the ocean

It’s tempting to focus on the ports and on what happens there.  But these days at sea are exhilarating.  Well, they’re other things too: the lurching of the ship has its inconveniences, and we all spend all day moving awkwardly out of each other’s way.  Picture, those of you who remember him, a sort of Red Skelton impersonators’ convention.  And there’s of course the s… word, well, a word with four s’s anyway: we’ve got patches and pills and prayers to fend off that form of illness, but some have already succumbed, and my understanding is that coming into or out of Cape Town the majority of us might be expected to struggle.

 

Still, my friends who’ve sailed on Semester at Sea have all said that they liked the time at sea as much as the time in the ports, and while I can’t declare for sure I know whether I am getting used to the endless rocking or getting tired of it, I see their point.  The sea’s incredibly beautiful; the animals and islands we occasionally see seem like miracles; the air’s lovely.

 

And most sea days are class days, and my confidence about what’s going on in our classrooms runs very high.  Yes, there’s some recalibration going on as students and faculty from all over get used to each other. But the ambitions are wonderful; the faculty are immensely talented; and I’ve met dozens of students who’ve impressed me with their smarts and responsiveness.  The central course on the ship, Global Studies, which we all attend, is the best illustration: the quality of Alex Nalbach’s teaching there is second to none but is matched by the quality of the attention in the room.  If you know someone on the voyage, just ask about what the course has already covered: we were all much more ready for Dominica for the sake of those lectures (and Professor Lewis Hinchman’s splendid cultural pre-port briefing, and the absolutely essential logistical pre-port briefing on the night before we arrived) than we otherwise could have been.  Today Alex began readying us for Brazil.

 

We just heard over the speakers the evening announcement.  We get at least two of these a day: at noon we learn how far we’ve sailed and at what average speed; otherwise we mostly get word about behaviors that need correction (two towels flushed down toilets have cost the crew dozens of hours of labor and cost many cabins their water for all that time, and in general we’re consuming more water than we should be) and events that are ahead. Not Red Skelton there but MASH, except that Stuart Saunders, our assistant executive dean, has a voice of pure Texas authority and means what he says.

 

And now I look out again, and dusk approaches, and the sea is getting that “wine-dark” look that the poet talks about.