So…Weather-beaten we sighted the BC coast. Our days were now filled with repairing the damage the storm had done. Lots of broken railings in our quarters. Dishes needed replacing. Cookware needed fixing.
Remember how I told you that we had to get into clean clothes every time we went for a meal? We got pretty good at that. One lunch were sitting waiting for grub when ‘slop, slop’ one of the engine room young boys came into the eating room. He’d forgotten to change! Every step he had made from the engine room to the restaurant was marked with a black greasy footprint! Needless to say, the bosun was apoplectic. The poor kid was made to go back to his room, change his clothes, then take a bucket of warm water, a brush, and a rag and clean up every step he’d made before he could eat.
We had to go down into the forecastle hawser rooms and fix whatever damage the storm had done. Not too bad. The holes in the hull for the ropes had been sealed up before we left Japan. Not perfectly! There was about 6 inches of water on the floor and we took mops and cleaned it out. We also had to make the hawsers ready for docking. This didn’t take long as we’d done that in the last port.(listen to me, talking like a sailor)
We were now heading along the Vancouver Island coast. Tomorrow we would dock and the trip would be over! Not yet, though, The 2nd mate came into the commons room with a handful of papers. He was renewing the jobs of crewmen. Not you, he pointed at me. I said, for the first and only time ever, “You can’t fire me, I’ve quit!”.
-to be continued…