Sitka to Seattle

by Sarah Lake Upton in


Another summer is over and like many creatures the Sea Lion has begun her long migration south for the winter.  I met the boat a little over two weeks ago in Sitka and over the course of a two week trip with guests we worked our way down to Seattle.  The weather was generally proper Alaska late summer, which is to say cold and always somewhere between fog and rain.  

Going though my photos just now I am amazed by how many of them I took (or rather, “made” according to the current lingo of our photo instructors, nothing has been “taken” when one “makes” a photo - I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that usage) though I do remember feeling like every time I poked my head up on deck I was struck by the need to photograph something. I am still relying on our ship’s slow and expensive internet system, so I can only post a few at the moment, but here are some of my favorites. 

Steller Sea Lions

 

And bubble netting humpback whales (working very close to shore)

DSC_0352.jpg

But even more than the wildlife, I found myself drawn to the colors: 

Icebergs calved from Dawes Glacier

And what I came to think of as “tree portraits”. 

And finally I got to take myself for a morning walk in Alert Bay, and fell in love with the green of the waterfront. 



Conrad and Cramer

by Sarah Lake Upton in


Not at all yarn related, but I was very pleased to discover a very sweet article about two of my favorite subjects in today’s New York Times.  

One of my favorite non-yarn-related authors is Joseph Conrad.  Most people know him, if they know of him at all, because of Heart of Darkness, which they were often forced to read in high school, thus leading them to heartily resent Joseph Conrad.  This is a shame.  Much as I love Mr. Conrad, Heart of Darkness is not my favorite work, and in any case it is mostly wasted on high school students.    Joseph Conrad was a sea captan for years before he started writing, and he manages to convey, more than any other author I have ever read, the joys and frustrations and intimacies and terror of working on boats. During his working life the age of sail was coming to a close, and while he often worked on steamers, his heart belonged to tall ships.  I love my current job but my sailing life began on tall ships, and like Mr. Conrad in his day, if there was any way I could afford to, I would still be working on tall ships. 

The article that so pleased me in today’s Times was written by a from Harvard history professor who is writing a book about Conrad and who sailed aboard the Corwith Cramer from Cork to Brittany.  This connection was especially lovely for me as I spent a season working on the Cramer (my first trip was this one)

At Sea with Joseph Conrad  - 


I am home.

by Sarah Lake Upton in


By which I now mean “I am in Worcester”.  We are still opening boxes and debating where to put various pieces of furniture, and we have another load to bring down from our storage unit in Portland, but; Sam baked bread this afternoon and our dishes are in the cupboard, so we are more moved in than not. 

I have many yarn-ish thoughts, and have much yarn news to share, but before I get completely sidetracked by thoughts of knitting and dyeing I wanted to share a few photos from my last week in Alaska.  

Dawes Glacier, Endicott Arm Alaska

Dawes Glacier, Endicott Arm Alaska

 
Buoy coming into Petersburg Alaska, a favorite place for napping. 

Buoy coming into Petersburg Alaska, a favorite place for napping. 

 
Mamma brown bear and three cubs, Glacier Bay, Alaska. July 2015

Mamma brown bear and three cubs, Glacier Bay, Alaska. July 2015

 
The face of Johns Hopkins glacier, Glacier Bay, Alaska. (The blobs on the icebergs are seals)

The face of Johns Hopkins glacier, Glacier Bay, Alaska. (The blobs on the icebergs are seals)

Calving......

Calving......

Glacier Bay was Friday.  On Saturday I got to go diving again, and amongst many other wondrous things I finally got to see a Giant Pacific Octopus in her den.  I suspect that she was much less excited to see us. 


Whales.

by Sarah Lake Upton in


One of my favorite things about the Alaska season (aside from the weather, and the mountains, and the marine mammals, and the ravens, and the glaciers - really I just like Alaska) is getting to hear Andy Szabo from the Alaska Whale Foundation do his talk.   His talks each week have the same outline, but like most very smart enthusiastic people he is easily persuaded by guest questions to go on tangents about killer whales (not his area of research, but clearly something he knows quite a bit about) and fishing techniques and random stories of human whale interactions up here. I try to listen to his talk every week, because every week I am reminded of something, or learn something, that totally reshapes my view of whales.

For example:  There are two distinct populations of killer whales up here, fish eaters and mammal eaters.  Despite looking basically identical to us, they have completely different social structure, “speak” totally different dialects, and have not interbred in a very very long time.  (To go an a tangent of my own, in the traditions of Pacific Northwest peoples there is an “killer whale - wolf” creature distinct from the killer whale, that is generally taken by modern folk to be mythical, but hearing about the two populations of killer whales I have begun to wonder if the folk up here had noticed the same behavioral differences in their killer whale population and named them accordingly).

Killers whales, July 2015, Southeast Alaska.  I'm not sure where we were (Kelp Bay?) but we spent a lovely evening watching this pod go about their business.  

