decks. water, pipes, electricity, engines, batteries, coolant, propellers, heads, bilges.

5. Purser- in charge of the money, keeping the books, the paperwork, running the store for gift-shopping tourists. (my job, as of about a week into my first 2 weeks, until I left)

6. StewCo (Steward/ Educational Coordinator). in charge of pretty much everything else. Dealing with the public, running tours, ed. programs, scheduling, PR, port reports, boat laundry, getting bunks and "funnies" (our historical reenactment-ish uniforms used when interfacing with public)

And finally, last but certainly not least, the most important person on the boat:

7. The cook.

I saw every single one of these positions change hands at least once this past nine months of my affiliation.  To say nothing of the rates of crew rotations amongst the volunteers.

I'd estimate I met roughly 75 people in the time I worked on (and later briefly visited) the Hawaiian Chieftain, and fraternized occasionally with the crew of our sister ship, the Lady Washington.

But that's all beside the point.  The point is that this boat makes it way through the world, while I was on her, up the coast of California, in fits and spurts, stopping for usually 2 weeks at a time in any given port. Oxnard, Ventura, 3-day crazy transit to Oakland, Oakland, Redwood City, San Francisco (for a day, unfortunately), Sausalito (for almost a month, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), then back out under the Golden Gate Bridge (riding/flying atop the highest yard) up to Bodega Bay, where they REALLY put us through hell, then on to Eureka, and finally Crescent City.  That's where we were in the 3.5 months I worked, January 15 - April 24.

While she's docked, she ties up to the dock with four (and sometimes 6) huge, thick "mooring lines" with big bowlines tied by us latching her onto those big old cleats and keeping us from drifting off into other boats, rocks, or off to sea. 

I can't really emphasize how important this whole mooring line, mooring procedure thing is. It's probably one of the most dangerous, if not THE most, and most important things that we do as a crew on the boat. And we usually dock and undock at least once or twice a day.  

Sometimes we are able to leave crew ashore for various reasons while most of the boat goes off on a sail. Perhaps the cook, off to buy provisions. Perhaps the purser, off to the post office. Perhaps we have too many passengers and too many crew to fit our Coast Guard specifications, so a few crew get kicked off and get a few hours for themselves. And we usually have at least one or two people with the day off. And often the other boat gets there first, and we just tie up to them, or they move our mooring lines for us. 

But when none of these are the case, someone must play the "jumper."  The jumper's job is to jump off the boat onto the dock, when the boat is closely safe enough, to then run around as the captain tries to maneuver this huge, unwieldy boat safely around many other obstacles, while the crew stands poised to throw mooring lines, or run around with roving fenders, or call out the distances we are from hitting various things, to hopefully catch all 4 mooring lines as they are thrown, even if that requires lunging for them, almost into the sea, and getting those things hooked on around the cleats so everything goes according to plan.  When LEAVING a port or a dock without outside assistance, the jumper's job is to run around unhooking those bowlined-mooring lines and "casting them off" back towards the boat, so the sailors handling them can haul them on in without getting tangled up in the active propellers, and then safely launch him/herself from dock up onto the boat before they get too far from the dock, without misjudging the distance and falling into the water between boat and dock, and getting either crushed, drowned or prop-mangled to death.

Needless to say, it's a tricky and demanding task, not for everyone, and not for the faint of heart.

In the months I worked on the boat, I saw 4 or 5 people act as jumper. Most of the time it was my bosun Shane.  He's been sailing for many years, he is young and fit, graceful and agile, and Competent in most areas of running old Chiefie. As bosun, he did the bulk of the life-risky stuff, and it never seemed too dangerous, except for that time our captain almost crushed him and our smallboat near the fuel dock in Oakland. (Oakland was a very stressful place for us.) Earlier in my Chieftain career, I saw our engineer Eamon do it a few times too. Eamon, also, is a badass sailor who knows his way around that boat like no other. I'm pretty sure our first mate captain-to-be Shiney performed the feat with ease a few times before taking over as captain. He's been sailing since he was 16 or something, and is way more comfortable on a tallship than ANYWHERE else in the world. I think Purser Erik may have done it once or twice too, before he took off, pretty early in my time on board.

