There she blows

Ever since my last offload I've gotten on this really bizarre sleep schedule where I'm usually not able to go to bed till like 4 or 5 in the morning. When you're at sea on a fishing boat though you come to realize that time frames like the normal 9-5 are insignificant and more accurately nonexistant. To aid with my bizarre habits of sleeping and to make a general attempt at keeping my body from atrophy I've been going out on the deck and doing a little workout that consists of various sets of pushups and pullups crunches and lifting some heavy pieces of metal that they have in the deck locker. Well late one evening around 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning I'm doing some pushups and I stop for a second to look at the ocean. It's pitch black and i'm mainly staring at the spray from the waves that are coliding with the boat. The deck is always pretty loud due to huge diesel engine that lies below so there's a constant hum. But that night, two nights ago, I heard a high pitch vibration. I didn't know what it was but I knew it sounded like it came from an animal and almost sounded like a dolphin. I stopped and stared off into space like people do when they're really trying to listen for something and as it happened the void that I was staring into was filled by a large black dorsal fin that rose above horizon of the boat and then disapeared. I ran to the edge of the boat to stare into the water after shouting various expletives in astonishment. There were two overhead lights that shone on the deck and spilled out onto the sea as well giving the water just outside the boat a really light blue color. I stared intently when all of the sudden two large black and white figures errupted from the water's surface. A male and female killer whale within 6 feet of me swimming beside the boat. I ran inside to grab my camera and started to take video. For the next 10 minutes I sat by the edge of the boat staring over the rail and in that 10 minutes they submerged and emerged probably 6 or 7 times. It was one of the coolest things that I've ever seen in my life and that expirience alone has made this trip amazing.

As for the video? Well i watched it and it's pretty dark and if you weren't there at the actual occurence then you probably wouldn't be able to see the whales in the video. And if you could see them you'd probably be to distracted by the guy in the background who was shouting explitives in astonishment and how totaly cool it was.

I'm still alive

I'm sorry that I haven't updated this in a long time but it's really difficult to get to a computer long enough to type anything. My past few times in port have resulted in me having to go straight to offload which means that I go straight to staring at dead fish for 6 hours. The sweet thing is that the new plant that we're offloading to doesn't require me to actually stand so I get to read for those 6 hours!

Things are going well though. I've got nothing all too exciting to report. One of the crewmen is going to show me how to weld on the next trip out to sea which I'm looking forward to. I've been reading a lot but I don't have a lot of music so any mix cds that people might feel inclined to send would be great.

I hope those that I haven't talked to are doing well and if so feel inclined should shoot me an email or post a response. Thanks. Sorry this is so choppy. I'm in a hurry.

-Patrick

ps. and i'll continue living