Killers whales, July 2015, Southeast Alaska.  I'm not sure where we were (Kelp Bay?) but we spent a lovely evening watching this pod go about their business.  

And; Humpback whales up here cooperatively bubble net for herring in groups of eight to twelve.  The members of each group are no more related to each other than to any other whales in the area, which makes their cooperative feeding a bit of an anomaly in the animal world.  The members of the group seem to be task specialists, with one member of the group acting as the “caller” who, through making a very distinctive noise at just the pitch that herring will apparently do anything to get away from, drive the ball of herring up into the net of bubbles blown by a different task specialist in the group.  The bubble net itself, being something deliberately shaped and external to the body, meets the definition of “tool”, which makes the humpback whales up here task-specialist cooperative tool users.  Which is just cool.  (Also, only a very small percentage of the whales up here cooperatively bubble net - most of them feed by themselves on krill, which is actually a better calorie source than herring). 

 

Bubble netting humpback whales, Wrangell Narrows, Alaska,  September 2014.   -   

Bubble netting humpback whales, Wrangell Narrows, Alaska,  September 2014.   -   

When the herring are in season we often get to watch this group bubble netting behavior.   The group of whales dive in a specific order, do their flipper-flashing bubble-net creating thing, and then appear as a mass, all eight or ten at once inside the boundaries of the net they created, mouths agape and then quickly closed to expel the extra water with their tongues, straining out the herring.  They are so close together when they do this that from the surface it can be difficult to sort out one whale from the next.  They pause for a moment or two on the surface, then re-line up to do it all again.  Apparently when they are done for the evening, or when the fishing just isn’t that good, one of them will breach, then the rest will breach a few times, and everyone will go on their way.  Andy refers to this as a “disassociation ritual” in his talk. 

The Alaska Whale Foundation relies on college and grad students to collect a lot of the observational data they use.  They have just acquired land up here to create more of a permanent center for field schools.  I am very much wishing that they had been around when I was still college student.  

So, anyone with a college student who is interested in Marine Biology should maybe check them out.  (High school and college students interested in Marine Biology or Marine Ecology should also check into Sea Education Association - I worked for them for a bit and their programs are amazing). 

In other news, while I was home I got certified in dry-suit diving.  I am not a natural at dry suit diving, but I am practicing and getting better at it and I have now been diving twice up here.  

In a dry suit.  

In Alaska.  

About two years ago now, during my job interview for this position, the port-engineer asked me if I was a diver, and over the course of the conversation it became apparent that what he actually wanted to know was whether I was dry-suit certified so that I could dive in Alaska.  I managed not to say what I was actually thinking, which ran along the lines of “no, of course I’m not certified to dry-suit dive, and only really crazy people dry-suit dive in Alaska, I’m also not a certified pilot of float planes”. And yet here I am.  (And it was seeing the footage brought back by the undersea specialist last year in Alaska that convinced me to get my scuba certification to begin with - I am not thinking about what that implies).   

 

So here I am.  The gnome was brought along by some of our guests, who very nicely asked if we could get photos of the gnome with undersea creatures on our dive.  For some reason Ashely (our current undersea specialist) decided to take my photo with the gnome too.  The photo was taken at the end  of our dive, and I am very very very cold.  (And very happy).


Gloomy Knob

by Sarah Lake Upton in


I am back on the Sea Lion, and we are back to our summer season in Alaska.   On Wednesday we motored slowly through Glacier Bay, spending the morning along the aptly named “Gloomy Knob” looking for mountain goats.  We came up very slowly on this one, 

who I was worried might be dead, given how still she was. 

And then she lifted her face.

She was unimpressed by our presence, and decided to continue her nap.



n Which I have been Home for Five Weeks and Many Things Happened, or, New Yarn and a New Apartment!

by Sarah Lake Upton in ,


First, the big news:  my husband has been accepted into a graduate program at Clark University in GIS.  On the positive side, the program is one of the best in the country in this field, employment potential post graduation is very high, and he is genuinely interested in the subject and the actual work.  On the down side, Clark is in Massachusetts, and so I spent much of my time home anxiously refreshing Craigslist Worcester trying to find the elusive perfect apartment that is near Clark and also accepts dogs (of the two of us, I am far pickier about where we live, so the apartment hunting falls to me).  We finally succeeded in finding the right apartment, though I am superstitious enough about such things that until we have actually moved in I will not say for sure that we have the apartment, and I will not fully relax about it.  Neither one of us want to leave Maine, but it will only be for a few years, and then we will be back (fingers crossed).  In the mean time I will continue to buy fleece from the same Maine farmers who have supplied me with such lovely fleece in the past, and explore the potential of flocks in western Massachusetts, of which I hope there are many.   Astute observers will notice that I no longer list “Maine” after “Natural Dyes, New England wool” on my yarn tags.  I have left that space blank, because I can’t bring myself to list “Massachusetts”.  I mean no offense to folks who are from Massachusetts (my dad grew up outside of Boston) but New England is full of regional chauvinism, and folks from Massachusetts are the first to understand that to other New Englanders “Massachusetts” carries a certain something.  That said, I am looking forward to getting to know a new city. 

