Last Christmas, I thoroughly enjoyed making crochet scarves for the family why watching movies, talking and sipping on some tea. I thought crochet projects would be the perfect pass-time to bring on the ship.

Since I had the memory of making almost one scarf per day, I thought I needed a LOT of supplies for this 28 day container ship voyage. Back in Austin, with the help Justin’s family, we packed up 8 skeins and some synthetic stuffing in… vacuum-sealed bags! It worked like a charm and saved us a lot of space.

While this is not the best picture in the world, here’s the crochet cast – still flattened:

So, why synthetic stuffing? Well, instead of making scarves, wouldn’t it be cool to make stuffed animals?! I felt ambitious. Using Brigitte Read’s Super-Super Cute Crochet pattern book (I’ll link to her when I get better internet), I gave making stuffed animals a shot. Turns out they are as cute as they claim to be, but they’re also a lot more work than I thought… so I have two to show!

First, a cute, round little whale.

And a pwetty butterfly.

In parallel, I’ve been working on a child blanket, which makes me want to make one for myself…

… that thing is warm!

I find crochet to be almost like a meditative practice. It’s repetitive yet requires your full attention. I don’t even like to watch TV all that much when I crochet. Just me, my thoughts, the yarn and the hook. It gives me time to think, it makes me feel like I’m giving my brain a break, yet I’m producing something useful with my hands and later have the satisfaction of accomplishment.

Nah, not really. But you have to be prepared for worst case scenarios. Safety first. To that effect, the Cap Cleveland crew performs a drill every Saturday. This past Saturday, we got to practice the “abandon ship” drill. Sounded pretty awful (or awesome?)… and we knew what we needed to do:
– (not mandatory) wear ear plugs so the alarm doesn’t pierce your ears because it’s so loud. We hear you, alarm! We really do.
– put on sturdy shoes
– grab and wear our life vests and hard hats (both stored in our cabin)
– go down to the Muster Station (on Deck A, starboard (right) side)
– wait for instructions

When we got to the Muster Station, we were greeted with a happy bright orange bunch. Drills are serious, but not “that” serious… let’s gather around and take a group shot – yay drills!

As part of the “abandon ship” practice, we needed to get acquainted with our life boat. I thought to myself: “wait… we’re going in the life boat?! For real? Yikes!” Apparently, that was the plan. We did not lower it to the water, but we did take a tour.

To give you guys a better idea of what it looks like, here’s a shot Justin snapped in a port (shh, we’re not allowed). See that red and white boat or submarine looking thing hanging on the side of the ship? That’s our life boat.

The ship has two of them, one on each side. They also have 5 rafts (2 on each side and 1 at the bow). Getting into the life boat, you had to duck and wiggle yourself in to find what I thought was a simple submarine-like interior.

In the picture below, you can see on the left, the pilot’s seat (right near the entrance) which enables the pilot to look out small windows (with hand cranked windshield wipers!) to navigate. Slightly down and in front of him, there’s the main space with seats and seat-belts all around. In the center, there are yet more seats with boxes underneath carrying survival supplies.

A life boat can carry 26 people, which seems like a lot of bodies to cram in there. Luckily, there are currently only 23 people on the ship, which means one life boat would carry a max of 12 people. Phew! That sounds better.

Each seat had a foam cushion for the back and the head, as well as dual seat-belts to really latch you in. Indeed, if you needed to use that boat and the weather was bad… it could toss you around like a washing machine until it stabilizes. You definitely want those seat-belts.

The cool thing we learned about the life boat, is that it actually has an engine (already filled with fuel) which can take you places, rather than just drift and hope to get saved by someone. Personally, I find that very reassuring. So guess what? We got to turn on the engine and learn how to operate the levers (forward, backward, neutral).

Justin quite enjoyed playing life boat captain!

I got to try too and it worked! It saved my life, but apparently I lost a hand in the process… can someone find it for me please?

What to do on a 28 day ship ride? Read. A lot. We wanted to bring lots of books with us both for enjoyment and as a boredom life-vest.

So, why books and not a Kindle? Lots of people asked us that question or would just straight up say: “Do you have a Kindle? You’ll need one!” Well, we didn’t feel that way…here are our reasons not to bring one:
– we didn’t have one in the first place
– it’s expensive (plus, we already owned most books we wanted to bring)
– it’s yet another gadget we’d be afraid to loose/damage/get stolen
– we like holding books with real pages
– we can lend/give books to others and can even contribute to the ship’s library
– with books, Justin and I can read simultaneously. So… does that mean we would need 2 Kindles? Yikes!

Who knows, one day we may be sick of lugging our books around and try the Kindle just to discover we can’t live without it. For now, books are doing just fine.

