Three white lights

In navigation, three white lights vertically and red to right 
and green to left mean a tugboat and tow more than 200 
meters long is coming toward you.

That Thanksgiving night seems like it was more than a hundred years ago now. That night I learned what the loneliness of the ocean sailor is all about. We were delivering an 83-foot fish tender from Alaska to the Seattle area and Thanksgiving found us off Namu, British Columbia, about to enter Fitzhugh Sound.

Below in the galley we had a turkey we'd brought along cooking in the diesel stove. The odors wafting up through the house brought memories of their own. The boat rose and fell on a gentle swell as we entered the sound and I checked all the visible navigation aids against the chart to make sure we were far enough offshore and heading the way we wanted to go. With all signs good, I set the auto pilot and leaned back in the chair casually watching the dark water ahead. The VHF radio had barely issued a peep all day, but occasionally traffic on the Single Sideband disturbed the quiet in the wheehouse.

Then out of the buzz and garbled voices a clear one loudly called for a particular vessel. That vessel responded equally as clearly and suddenly a father at sea connected with his young son on the night of Thanksgiving. The father said he was on a tug off the coast of California near San Francisco; the son responded with an unhuh. And that was how the conversation went from there. The father  trying to coax any kind of conversation out of the boy he could, wanting that connection so desperately and the son unsure and shy answering in affirmative grunts and mumbles. Did you have a good dinner?  Uh huh.  Did you have turkey?  Yeah. Did you have mashed potatoes and gravy?  Mm hmm. Did you eat your vegetables? Ummm. The seaman laughed at that response.

But you could almost feel the desperation in the man's voice as he queried his son most likely wanting any sign at all that they were connected and he was appreciated. If it did come, I never heard it. In time the father said he had to go and the boy said OK and that was that. Given that a woman never came on I assumed this was a divorced father, as I was, which probably made the pain all the worse.

On and off through the night I thought of that father on the tug somewhere south of us, not even knowing which way it was headed. I replayed the conversation in my head and thought of my own son 2 years old at the time with whom I could not have even had that stilted conversation.

I actually thought of a song.  For a long time I thought it would be cool given the number of folks on the water around the world to write a series of country-western-type songs in the way of truck driving ballads but about work boats and the people on them. A tug with a tow longer than 200 meters shows three white lights vertically forward and I started on "The Three White Lights of Christmas." Perhaps fortunately for the world, I never got very far with it, but I have never lost the memory of that night on Fitzhugh Sound and that sailor's conversation with his son.

I guess on holidays no matter who we are or what our circumstance is, in one way or another we reach for family. I have spent many holidays alone since that night and in a way feel that kinship with mariners and in that understanding I know that every year somewhere in the world, there are sailors out on the big oceans trying to converse with a child across the waters and, one can hope, making that desired family connection.

A whale of an argument remains unresolved

Have you ever been involved in an argument that ended unsatisfactorily and then lingered in your mind, maybe for years, unresolved? This post is an attempt to resolve one of those. It came up as a memory after seeing this item about sei whales on Facebook the other day.

Sei whale photo by Christin Khan on the Mission Blue FB page.

The Sei Whale is the THIRD LARGEST baleen whale and one of the FASTEST of all cetaceans: it can sprint up to 50 kilometers per hour! They're also ENDANGERED, having been hunted to near extinction during humanity's whaling days. (Japan still hunts them, by the way.) – From the Mission Blue Facebook page.

It began off the coast of California a couple of days out from San Francisco Bay. On a dark gray afternoon we spotted a whale resting on the surface several hundred feet from the boat. The visual silhouette indicated one of the larger baleen whales, the long back with an unnaturally small dorsal fin in the rear third of the body. From experience, looking at it, I guessed a fin whale or a sei whale while others on the boat said it was a blue whale, one outside my experience.

In time and very authoritatively two people decided it was a blue whale and that was that. At the time to a younger person I suggested it could be a fin whale or a sei whale. One of these two authorities overheard me and said it could not be sei whale and I was dead wrong.  Now I hadn’t said it was definitely a sei whale, the way this former friend had decided it was a blue whale.  I just said it could have been and just as easily could have been a blue or a fin whale. No, it cannot be a sei whale, he said.  Why not, I asked. To that he said this wasn't sei whale habitat.

Sei whale range from the American Cetacean Society

Now, I knew better than that. Years earlier a friend and I had had almost the same discussion. We saw a similar whale from a boat I was operating in Alaska waters and most people identified it as a fin whale, but this one fellow suggested it could be a sei whale. I had never heard of sei whales, so I looked them up. What I learned was they have the same shape and almost the same size as a fin whale, averaging only about five feet shorter.  According to my source book, they are very difficult to differentiate from fin whales and the only way is in how they hold their tail flukes when they dive. Also according to that book, A Sea Guide to the Whales of the World by Lyall Watson, sei whales are found throughout all the world's oceans except the extreme Arctic and Antarctic waters.