3 Ply Coopworth Sportweight 

3 Ply Coopworth Sportweight 

Astute observers will also notice that I mentioned new yarn tags, because while have been home I have also been dyeing up a storm.  My 2015  3-Ply Coopworth Sportweight is available in a very purposeful looking color run, which is one of those happy accidents of natural dyes since the only color I actually planned was the deep red Pomegranate, and everything else followed.   This batch of yarn was spun to a slightly lighter weight than my previous 3-Ply sport weight which was itself on the heavy end of the spectrum for sport weight, so people who have worked with my 3-Ply sport weight previously may want to swatch again.  The yarn is available here.   

Spring is also the time to pick up fleeces.  This year I am exploring fleeces from a couple of new farms (to me).  Currently at the mill is Blue Faces Leicester from Two Sisters Farm in Waldoboro, Maine, which is being worsted spun into a light Aran weight yarn, and on Sunday the intrepid Sarah Hunt (of Fiber Trek) was good enough to lend me her time and her Subaru to transport 172 pounds of Straw’s Farm Island fleece from Straw’s Farm in Damariscotta, Maine to my workspace, from where it will be picked up on Wednesday (hopefully) to go to the mill.  The island wool will be spun into a 5-Ply Gansey yarn in support of the Cordova Gansey Project, masterminded by Dotty of the Netloft in Cordova, Alaska.  I will make a proper post about it in the future (because it deserves its own post - or series of posts) but for now, please go check out Dotty’s amazing posts of the subject.  She has managed to put so many of my very inchoate feeling about knitting and history and ganseys and the  sea into very eloquent words, and she has done in so well that the next time someone asks me about my feelings of connention to gansey knitting I may just point them to her posts. 

I return to the boat this Saturday.  I will be meeting the Sea Lion in Sitka, Alaska.  As always my time home has passed way too quickly, but I am looking forward to our Alaska season.  

 


In Which I Admit that Yet Again I was Wrong.

by Sarah Lake Upton in


If you had asked me about my opinion of boats and/or SCUBA diving when I was 26, I would have said that boats involved too many people living too closely together and anyway I get ragingly sea sick and taken all together boats were the worst idea ever and if I never went out it one again it would be okay.  I would have been likewise (though less passionately) negative about SCUBA diving; I probably would have said that the very idea of being under all of that water made my breath shorten and my adrenaline spike and it all seems like a Very Bad Idea.  

By the time I turned 27 I was madly in love with a fully rigged ship in New York harbor.

By my 28th birthday I was working full time on a traditionally rigged schooner and living on said fully rigged ship.  

It has taken me a little longer to come around to SCUBA diving, but because we carry an Undersea Specialist who takes underwater footage every trip, and because said Undersea Specialist needs a dive buddy, getting certified to SCUBA dive is encouraged and the cost of classes is reimbursed, and being able to dive on the hull is a useful skill for an engineer and another skill to add to my resume.  So finally and with much grumbling I went ahead and took the classes to become certified in basic open water diving.   

I actually ended up doing the required open water dives to complete my certificate in Maine in November, because sometimes I am terrible at planning.  This occasioned much more grumbling, nay whining, on my part.  The water was 47 degrees. 

But, we are in the Sea of Cortez, and I have come up twice in the roster to be the Undersea Specialist’s dive buddy, and yet again I must admit to being utterly wrong.  I am now 37 and a few months old, and last week I was fifty feet down (after a small panic attack at the surface) looking for interesting sea life for Paul to film, being watched in turn by a curious and bored sea lion who occasionally entertained herself by nipping at my fins. 

Diving is the best thing since boats, which is to say, absolutely magical.  

photo credit - Billy O'Brian

photo credit - Billy O'Brian





Shop Update!

by Sarah Lake Upton in ,


New yarn posted! 

After several delays due to weather and/or life events, the yarn hand-off between Sam and my mum has finally occurred (in a parking lot in Portsmouth NH near a large mural of a whale, which has become our traditional meeting place for yarn hand-offs). I have two new yarns listed, a 3-Ply Cotswold light fingering weight, designed to replace my 3-Ply Cotswold x Romney fingering weight, and a 3-Ply Romney > Cotswold fingering weight.  

Life on the Sea Lion continues to be lovely and uneventful.  We are in the midst of moving the boat, without guests, up to Baja California where we will have a short spring season. The weather has been perfect and calm (not always a given on these positioning trips - there is a reason we don’t have guests) and the dolphins have been plentiful.  The dolphins are clearly doing their own thing this time of year, which seems to involve lots of very high leaping and splashing, but every now and again a group will take a break from whatever it is they are doing and come ride our bow.  

