#sailorlife

3 IS THE PERFECT NUMBER - 3 E’ IL NUMERO PERFETTO

Whitstable, Kent

Sometimes sailing on tall ships ( or any ship for that matter) gets weird. Really weird. Im not talking about sea monsters and ghost ships ( thats another story all together) but sometimes things happen so unexpectedly out on the open ocean that defy all sense and logic- and without explanation. Ask a sailor. They’ll tell you.

The ship I was sailing on a couple years back had just left port in Europe, and was traveling north through the Baltic Sea. A gently breeze carried her through the water slowly, at about 4 knots (5mph roughly). As far as the eye could see, water in every direction, and no land to be had. Vast, open ocean.

It was morning. The sun shown bright. As my crew was on watch, it was my turn to take “bow watch”. Bow watch is essentially this: stand out at the front (bow/fore) of the ship with a radio, binoculars  and a wind jacket, and report anything that might be a hazard to the ship or the crew, i.e., other ships, fishing bouys, flotsam, jetsam, and the like. As the helmsmen and officers navigate by charts and navigating equipment, following blobs on a bright neon radar, blind to what is truly ahead of the ship, its your job to be the eyes and the ears. It’s a serious job that for the most part is uneventful and boring- with short bursts of communication over a radio spotting far off cargo ships or the aforementioned buoys and their lines that might become ensnared in the propeller of the ship. On this particular day however, things took a turn for the unexplainably silly, and I was there to witness all of it.

As I was performing my duties at the bow, looking through my binoculars at the vast blue horizon, scanning for any traffic that might impede our progress, I spotted something odd. A small yellow shape, not far off from the bow of the ship. The water, being a dark calm blue, made any other color distinct among its rolling hilly waves. As the small speck drew closer, I tried to find it looking through my high powered binoculars. As I scanned from left to right, right to left- blue, blue, blue blue… yellow….blue blue- I jerked my binoculars back and found it again. A little yellow blob- floating quite contently over the surface. I racked my brain to try and associate an object to what I was seeing…

Piece of a buoy? Too round.

A balloon? Too small.

A life jacket? Please not a life jacket.

A duck? A duck!

As the shape drew closer, I could make out its little orange beak and big white cartoon eyes, gleefully tossing about over the crest of the small waves, this way and that, bobbing along wherever the ocean would take it. At this point, you might have guessed that this was not a real duck, but a yellow, rubber bath duck. In my haste to report such a silly thing to the officer of the watch, I forgot all protocol over the radio and blurted out in a voice that was far too loud for a microphone so close to my mouth, “A DUCK!”. A little embarrassed, I immediately hoped that transmission was unheard by the officer. To my disappointment, two seconds later the radio crackled, and a voice on the other side replied, “officer to bow…” (elongated pause, followed by en exasperated sigh)…

“what?”

Sheepishly, I replied- the silliness of the situation permeating my brain, and in the same excited tone as before, albeit a bit further away from the speaker- “A DUCK!”

Again, a long pause before the radio crackled again- “So what?” was the reply.

Just then- as I was about to reply once more to an already peeved officer- I saw more.

More ducks.

They floated contently on the ocean. I moved about the bow of the ship, counting. One… two… three…four…five…. Five. Five little ducks, all going where the current and waves would take them- and towards us. As they passed the ship by, or rather, we passed them by, I chuckled to myself at the comical absurdity. Here we are, way out in the middle of the baltic sea, and our only companion cruising these waters are bath ducks.

I could hardly contain my snickering giggle as I called back on the radio: “Bow to officer” (chuckle).

Again came the muffled, staticy (slightly sarcastic and annoyed) reply, “officer to bow, go ahead.”

(Chuckle) “rubber duckies, sir. One point off the starboard bow” (chuckle).

Pause. The radio crackles again. “rubber?”

I reply, “duckies, sir”.

At this point, I look down the length of the ship. From the bow to the stern. The first officer- white shirt, blue and gold epaulettes, sunglasses and windblown hair, holding his radio, has exited his navigation room poignantly and is standing near the quarterdeck of the ship. We make eye contact. He throws up his arms straight into the air, radio in hand, squishes his head into his neck, scrunches his nose, and shakes his head rapidly in aggravated confusion. I smirk, shrug my shoulders exaggeratedly and go back to my task. (Chuckle).

By now there are ten. Then twenty. Then thirty. Then a hundred. Then more. Uncountable.

Hundreds if not a thousand or more little rubber ducks. All swimming in the opposite direction as our ship glides past them. Little yellow pepper flakes on a blue soup. I stare, smiling, giggling and shaking my head as I watch these wide eyed little canards so blissfuly pass by.

I’ve lost it. The sheer insanity and absurdity of the situation has tickled my funny bone. I’m having a hard time concentrating on my task of overseeing the safety of the ship through my tears of laughter.  

The first officer by now has noticed them on his radar. The little floating groups of ducks have made islands on his screen which he now comes to the bow to investigate. He walks slowly up behind me, and just as he is about to say something to me about this anomaly, he locks eyes upon the source of my mania. I am bent over giggling to myself as we stand there- the most wrenched look of confusion upon his face that I have ever seen, with a hint of a smile. He then lets out a short, airy chuckle. He leans over the side, hands upon the rail and shakes his head, smiling. I finally wipe the last of the tears from my eyes as the rest of the crew has realized what is going on, and are leaning over the railing to take in the sight excitedly pointing and laughing. The officer calls indistinctly over the radio, and not soon after the captain joins us on deck for the circus. The captain- a weathered man with a gruff demeanor (as most captains are) comes to the bow in a knit cap and a peacoat. He looks out over our duck-dotted horizon, gives a smirk and looks over the bow of the ship. Returning, he looks at me, nods and says, “catch me one, will you?” and continues on back to his cabin. I oblige, and fashion a bucket and line together. Swinging it over the side, I dip it into the cool water and capture a couple as they float past. I bring the bucket up and handle the two, studying them for any signs or clues of origin, not to mention why they have come to sail the Baltic. None.

We go about our day as the swarm of bath toys passes us by, hopefully to end up on a beach somewhere where little kids will take them home, rather than in the mouth of a whale or in one of those damnable trash islands we’ve heard so much about. I chuckle to myself for the rest of the day about the whole situation- and every time I retell it, even now, I guffaw my way through the account.

As far as an answer to the source of these ducks, I can offer you no solace in resolution. There is no truth, only theory. The best idea that came about, most assuredly from the captain, is that a container ship had lost some of its cargo while in a storm. The container, falling off the ship, dives down to the deep- where either the pressure of the ocean bottom, damage or corrosion takes its toll, and the container releases its contents. Being of buoyant nature, the ducks swam to the surface, where they began their journey back to man, searching for a smaller tub in which to swim.