Twice, I was offered the chance to try it.  I wasn't given much instruction on the matter, Cap'n Kyle just thought I was ready, I guess. I did pretty well that first time, I think it was when we left after our one day in San Francisco.  It pumped my adrenaline in a way going aloft never quite did, except maybe those other two near-death-type times, but I got the job done, got all the mooring lines and myself safely back onto the boat, and we took off.  

Several weeks later, Cap'n Shiney gave me another chance, "to impress" a friend who had come to see me, with whom I had walked around running purser errands for a couple hours while we refueled in Oakland a few days before taking off from Sausalito to Bodega. 

A few mistakes were made in how my instructions were given. No one ever impressed upon me the importance of priorities when being the jumper.  No one ever said "It's much MUCH more important that you get safely back onto the boat than that the boat makes a clean exit on first attempt, and we make it look cool." In fact, framing it as a chance to show off convinced a show-off, performer like myself that looking cool was in fact the priority.  And efficiency too, was usually emphasized on the boat.  With alacrity!

I wasn't really thinking clearly. My head was pumping with caffeine, nerves and adrenaline. I'd only done this once before. Shiney told me to do a bunch of complicated things, reordering the mooring lines and whatnot. So I did, but that caused me to take off the wrong line in the wrong order, so I had to go back and fix my mistake, by which point I became overwhelmed and even more anxious and confused, and all the while, the boat moved further and further from me. 

Also before getting back on the boat and starting to drive, Shiney had told me that if I couldn't make it to the opening in the door at the low point of the main deck, I should jump for the shrouds.  The best thing here would be for you to have seen the boat in person, or at least have a picture, but I must just try to paint it with words.  The shrouds go up towards the top of the mast at an acute angle from the rib-line of the boat. At the rib-line, there is a plank of wood that sticks out about a foot from the steel side of the boat. Below this, a couple steel bars called channels support it.

So I jumped for the shrouds, but the boat was too high and I too low, down there on the dock, and they were moving too far and quickly away from me. Instead of the shrouds, I caught a hold of the channels, which meant I was essentially hanging half upside down by my arms, looking up at this piece of wood over my head, above/around which were the shrouds I wanted and could climb. All I had below me was the smooth, steel, inwardly curving side of the boat, a little wet, and generally not much of a footrest.

I’m a good climber, and strong, but getting up from that position would have been super-human. I’m not sure even Shiney or Rangi could have done it, though I don’t put much past them.  So I hung and dangled and kicked there for a few instants, while the rest of my crew on the boat totally flipped out and panicked, because they were sure they were about to witness my sudden and grisly death by boat, and then I fell into the water.

My first thought was to look behind me and see where the boat was, how much space was between me and it, and whether it was moving towards or away from me.  Depending on this information, I could judge if my best chance for survival was to wait, and climb back out onto the dock, or try to dive under the dock and/or boat, avoiding the propellers and shedding my life jacket on the way to avoid being crushed. Luckily, it didn’t come to that. There were a few inches on either side of me and the boat and the dock, and although it seemed to move closer for an instant, it then began to retreat, away from me and the dock. I was able to scramble/get pulled back up onto the dock, the boat came closer, and I stepped aboard, now soaking wet in dirty fuel dock/pump out Bay water, and was grabbed and helped up by my first mate and perhaps one or two other strong hands.

I stood and dripped and gaped there for a beat or two, then Shane, who had been aloft for most of this situation, brought me up an emergency blanket from down below.  I went off, stripped off my dirty wet clothes and shoes, and got immediately into the boat shower, as we took off and headed back to Sausalito.

The rest of the crew dealt with the trauma in each of their own quiet, private way. Ashley the engineer, who hadn’t always liked me or cared much about me up til now, went down to the engine room and cried. Her engineer’s mate Chloe smoked a cigarette. The only time in her stressful 3-5 months on board when she did so. Most of the crew still doesn’t like talking about or remembering this story.  I’m sure it was even scarier for all of them than it was for me.  I didn’t really have time to be scared. I only had time to react, and survive.