And, a reader, M., has very kindly identified the moth in my previous blog post. It is a lovely Urania fulgens known more commonly as a swallowtail moth. These day-flying moths live as far south as Bolivia and migrate at seemingly random intervals.  I did a bit of research in our shipboard library (I should have just asked a naturalist, but we work opposite schedules and I always hate to bug them when they are off work) and found a journal article, sadly from 1983, about them.  As of 1983 the best guess as to the random timing of their migrations had to do with the plants they lay their eggs on.  Apparently  they only lay their eggs on one kind of plant, and over the course of successive groups of urania fulgens caterpillars eating its leaves the plant increases the level of toxins in its leaves, until it no longer tastes good/is good for the caterpillars, at which point the moths decamp for someplace where their preferred brood plant isn’t producing quite so much of the toxin. But again, this was published in 1983.  We may now have a more nuanced understanding of their reasons for migration. 

 


Back to the Day Job, New Yarn will be Listed Soon (thank you for your patience)

by Sarah Lake Upton in , ,


As advertised, I am back in my blue coveralls, at work aboard the Sea Lion.  Returning to the boat requires just as much of a mental shift as returning home does.  I’ve spend the last week pausing every so often to wonder if that thing has always made that sound, and is that rattle new, and does this space normally smell like that?  

Just as I apparently lose the first week home to the couch and my dog, no matter how well I plan or how strong my resolve to do better this time, I lose the last week at home to last minute dyeing/preparing to leave home for six weeks (or eight weeks this time).   This time I lost a whole day during my last week home to a week-earlier-than-I-expected shearing at Buckwheat Blossom Farm, which led to a lovely farm visit and a lot of fleece off to the mill (for my 2015 gansey yarn, and the return of my 3-Ply Coopworth Sport-weight) but also meant that I did not have time to meet up with my mom to give her my new inventory.  So, until my husband can coordinate a trip to Portsmouth,  which will hopefully happen soon, new yarn will remain unlisted.  This is probably a good thing, as the other item on my “to-do” list that I failed to tick off was the whole posting-new-items/newsletter business. I will now be designing a newsletter and posting yarn via the ship’s satellite internet system, which is a bit slow for photos.  I apologize for the delay, and am grateful for your patience. 

To offer a preview: 

I will be offering two yarns, one fingering weight and one slightly lighter fingering weight, both spun from mixed flock of Cotswold and Romney at Liberty Wool Farm in Palermo Maine.  My 3-Ply Cotswold fingering weight yarn is meant to replace the 3-Ply Cotswold x Romney fingering weight yarn of previous years.  I have dyed it two shades of blue, lots of pine green, and a dark gray, as well as leaving a fair amount an undyed natural cream color.  The second yarn is from a group of sheep with slightly more Romney than Cotswold in their lineage (hence the name “Romney > Cotswold” - naming yarns is difficult).  The fleece is a bit shorter and a bit crimpier than the more even Cotswold x Romney fleece, and the resulting yarn has a pleasing smoothness and bounce.  The yarn is spun to a more traditional fingering weight.  These fleeces were mainly mid-brown, and they blended to a dark gray/brown color that I am calling Bark.  Because the undyed yarn is dark, I could only create darker colors when dyeing, but using a darker yarn as my base added quite a bit of depth to the resulting color. I am quite happy with the forest green, dark indigo, deep brown, and oxblood red that the yarn achieved. 

On a slightly more boat related note - while fixing the hinge on the door to the laundry storeroom I noticed this lovely creature keeping one of the stews company.  



Other Places to Find Upton Yarns, a Snow Day, and Hello!

by Sarah Lake Upton


The response to the recent article about Upton Yarns in the spring issue of Interweave Knits has been amazing! (And a bit overwhelming!).  So, hello new readers.  The concept of "working wool" is one I would love to continue to explore, and it is gratifying to discover how many others have similar interests.  I have plans for all sorts of yarn, and while I love the winter, spring cannot come soon enough.  I am working away in my dye space (when I can get to it - thank you snow storms) and will be sending out a newsletter announcing my new yarns during the first week of March (I return to the boat on March 6).  If you would like to be included in the list for the newsletter, please send me an email at UptonYarns@gmail.com with "newsletter" or similar in the subject. 

For those of you interested in traditional knitting, and better yet traditional gloves, Beth Brown Reinsel is selling many of her wonderful patterns as kits at her site here, including two designed featuring yarns from Upton Yarns.  Last years she designed her Winter: A Sanquhar Glove Pattern which she used in her DVD about Sanquhar knitting.  She is including the DVD and my yarn in a kit here.  She is also using my yarn for her Compass Rose pattern here.  I have just finally finished tucking ends on her Winter pattern, and I could not be happier with the pattern or the results.  I am working away on her Compass Rose Pattern, and am equally pleased with how it is going. 

 

My pair of Beth Brown Reinsel's Winter: A Sanquhar Glove Pattern

My pair of Beth Brown Reinsel's Winter: A Sanquhar Glove Pattern

I spent the week skeining and skeining, but I also managed to get an indigo vat going to give my 3-Ply Cotswold skeins, dyed with weld last week, their first dip towards my Pine Green Color.   