None of that mattered to this guy who in front of a whole bunch of people told me I was wrong and to boot, stupid for thinking what I was thinking. At one point he said he didn't think sei whales went into Prince William Sound, a place we both had sailed in, but was about 2,000 miles north of us at the time. But then in frustration to my not bending down in homage and agreement he said very authoritatively that he had spent years in the Antarctic and there were no sei whales there. What that had to do with whales in the mid latitudes I don't know, but by that time I was embarrassed and fed up. I told him I didn't care if he had spent years on the moon, sei whales certainly could be where we were and this could have been a sei whale, and walked away. There comes a time when you just have to cash in your chips and get out any way you can.

Still that argument has lingered in my mind for the four or so years since it happened and every time I

Blue whale

Fin whale, you tell me

see the mention of a sei whale it comes up. I guess what bothers me is that this person who has since lost my friendship, had so little disregard for me or my knowledge or intellect that he could tell me in front of a bunch of people we barely knew that I was ignorant and stupid. I did eventually tell him he was wrong about sei whales but I never said absolutely that this whale was one, only that it could have been one and that he and others had identified it as a blue whale because they wanted it to be blue whale. They had wished it so.

In the long run it is silly and immature to let oneself be dragged into such an argument and to let that argument linger as anger in the psyche for so long. Perhaps just venting here will help let it go. And by the way, I will brook no arguments over this post; as they say on Facebook, LOL.

And perhaps for those who have read this far, you are now aware of yet another species of great whales endangered on the high seas.

I guess the southern tip of Chile doesn't count as being near Antarctica

Mission Blue petition to the United Nations to save sei whales

Milestones, logs and blogs

"Sea Guide to the Whales of the World"

What a day, what wild weather

This is the lake effect snow cloud approaching Buffalo from Lake Erie.

What an interesting weather day. To begin with my old home town is being blasted with up to 70 inches of snow from an awesome storm that moved across the Great Lakes, with healthy snowfalls elsewhere in Western New York. More expected until at least Saturday.

Meanwhile here in Alaska because of a lack of snow and dry conditions we have wildfire warnings out all over the place and responders have already doused two in this general area.

Freezing temperatures in all 50 states this morning.

What's more, the Weather Service says this morning was the coldest November day recorded at least since 1976. Every state among the 50 had temperatures below freezing, including Hawaii. But right now at about 5:30 pm in Alaska it's almost 40 degrees above zero. But our time is coming: A major storm system is working its way up the Pacific Ocean and should be in the Gulf of Alaska by Thursday promising some wild weather in this area just a day or two after that.

That polar vortex was something last year and looks to get worse this time around. I wonder which way the snowy owls are flying.

And, here is the storm approaching Alaska from the south.

Photos of the storm and approaching lake effect cloud.

Coldest morning in US since 1976.

Matanuska-Susitna fire danger

Owl be seeing you in the Polar Vortex

Meanwhile back in Alaska

The sun rose this morning. Lots of birds came to the feeders. The electricity in the house still works. So, I guess it's not the end of the world quite yet. And, I realized I have been ignoring the better parts of life in recent posts, so please bear with some disjointed thoughts from the north.

Why is it most songbirds look angry from head on? There's that bluebird.

First, I finally pinpointed the exact date when the sun goes behind the mountain in the fall. It came last Wednesday right at the peak when the sun slipped behind it for less than an hour. Two sunrises for a while, but they will get farther apart until the day when it doesn't show at all. Marking the date at October 29. The two sunrises come back for the spring around February 5.

Then there is the solitary man. Not much to write about him these days because I just don't travel

I have one of these hanging in a window at the cabin.

that road often enough and at the right times. But there is news. Driving by the  island between freeway lanes where I believed he lived, I saw massive bulldozer cuts into the woods and a huge pile of soil fill at the north end. More bulldozer scars at the south end and a collection of heavy yellow machinery. The world is taking out his home. Plans are for a highway widening to three lanes on each side and the new bigger, safer interchange of entry and exit ramps in both directions. Where he went is anybody's guess but for sure he isn't gong to be staying there any more. Another attack on the homeless.

Around here chickadees crowd the feeders and as many as nine Pine grosbeaks at a time join the frenzy. A nuthatch here and there and a junco join the fray now and again but so far no sign of redpolls. They usually show up later in the winter. I have gone through about half the first bag of feed of the season.

Only a thin, broken cover of crusty snow colors the yard but that's about normal for the season. More to come for sure, especially with a huge storm coming in on the Bering Sea coast this weekend, part of a huge cyclone system moving up the Pacific this week.

I started the first fire in the wood stove this week, replaced the kitchen sink and repaired the chain saw, not that it's needed anytime soon. There's a good supply of firewood in the yard.

Given the events of the past month, it's coming time for an extensive foray to the East Pole. I look at the idle snowmachines in the tent and hear Alaska calling again and it's time to heed that call. All that’s needed is about 20 inches of snow. Bring it.

On the slippery slope that leads to third-world status

American democracy goes on display for the world tomorrow. Let's hope we get it right. It's difficult to force our system down the throats of third-world countries when we can't do it correctly at home.