Daily Journal

June 19, 2010

By David M. Lawrence

Today, B Watch had the dawn watch (0300-0700 hours). Aside from getting to see the sunrise – and a spectacular sunrise it was – dawn watch gets the pleasure of doing dawn cleanup after breakfast.

Dawn cleanup is often considered part of the drudgery inherent in any scientific expedition. You clean up your workspace, which on a ship is also your living space. Despite the complete lack of glamour in getting the ship clean, it is important to maintaining morale. In our case, we clean the heads, the showers, the passageways and the aft cabin where the captain and chief scientist have sleeping space as well as an office.

Today, though, we had "DC lite" – a not quite as intense dawn cleanup. We weren't slacking. A more ambitious cleanup effort, called a field day, was scheduled for the afternoon. The ship's routine carried on as usual until class time, but instead of class, Captain Chris McGuire gave a rousing speech to inspire us to do a thorough job. He spoke of a never-ending campaign against a nefarious entity called mung that infests the hard-to-reach places of a ship and grows from its refugia.

Once the speech was over, the captain ordered us to play a game called "bear, ninja, cowboy" – a whole-body form of "rock, paper, scissors" – to help us develop the skills and energy needed to defeat mung. Once we had a winner (I lost in the first round), we were given our marching orders: A Watch cleaned the galley and everything in it, B Watch cleaned below deck from the main saloon (the dining area just abaft the galley) to the forecastle, C watch got the aft cabin area and the doghouse (charthouse), and the scientific staff got the lab.

Each watch scattered to its respective zone of responsibility. Since everyone was awake, however, the cleaning activities which are normally conducted as silently as possible were carried out to the sound of music blasting from a number of devices. In the main saloon area, for example, B Watch had Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" competing with A Watch's selection of Pink Floyd's "Us and Them."

The work was hard, the effort intense, but the comaraderie made it worthwhile. Little bits, like having Roman Shor – built like a Roman statue (one of those big ones, not the little trinkets they sell on gift shop shelves) – fill in for my vertically challenged frame when I couldn't reach the bulkhead above a watertight door, make the experience fun rather than something to hurry up and finish. (Not that we didn't try to hurry up and finish.)

When we finished, my 48-year-old carcass was exhausted. But we gathered on the quarterdeck for the captain's debriefing, and he announced a treat – swim call 900 nautical miles from the closest point of land in a pool three miles deep. It was a short swim, but I cannot think of a better way to end a long day.

Except for maybe joining evening watch once I'm through posting for the day.