 

This will be Pine Green after 4 or 5 more dips.

This will be Pine Green after 4 or 5 more dips.

For once a winter storm seems to have given us a miss, but we planned for a snow day, and I am using the time to catch up on Fiber Trek podcasts.  Sarah Hunt envisioned a travel show based around fiber and fiber producers.  Her first full episodes can be seen here.  When she is not filming for the proposed show, she podcasts. I have been especially enjoying her discussion of "slow knitting" and a "soulful stash" in episode 26, posted on January 8th.  She also has a great discussion about what goes into a good sock yarn, which has me plotting sock yarns for the future, though I'm not really a sock knitter.  So, to all sock knitters  I would love to hear what you look for in a yarn.  I am thinking of using the fleece from this flock (once things warm up and they don't need their fleece anymore).



And the Dyeing Commences (also, Hello)

by Sarah Lake Upton in


Hello to all of the new folks who read about my yarn in the recent Interweave Knits article!  I had a wonderful two days talking about yarn and dyeing with the author of the article (Selma, who in turn keeps a great blog here) but I must admit that it is a little surreal seeing what otherwise felt like a lovely visit with a fellow fiber enthusiast written up in a major knitting publication. 

To all of you stopping by for the first time, I work with small batches of yarns spun from local fleeces.  My stock is a little low at the moment, due in part to the time of year and also because I just recently came home from working on the boat.  I have some dyeing to catch up on.  I have been home for two weeks now, but as I always do (and always tell myself I won't do this time) I lost a week sitting on the couch catching up on dumb TV and knitting (and cuddling with Nell).

This is Nell.  She wishes the snow would go away and the squirrels would come back. In the meantime she wishes that I would stop bugging her with my camera and go back to rubbing her ears. 

This is Nell.  She wishes the snow would go away and the squirrels would come back. In the meantime she wishes that I would stop bugging her with my camera and go back to rubbing her ears. 

But, this last week I braved the snow (and there has been lots of it) to start working with my new 3-Ply Cotswold fingering weight yarn, which very conveniently returned from the spinning mill a little before I returned from the boat. 

 

The fleece for this yarn comes from Liberty Wool Farm in Palermo Maine.  This is the same flock that in years past provided a lovely group of fleeces from Cotswold Romney crosses.   Last spring there were fewer fleeces from Cotswold Romney crosses, but a lovely group of pure Cotswold fleeces, so, anyone who has been knitting with my 3-Ply Cotswold x Romney fingering weight, please consider using the pure Cotswold version instead.  Hopefully I will have a new batch dyed up in the next week or two. 

Yarn comes from the mill on cones - therefore the first step of dyeing is skeining, and skeining, and skeining, and then building a fort with all of the piles of skeined yarn. 

Yarn comes from the mill on cones - therefore the first step of dyeing is skeining, and skeining, and skeining, and then building a fort with all of the piles of skeined yarn. 

I am always adding new colors and yarns.  One day I am going to be truly organized and start sending out an email newsletter.  In the meantime, If you would like to be added to my hypothetical email newsletter list, please send me an email at uptonyarns@gmail.com with "newsletter" or similar in the subject line.   I am "uptonyarns" on Instagram, and "puffling" on Ravelry.  Upton Yarns also has a Facebook page, which I am terrible at updating but always resolving to be better about.  I am not terribly consistent in my social media presence, but I am trying to be better about that, and I love hearing about what other people are up to knitting wise. And I love photos!

Happy Knitting,

Sarah 


My Day Job - Tuesday

by Sarah Lake Upton in


I had a lovely idea of writing a serious of posts about a whole week in my day job, and all of the silliness therein, but clearly I write too slowly to carry that off, and anyway I’m home now (I arrived home on the evening of January 25th, just in time for the blizzard) but I managed to write most of the next post before I left the boat, and so I am going to post it anyway.  And even better, now that I am back in the land of reasonable internet, I can include photos. 

Tuesday. 

Still cranky about the previous day, and finding myself with a free few hours in the evening (I usually make repairs to guest cabins during guest mealtimes, but this evening there were no repairs to be made) I decided to rebuild a spare generator raw water pump, at least in part because the “stupid naturalist jerk can’t rebuild a raw water pump” (to put into words the amorphous annoyance that I was still in the grips of). Which is not the most grown-up reaction I will admit, but it was also work that needed to happen, and work that I really enjoy, so I told the deckhands that I’d be down in the engine room in case anyone needed me (deckhands, officers, and engineers all carry hand-held radios with us when we’re working, but I can never hear mine when I’m in the engine room) and set to it. 

