A separate voyage, underway from Chicago to Boston, we were starting to wish for more time with the land.
(departing Chicago after a good night celebrating Nick’s going away from a chapter of his own life)
I really, really wanted to see Niagara falls. Myself and my captain both were sleep deprived, but he the more. Being only three men working four hour shifts in single-man rotations, night watch was hairy when the other two were fast asleep. It seems like a lot, eight hours to sleep, and it can be - but you don’t really sleep when you’re on standby and the churnings of the Great Lakes are rocking and rolling. And sleep is certainly harder to get during day naps.
(night shift - 3 men, 24 hours, 4 hours per shift)
I really wanted to see Niagara falls, my captain truly needed the extra sleep, he had been awoken often for various micro-dramas prior and was also a light sleeper in general wellness of his duties, so this time I let him sleep in through part of his shift.
(ill of good wind for a time ever in Lake Michigan, the flies were real bad, my fro was in the way, and so we cut it)
We had deliberated prior on whether to take the extra of time needed to get to the falls. Having fallen behind early on in our initial departure due to being ill of good wind, and having grown a fond preference for the land by this point in our journey, the team was mostly indifferent, but mostly thinking against seeing Niagara at the expense of more time.
But I really wanted to see the falls. I looked at the map, I pointed the ship towards the continuance of course, the eye of the river leading towards the falls. I allowed skip to oversleep.
Towards the end of my extended tenure, I wasn’t having trouble staying awake in any sense. I was the least sleep-deprived of the three (though not taking easily to sleep deprivation by my own nature & beside nature of most others), and I thought I was balancing things out at the time. But I noticed a problem. The depth finder was rapidly dropping from hundreds of feet, to 60, 50, 40.
Bearing approximately Due northeast, I slammed the sails and keel hard to starboard to stall her and bring her about. I knocked, knocked, knocked on the captain’s skylight rushing him awake. He roused fast as lightning, heard my brief explanation, got his charts in with flashlight in mere moments, and determined with both precision and speed exactly where we were in space.
Welland Canal, we needed to to have taken the Welland Canal. And the shoals of the Horseshoe Reef Lighthouse are dangerous.
My mistake was that I had misunderstood. I thought that it was meant our redirect at the expense of time was toward the Niagara River. I hadn’t realized the Welland Canal was the proper course. And so we didn’t get to see Niagara, as now we had to backtrack quite a ways to get to the mouth of the Welland.
(Boston)
