Navimag, Chile: We must have been waiting for daylight. When the sky went gray to pink I felt the engines throttle up. A few minutes later I felt motion. We headed south for an hour or so before making the move west and then another hour or so, north. All of us passengers turned out topside. The observation deck was on the very top, above the bridge and officers quarters. Not a lot of conversation, we were all caught up in the moment.
When I went to Alaska in 2009, the mountains and fjords were spellbinding. It was normal for natives, transplants and wannabe pilgrims to beg the grandeur of Alaska’s prime wilderness. Of course the wide eyed newbies could only affirm that sense of awe. But awe is one thing and blubbering is another. I would nod my approval and say, “Yea, it’s cool.” Sometimes I got pushback, like “How can you not be dumb-struck?” Without any rhetoric I explained, “I’ve been spoiled; I did Patagonia before I came here.” Not that one is more special than the other but you only get one first kiss.
There were two game boards painted on the deck, one with large checkers the size of hubcaps and the other, knee high chess pieces. You had to walk around the pieces, pick them up to make your move. Carmen, the lady who would be getting of at the next stop, she wanted to play chess so we worked on my Spanish and tried to remember some chess strategy. We both knew the moves but neither had any idea how to attack or defend. Her job was a collaboration between the Navy and the National Park. In the wee hours of the next morning we would stop in the middle of the channel to resupply the hamlet of Puerto Edén and she would go ashore there.
The cloud cover was broken with occasional shafts of sunlight breaking through. I learned that was normal. The archipelago itself is a weather maker that doesn’t let much sunshine through so you relish the patches of blue. Soaking up the scenery is great but pretty soon you need to move and do something else. I went up to the starboard wing, off the bridge, looked inside and to my surprise my British cohorts were there, talking with the man. It turns out, whoever is in command can choose to let passengers on the bridge. The 2nd Officer’s name was Chris, he had the 12:00-4:00 watch both day and night and liked speaking English so getting on the bridge was easy. The boat pretty much drove itself but he showed us the manual systems and we studied his charts and radar. He was a music buff, listening to the blues, loved Clapton and B.B. King. Chris didn’t wear his uniform on the bridge and the informality seemed strange. I suppose we could have saluted or called him “Sir” but he liked spontaneity and we might as well have been drinking buddies. Sailing the inland passage does not have the rigors of the open sea but it gets tense when the boat negotiates tight spaces. Chris would send us off to the far window while he played with the thrusters. He would be on the bridge when we stopped at Puerto Edén but the Captain was always up for that stop as well.
The bridge of a ship is where you want to be, at least if you’re on an inside passage. Looking up the throat of narrow channels, you can’t ignore vertical walls of black granite. The more I looked the harder it was to imagine if water was encroaching up the mountain side or the other way around. There are times when you have a quarter or half a mile of open water to the wall but it can narrow dramatically, quickly. From the bridge you see it coming. That first day there was open water on the port side but we were angling straight into the mountain on the right. Chris had played this game with others on other trips I’m sure and he enjoyed it. Jeff and Jeffrey (my English amigos) exchanged anxious glances and we all rolled our eyes. Uncomfortably close to the rocks Chris informed us; “The open water is a dead end.” As he spoke, a narrow gap in the wall appeared. “To transit these narrows we have to make a sharp 90 degree turn to port inside the narrows, with altogether maybe 30 meters clearance.” He loved it. This was where he truly earned his pay. It took half an hour to go a quarter mile. It felt like we were dead in the water but he was tickling the rudder and thrusters like an astronaut docking with the space station. Seals came up close, barking back and forth but nothing new for them. A Navimag ferry does this little dance, going or coming, every two or three days. Jeff, the taller of the two, likened it to riding an inner tube in the bath tub. Upstream a ways we had 100 meters on either side and it seemed like miles.
We ate cafeteria style with a cook spooning out portions. You could go back for seconds and we did. Good thing I’m not vegetarian, meat is central to every entree. I think the salad bowl was there to add color. I took my share of peas, avocado and corn but then I’m a gringo. After dinner we checked the movie; they ran movies in the lounge until the wee hours. Depending on which movie was playing, a few truck drivers came up from their lounge to watch what was showing on our screen. They had to keep their trucks clean so they could put feed on the floor. They didn’t want the cows to lose weight on the boat ride. Twice a day they hosed manure out of the truck, onto the deck and then to a drain that kept the deck clean. The smell tended to waft out the back and we didn’t notice but some of the drivers kept their trucks cleaner than they did themselves. Late at night the lounge reeked of cows, smoke and booze but come morning, it smelled of disinfectant and fresh air. I never knew who’s job that was but he was my favorite employee.
No comments:
Post a Comment