This is a raw water pump for one of our generators

This is a raw water pump for one of our generators

So, what on earth is a raw water pump? (Feel free to scroll past this bit)

Your car’s engine is cooled by via the circulation of coolant.  The coolant must in turn be cooled, otherwise it would get hotter and hotter until it was no longer able to cool your engine and your engine would then overheat.  In your car this is done by sending coolant to the radiator, basically a big flat plane that exposes as much coolant at a time to as much air as possible.  For reasons of stability and propulsion, engines rooms on boats are generally as low in the boat as possible and fairly contained.  There is no way to get enough air circulation in most engine rooms to cool the coolant from one engine, let alone the four that we have (two main propulsion engines and two generators).  So instead most marine systems use sea water to cool their coolant.  There are two general ways to do this.  The first involves piping sea water to the marine version of a radiator, referred to as the “heat exchanger”, which is basically a big tank filled with little tubes.  The coolant flows through the little tubes, which are immersed in sea water that is constantly being pumped through before being pumped overboard again, a few degrees warmer than when in started.  The second involves putting a network of little tubes into a protective housing on the outside of the hull, through which the coolant can then be circulated, and cooled as the boat moves through the water.  Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages, and I’m sure there are whole forums devoted to arguing over which system is better for which circumstance, but that is a much longer post.   We have heat exchangers, which means that we also have a pump that pumps sea water past the coolant. When sea water is used for cooling it is often referred to as “raw water”, hence the “raw water pump”.  In our particular situation, the drive shaft of the raw water pump slots into a set of teeth on the coolant pump, and from time to time the teeth on the coolant pump wear down a bit and grind the shaft of the raw water pump smooth, and eventually the raw water pump stops turning, and then the generator engine overheats and shuts down (and then an alarm goes off, the emergency generator kicks on, and the nearest engineer dashes down to the engine room to very quickly start whichever generator was offline at the moment). 

tldr: the drive shaft on our raw water pumps wears down and sometimes needs to be replaced. 

 

Raw water pump drive shafts, bad and new.  Note how worn the teeth are on the one on the left.  This is not good. 

Raw water pump drive shafts, bad and new.  Note how worn the teeth are on the one on the left.  This is not good. 

Rebuilding a raw water pump for a generator is one of those rare utterly satisfying engineering projects, being right in the sweet spot of complicated-but-not-too-complicated, and a-little-messy-but-not-too-messy, and heavy-but-not-too-heavy.  The pump housing is about the size of a cantaloupe, and bronze.  The whole thing weighs about twenty pounds, which is heavy enough to feel like a real project, but not so heavy as to be really annoying.  Replacing the shaft requires also removing the impeller, shaft seal, slinger, lip seal, and the bearing, which in turn is held in place by two snap rings.  Strange tools are required, like snap ring pliers, and a large impeller puller.  And to remove or replace the bearing one must employ a mallet.  

 

The grabby claw looking thing is an impeller puller.  As I tighten it, I am slowly forcing the shaft to slide out of the bearing. 

The grabby claw looking thing is an impeller puller.  As I tighten it, I am slowly forcing the shaft to slide out of the bearing. 

In short, rebuilding the raw water pump is as pleasing a craft project as anything I get up to at home.  On a boat it is made even better by the fact that the work bench is on the other side of the water-tight door, in a section of the boat that only engineers, and once an hour during their engine rounds the deckhands, ever enter.  True privacy is almost impossible to find on the boat and the spot by the workbench is the closest to real privacy that I have found on board.  Which meant that while I worked away with my obscure tools, listening to music that I chose, I also danced like a loon.  And sang along.  Loudly (because engines were running, and who was going to hear?).  

And at the end of the evening I had a rebuilt raw water pump, one more item completed on my ever growing ‘to-do’ list, and a restored sense of humor.  I feel incredibly lucky for my day job. 

 


My Day Job - Monday

by Sarah Lake Upton


Up late the night before (I didn’t get back to bed until 0330) I was already in a somewhat cranky mood by the time the wrong person called me the wrong thing while I was drinking my first cup of coffee up on the sun deck and pondering my life choices in that slow sleepy way that happens when one really wants to go back to bed.   With the distance of time, and a lot of coffee, I know that he meant nothing by it other than the vague friendliness that all people who deal in customer service routinely express to those around them, and yet.  And yet.  And yes, in retrospect I let it bother me more than I should, because it was a little thing, but it was also just one little moment in a constant stream of little moments, and any woman who has ever worked in a mainly male field will know exactly what I am talking about, and will also understand the subsequent stages of righteous anger, then minimizing, then feeling silly, then defensive, and ultimately resigned, because seriously, it’s not as bad as it could be, and what else can one expect? 

