New post, been a while, etc. etc. etc.
Sort of a crazy day today.
My day began with a phone call at 0345 (that’s still-sleeping o’clock for all ‘ya civillians) which a co-worker across the room answered. I’m a light sleeper, so the phone ringing woke me up and I was able to peripherially understand his end of the conversation. It went something like this:
“hey, not bad, how are you?”
(pause)
“yeah, we have a boat.”
(long sigh)
(to the rest of us in the room): “Bridge jumper.”
Everything jumped into motion.
Seaman Wirick ran up to comms to get the relevant information and start the case, Fireman Bowne, my roommate and fellow guitar/gun nut lept from his rack and took of down the hallway towards the SAR room (and made it halfway there) before realizing that he was still in his boxers.
The rest of us rolled out and grabbed our cold-weather gear from the ready room and began the arduous process of putting on the clothes that would keep us alive if we fell into 32-degree water. Polypropeline underwear, check. Sock liners, check. Wool socks, check. MSD-901 dry suit… hang on, gotta contort… myself… check. Wool beanie under fleece balaclava, check. Ski goggles, check. Boots, check. Big snow gloves, check. An assortment of knives, pens and flashlights, check. That feeling in your gut that is equal parts apprehension and adrenaline dump… check.
Because the weather here has been windy above the average, we’ve been keeping the boat moored at a better protected slip, so after we were all dressed out, we piled into our Dodge Caravan and took off down the road. On arriving, we ran down the pier to our faithful Textron Marine motor lifeboat where the engineers got everything engine-related warming up and the “deckies” pried the frozen lines from bits and cleats. At sometime between “way too early” and “way too late,” we were off.
After a brief stop to the station to pick up a SLDMB, we navigated around the Graham Shoal waters and pulled up to the bridge, some eighty feet below the flashing lights of rescue vehicles on the road above. We flipped a life ring with a flashing light overboard and BM3 Feldman gave me steering directions through a “victor sierra” search pattern, which we used to determine “set and drift,” or the general direction that the wind and water were pushing things. Sector Sault Ste. Marie also wanted to track the currents, so they directed us to drop the SLDMB at the same place that we threw our life ring. Aye aye, and MK3 Gagnon and I drug the long cardboard box out of the survivor’s compartment, looked at each other, and realized that neither of us had any idea how this dang thing worked. Fortunately, I’m a nerd and it came with an instruction booklet. Here’s how the conversation went:
Gagnon: “What are we supposed to do?”
me: “um… it has instructions for dropping from a helo, a c-130, a hu-25 and a few other aircraft.”
Gagnon: “We’re on a boat.”
me: “yes. yes, we are.”
(flips pages)
me: (skimming) “… upon contact with water the tape will dissolve… something, something… Hey, just throw it overboard.”
Gagnon: “Really? Just… overboard?”
me: “… yeah. pretty sure. Just chuck it.”
Gagnon: “uh… aye aye!” (throws tube over)
With our set and our drift in hand and a Dolphin buzzing overhead giving us spotlight envy, we received instructions from the powers that be to begin our search west of the bridge, going up and down the length of the bridge, gradually working our way east: the direction of the drift. By this point, the spray screen in front of the open bridge was completely iced over, as well as the non-skid on the bow of the boat. For the record, when non-skid is iced over, you may as well just call it “skid.” So to begin our search, Fireman Bowne and MK3 Gagnon put on a couple of heavy-weather harnesses (used here as “icy deck harnesses”) and clipped into the very front of the boat, Gagnon on the left, Bowne on the right.
A few notes for the statistics-minded:
Time: oh-cold-thirty
Water Temp: 35f
Air Temp: 15f
Wind Chill: 8f
Waves: 4-6 feet
After roughly 45 minutes of our “creeping line” search, Bowne and Gagnon had been added to the list of boat fixtures that were frozen over, and those of us sitting on the top parts of the boat were either losing our dinner or coming close to it. The search track that we were running went roughly north-south across the straits. The waves in that area predominately travel east-west. Taking waves to the side of your boat (beam-to) makes the boat roll. Rolling boats make boatswain’s mates paint the deck.
Having seen nothing in the water, we continued on.
At one point, our engineer-cicles came below to warm up and BM3 Ryan and I skated our way to the bow, clipped in, and scanned the water as the boat ran the straits, back and forth, back and forth.
Gradually, very gradually, the skies in the East began to lighten up, beginning with the surface of the water changing from an impenetrable black to a deep blue with the pink of an early-morning sunrise lighting off the wave peaks.
It’s 0800 now, and the sun is beginning to claw its way over the horizon, signifying the end of our searching. Sector told us that we would likely be recalled at “first light,” so as our eyes grew tired from the long night of peering into the darkness, our hope rose that we would soon be allowed to return for a few hours of well-deserved sleep. The colors of the morning sky have always made me catch my breath. The one patch of cloud in a field of cold, pale blue that catches on fire in the pre-dawn, a blazing pink portent of the day to come.
And I wondered.
If the individual for whom we were searching had just waited. Just waited four hours and seen what we were seeing, would things have turned out differently? Does a sunrise only matter to people who love life, or can it do the work of convincing those who hate it? It was all academic, anyway; a poet’s attempt at explaining war. But in those dawning moments, I had great pity for that person; that human, made in the likeness of God himself, who loves us enough to give us sunrises and still let us cast ourselves into dark water out of hate or spite or blindness.
We all reacted differently to this unseen, unfound person.
There was anger. Reciprocal hatred for this person who despised life enough to cast it away.
There were shrugs and falling-back on tired phrases: “it’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” as though we knew what those temporary problems were.
One guy sat down and wrote far too much.
And many people permitted themselves to feel nothing but chagrin at the inconvenience that had been wrought on their night’s sleep. Selfishness begets selfishness.
And so now, the day after, I still am no closer to solving this great problem: Is life merely cruel and cold? I think not. The one conclusion that I am certain of is that life is necessarily active. It will never simply take care of itself. Just like the wind whipped across our boat, come to steal heat from our hands and feet and exposed skin, we had to put on our dry suits and stamp our feet and rub our hands and go inside the boat to get warm when it all just got too much. And maybe some people just don’t realize that they need warm boats when the wind blows cold.
It would feel suitably poetic to leave things there, no conclusions or imperitives, but I do have one. Friends, when life gets chilly, relieve each other somehow. Nobody can stand on the bow in the freezing spray forever.