Saturday, June 2, 2012

The Galley Smasher


May 31, 2012
Day 5 at Sea
Somewhere in Canada

Bosun and his spy glass
Everything was smashing in the galley this morning. The weather was rough as we were completing our first open Sea crossing. It was heavier than expected and while I was up getting breakfast the boat started really rolling and everything slid off the shelves.  It was spectacular. 

A palette of eggs was the first to go, and after that came the plates, a tower of chocolate croissants (not for crew) wine bottles, coffee mugs and silver wear, all hitting the steel floor  and smashing apart with a satisfying raucous. Everyone in the Galley made a grab for something- I threw myself on a stack of china plates- and held on as the sous Chef, Karlos, tried to keep his feet from slipping on the egg-covered floor and his palms from falling onto the hot stove top which takes up the entire wall as the floor of ship tipped back and forth. Meanwhile someone made a lunge for the broom and was trying to sweep up the glass while fruit platters continued to sail off the shelves. 

We sat in the dining room as waves of grey water lashed against the window and our breakfast slid all the way down the table and the all the way back. If you got up to get a fork or a knife, you had to task somebody with babysitting your plate and holding it down so it didn’t topple over and spill onto the carpet.

Then you’d be in real trouble.

We’ve sailed straight through an Orcas pod, and seen a glistening humpback appear slowly out of the water, and a Grizzly bear on the shore lumbering along, looking exactly like a man in a Grizzly bear suit. Those were my thoughts when I saw the bear- “That looks exactly like a man in a Grizzly Bear suit-“ and that’s when I knew I simply was not a naturalist at heart.

We’ve engined past bright, white waterfalls cascading off of deep grey granite (the granite was the color of the Humpback) and massive rivers spewing out of the trees and into the Sea and a dozen types of waterbirds including trumpeter swans and Marbled Murellettes and still, it is the image of the eggs and plates smashing in the galley and everybody hitting the deck in a collective hail Mary that sticks with me the most, and in particular the cook, dancing on the split yolks, his legs bicycling beneath him the way they do in cartoons, trying not to get grilled on his own stovetop.  

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

missing you sister!

Nick Best said...

Oh Melina.... you are a hot mess as always. Been a while since I looked at the blog and just got caught up. It is my sincere wish that a movie gets made of your life. It is my other wish that that movie only be screened to a select few (I don't think it is suitable for public consumption en masse).
Keep a weather eye out. And help suture others' back in.

Baby By The Sea said...

So beautifully written; I heard every sound, crisp like your prose.

Anonymous said...

Sunshine in letter form on it's way :)