One of the naturalists* has taken to calling me “Sarita linda”. For those unfamiliar with the diminutive in Spanish, “Sarita” is the diminutive form of Sarah, basically “little Sarah”.  A college friend’s Colombian born mother used to call me “Sarita” and I felt honored, because she was one of my favorite people, and coming from her it conveyed a level of care and closeness. It is utterly inappropriate coming from a male not-quite-coworker who is maybe ten years older than me.   And “linda” (pretty) has nothing to do with me, my position on this boat, or my relationship to him.  I am the assistant engineer.  Though I never make a point of it, I hold a rank equivalent to the Chief Mate.  There are only two people on this boat who can order me to do anything and make it stick, everyone else has to ask.  We are a friendly bunch, not the kind of boat where anyone orders anyone to do anything,  but it still means something that I have three stripes on my epaulets (worn once a week during officer introduction, then quickly put away in favor of my coveralls).  And what really makes me angry is that this guy (and the Panamanian line handlers we bring on in the canal who flirt and call me “Princessa”, and the refrigeration tech in Alaska and a host of others) see me first and foremost as just some chick to be talked down to.  It’s exhausting.  And I find myself thinking about what I’m wearing (full coveralls if I’m working, long loose canvas pants and a t-shirt when I’m just waking up) and how any of that could possibly make it seem like I would take well to being called “pretty little Sarah”, and then I get angry because that way lies victim blaming a burqas and if these guys are going to see me as less than fully human why can’t they see me as merely an extension of the boat, which is how I feel when I’m feeling less than fully human. 

I long for a book written by a woman in a similar position.  I long for the voice of the slightly older, slightly wiser woman who knows what it feels like to be the only woman holding a position of authority amongst a group of men.  There seems to be a flourishing lately of books written by women who head out somewhere, alone, to find themselves.  This is great, as far as it goes, but I have gone out, alone, to find myself and I find that my problems these days lie mainly in other people. 

So I lost the rest of the day, and much of the next, in rumbly grouchy thoughts about such things.  One of the things I love most about working on boats is that one quickly becomes one’s position, and that eventually one’s gender becomes as relevant as one’s hair color, nothing more than a descriptor.   It never fully goes away, but I can be “Assistant Engineer”, “Sarah”, “Female” as opposed to “Female”, “Sarah”.  Luckily, the second mate who is on at the moment is also female, and also worked her way up on tall ships, and also very much understands the feeling of being female in a mainly male environment, so I vented a bit to her in the slightly coded language** that women use when they are angry about endemic low level sexism, but also can’t come out and make a big deal about it, and it didn’t make me feel better exactly, but it made me feel less alone, and very grateful for it.*** 

 

*In addition to “crew” (the people necessary to take care of the boat and physical needs of the guests - mates, engineers, hotel manager, purser, cooks, deckhands, stews) we carry also carry “staff”, a group of naturalists, photo instructors, and a wellness specialist, who take care of the entertainment and education of the guests.  The relationship between staff and crew is generally cordial, but an essay unto itself. 

 

** And that’s the other maddening thing about endemic low level sexism - no one wants to be seen as a whiner, or as someone who can’t take a joke, and no one wants to hurt the feelings of their male co-workers, and so even to other women in private conversation we use coded language that can be quickly walked back.  It’s one thing if the problem is from people outside the boat - it is understood that the stews and (female) bartender will take bags full of trash to the aft companionway rather than all the way to the trash locker when we are in the Canal because going to the trash locker means walking past, and maybe through, the group of Panamanian line-handlers on the fantail, but when the problem is a co-worker things become far more complicated.  

 

*** I very nearly did not post this, because now that my temper has cooled a bit I find myself in the stage of “minimizing/denial” and don’t want to sound like I’m whining or turning a few offhand comments into a bigger problem then they are, because hey, it could be way worse.  And I’m disappointed in myself for that reaction.  So I’m posting it. 

 


My Day Job - Sunday

by Sarah Lake Upton in


At some point very early on Sunday morning we hauled back the anchor and made our way to an anchorage off of Barro Colorado Island in Lake Gatun, where we anchored again.  Before the creation of the locks the area that became Barro Colorado Island was just a patch of anonymous high ground. As the waters rose after the locks were built various animals fled higher, and in 1920’s the Smithsonian built a research station there to study the newly isolated flora and fauna of the island.  We stop by whenever we are in the canal so that guests can go for hikes or take zodiac cruises around the island.  On Sunday mornings I take the opportunity for quiet and semi-decent internet to call home before work.  According to Sam, if one looks at Barro Colorado Island on Google Earth and zooms in a bit, one can see the Sea Lion at anchor.  We are the blue hulled mid-sized cruise ship with racks of yellow kayaks on the lido deck. 

To back up a little bit, because until I started traversing it once a week I only had the vaguest idea of what the canal actually was, a brief explication of the structure of the Panama Canal: 

There are two ways to make a canal.  The first is to basically dig a big ditch to connect two bodies of water, so that boats may traverse it basically at sea level - this is how the Suez Canal was originally built, and this is what everyone was hoping could also be done in Panama.  The problem down here is that the spine of mountains that start down in Tierra Del Fuego and end somewhere in northern Alaska continue, though much much lower, through Panama.  In the area where the canal was built they are more like medium sized hills, but they were enough of an impediment to building a sea level canal that for a while it looked impossible that a canal would ever be built.  Enter plan B, a system of locks that would raise boats 90 ft to save having to dig down as far.  

