- 66, on a Victory at anchor in Manila Bay, the Enterprise near, the whole Australian navy round about, choppers and launches going by continuously, the Aussies running amuck in Manila, President Johnson at the Manila Hotel
- being buzzed by the RAF off Singapore, warned to show our ensign, which the mate was saving because one, our other one, had been used as a drop cloth in an AB’s paint-by-numbers adventures in our ruined lounge
- 12 to 4 sometime after midnight in the Indian Ocean. On lookout, seeing a large orange ball, about the size of a quarter held at arms length off the starboard quarter. Consultation with the mate determined that it couldn’t be the moon, which anyway should have been in the south. The ball remained for sometime, then gradually faded. Later, a notice is posted on a board in the galley telling everyone to dress in heavy clothes, seal all openings, and wash down everything once an hour because the Chinese had exploded a dirty bomb and we would shortly be passing throug heavy fallout. An hour later, another notice, tellling us forget it, not to worry, we had probably already passed through it!
- with much forward way on, in Southampton, about to warp into the Queen Mary, which was idle there because of a seamen’s strike, as, meanwhile, the 2nd mate and a drunk AB slugged it out on the fantail to the jeers of the dockworkers that had ran when the stern wire began to sing
- 68, typhoon central pacific, very high confused seas with such a short wave length they could have been piling up over a reef. A tremendous roller coaster ride that buried everything forward of the house every time we dropped over a wave.
- 75, parting the pack ice, Bering Sea.
- 76, the DB Thor rolling off the Forties Alpha, North Sea, while the nearly four hundred foot long shear legs of a crane that could put 2000 tons 250 feet up on the platform was used to transport workers in crew baskets, at high speed, high up onto the platform in the light of the roaring flarestack
- 77, in the radio room of a giddily swaying jackup off the Dutch Coast, hearing of the rolling Sea Troll, which had lost its tow in the northern North Sea, falling broadside to 60 foot waves, the captain calmly ordering everyone to standby, not to try to launch life rafts, but just stand at the doorways in lifejackets as, meanwhile, the Spanish welders prepared to burn lose the saturation diving system to send it over the side. Of the five divers inside it was relayed to us on the jackup that they just said, “Lock us in some valium.” (The Sea Troll regained its tow, but if the message on the radio was true, a tow boat was lost with all hands.)
- from the semisubmersible Sedco 704, which was acting as a diving platform alongside the Piper Alpha, watching one of the two flarestacks catch fire, melt, and fall into the sea (I have photos of this). The Piper Alpha was of course the platform that, with most of its workers, was destroyed by fire in 88.
- 83, Bering, the haulback on an Akebono stern trawler, 400grt, killer whales converging on the ship from all along the horizon, chasing a whale, which sounded right along side of us, then the killers plunging after it. I thought of this every time I saw a diver’s flag in the vicinity of killers in Puget Sound.
- 83, Bering, Akebono Maru 1 to Akebono Maru 18, an amazing heaving line throw. Swung faster and faster in a vertical circle, about twenty feet in diameter, at the bow, then let go. A good two hundred foot throw that landed right at the feet of the catcher. (heavily weighted ball, of course). It was used to return a messenger, and then a line came back with the hand calculator, that I had left behind in an at sea transer, all wrapped in a pretty white package with a yellow bow. (This was twelve hours after the transfer. Maybe it had something to do with maintaining observer-Japanese relations.)