So here’s what we brought with us:

A Pig In Provence by Georgeanne Brennan
A Year In Provence by Peter Mayle
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Half The Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity For Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
First-Time Asia by Rough Guides
In Defense Of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan
Le Livre Du Voyage by Bernard Werber
Le Mystère Des Dieux by Bernard Werber
Le Pouvoir du Moment Présent by Eckhart Tolle
My Life In France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maughan
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett
The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
The Journals Of Lewis And Clark edited by Bernard DeVoto
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
The Ridiculous Race by Steve Hely & Vali Chandrasekaran
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Three Cups Of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Tramping in New Zealand by Lonely Planet
Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

A large majority of them will either stay on the ship or be sent back home at the end of our ocean voyage.

First off, one needs to know that big ships like the Cap Cleveland need to hire “pilots” to get in and out of every harbor. The pilot knows the currents, the depths and the bridges of the often times very intricate harbor entrances. Piloting can be required for a long time (6 hours in Philadelphia, 15+ hours for the Panama Canal transit, with multiple pilots) or a rather short time (about 1 hour in Balboa, Panama).

The pilot typically comes on when the ship is still docked and gets off soon before the open ocean. Sometimes they even get a “dock pilot” who specializes in getting ships out of their docks and turned the right direction, and then a “river pilot” to get the ship to the ocean.

So how does he come on and off? Well, like you’d see in movies… using a ladder on the side of the ship, dropped off and picked up by a pilot boat (which is often a form of tug-boat).

This procedure is so regulated that the ship has a laminated chart about what the requirements are for the pilot’s on/off-boarding.

I was able to capture the off-boarding process in Balboa. We were on our last straight line before getting to the open ocean, when on the port side, came the Pilot Boat towards us at a rather fast speed.

The boat gets really close and aligned with the ship, such that it comes against it.

Once positioned, the Pilot comes down the ladder on the side of the ship. Nothing else but his own hands are holding him on.

And hop he goes! Off the ladder, onto the pilot boat’s platform.

It’s like being James Bond as part of their job. Incredible! This one was pretty lucky… our pilot in Cartagena got completely soaked by a wave that came in between the boat and the ship as he was jumping off the ladder. I’m sure there are way worse scenarios than just getting soaked… I’ll have to ask the mates for stories.

That’s it, we are officially on our 18 days stretch across the Pacific ocean to get to New Zealand. No turning back, no getting off. We saw our last piece of land yesterday as we said our goodbyes to Panama (although if weather permits, we will see Tahiti about mid-Pacific journey). So, how do we feel, you ask? Great! Happy to be on the ship, happy to be on the ocean, happy to continue this experience.

The Panama transit was incredibly interesting. I especially liked the Gatun lake and going through the locks. Man, these things are impressive. They show the sheer force of man-made wonders. It was incredible to go through a place that plays such an important role in global commerce and world economy. There are a lot of dollars going through this canal!

We didn’t have much time on-shore but were able to squeeze in a late night outing to a restaurant on a popular night-life strip. It was very cool, but also very surreal. Speaking a little Spanish, being on land, walking through the container yard at night, the heat, the humidity, trying to enjoy our very short (2 hours) on-land opportunity, the fact that it’s night time and we can’t really take any good photos was a lot to process after the low-impact schedule we’ve been on. Oh, and the cab driver! I have to tell this little anecdote…

We negotiated with a cab $20 round-trip for 2 hours. As he drops us off back at the port, I hand him $20 and he says: “20? No, it’s $20 per person!”. I said: “What? That’s not true, that’s not what you said earlier” Justin (almost laughing and about to exit the car): “No, no, no… $20.” Me: “That’s not what you said, sorry.” After a little back and forth in Spanglish, feeling kinda bad, I got out of the car. Justin was totally rolling his eyes, thinking “how typical”. He didn’t even try to put up a fight, he just looked annoyed, so clearly he was bull-shitting us. Me, way more naive, was feeling bad for the guy in case we didn’t understand something earlier. Clearly, I need to grow thicker skin. It was obvious that he attempted to rip us off, and it was very probable he got a cut of our bill from the restaurant. He’s doing just fine.

Anyways, back on the ship by our midnight curfew, we slept through the loading and unloading process at night. Sometimes it’s loud and can shake the whole ship, but sometimes, you barely know they’re working. We were supposed to leave the port by 7am or so. At that time, they were still working on the containers, and it sounded like they were also waiting to get a pilot. All in all, we left the dock at around 1pm.

Bye bye cranes!

Bye bye Panama!

Oh! On our way out, we saw this ship… it seemed to be carrying 3 yachts. Funny, no?

And here we go, away from land and towards the greatness of the ocean.