On the Caribbean side heading south one encounters the Gatun locks; basically a set of three steps to bring the boat up to level of the canal.  Then there is a large lake (Gatun) created by the building of the canal, then a very narrow ditch, which despite being deep enough for containers ships to traverse is still small enough that in Maine it would probably be one of those rivers no one could remember the name of (though if it were in Colorado it would be a major named geographical feature that would provide water for every state around it - the importance of rivers is relative).  Eventually one arrives at Pedro Miguel Lock, which is a single step down, since we are traveling south, then the relatively small Miraflores Lake (it normally takes us about fifteen minutes to travel through this bit) and then Miraflores Lock, which has two steps down, and then we are back at sea level on the Pacific side.   In order to stop at Barro Colorado Island we cross the canal is two days, though given how short it is (about 50 miles) we could easily do it in one.  

So, on Sunday morning we were anchored off of Barro Colorado Island.  Once I came on watch I attended to various small problems (I think I fixed the shower mixer and drip in 304 for instance) and preventative maintenance items (I have a weekly checklist) and then at some point we hauled back the anchor, tucked ourself in behind the boat we would be sharing locks with, and began making our way down towards Pedro Miguel Locks. 

Once we arrived at the lock I was once again on standby. I used the time to take a few photos of the container ship that was next to us, and once again marvel at the impossible scale of things. 

Dublin Express.jpg

 

The main limiting factor to the size of modern container ships are the dimensions of locks built in 1914.   A ship can either be called  “Panamax” for measuring either the maximum length or width that will fit inside a lock in the Panama Canal.  The locks are 1050 feet long and 110 feet wide, so a ship can get away with being 973-ish feet long and  and 106 feet wide (the math is a bit fuzzy, because ships are not square, and the actual space inside the locks is not square, and the need to be able to use one’s propellers also confuse things and there are also problems with how deep a ship rides, but how much of a problem this is depends on the current water depth in the canal and how recently things have been dredged - apparently a few weeks ago a ship was stuck on one of the small sandbars that can form just outside of the locks and required the help of many tugs boats to get free).  The Dublin Express is Panamax in all dimensions.  Currently the canal is in the midst of an expansion project, with new sets of locks at both sides that will be able to accommodate much larger ships.  The new locks were supposed to be completed for the hundredth anniversary of the opening of the canal, i.e. 2014, but as usual with large construction projects there were delays and etc. and now no one is really sure when they will be completed, other than “next year?”.   The old locks will continue to handle all of the normal traffic, and the new locks will handle the “Post Panamax” traffic.

Once we were through the canal we anchored in the Flamenco anchorage in the harbor off of Panama City.   The chief engineer used the time to dash to shore to pick up a small part we needed to fix the galley air conditioner, and I attended to my evening chores (transferring fuel, running the O.W.S., topping up oil, checking bilge levels, peering suspiciously at various gauges).   The plan for the night involved getting underway at 0230, so I again knocked off a bit early, this time to take a nap before waking up at 0215, lighting off the main engines, and then waiting until we were three miles offshore to dump our slops tank. 


My Day Job - Saturday

by Sarah Lake Upton in


I find myself somewhat reluctant to blog about the specifics of my day job.  We have enough of a PR department that the office may well be watching, and as the bulk of my job involves fixing things that break, a list of my daily activities, when read from afar and without context, may well make it sound like the boat is in a constant state of breaking (which is sort of true, in the sense that to work on a boat is to be in a constant battle with entropy, but we are also a well maintained boat, and if something is not broken I do not generally get to interact with it, aside from an occasional quick to make sure that it is still not broken).  But my day job is also a bit unusual, so absent the ability to upload all of the photos I have been taking of late, I thought that I might try to capture what a week out here is actually like. 

Saturday was turn day in Colòn.  Guests depart in the morning and controlled chaos ensues.  Stores arrive, cabins are turned inside out to clean, decks are scrubbed down, I try to attend to engineering issues in that cannot be easily attended to with guests on board.  Each of these activities gets in the way of other activities and generally all of this happens at once.  On this particular Saturday my work-list included: fixing this dripping faucet in cabin 301, opening the collision compartment to check on the gear oil for the bow thruster (the annual oil change was done before I came back onboard, and we’re still working air out of the system, so the tank needs to be topped up from time to time) running the emergency generator to make sure that all was well with it, restarting the walk-in freezer after it had been secured by some refrigeration techs, helping to bunker lube oil and offload waste oil, and a number of other small projects that I have already forgotten.   New guests were supposed to arrive starting at 1645, but this being Panama, none of them did up 1715, when they all arrived at once.  We needed to be off the dock at 1800, but we were unable to start bunkering water under 1700 because the boat down the dock was using the hose, and then the valve on the dock could not be opened, and then there was a long conversation between the chief engineer and the guard on the dock and various tools were employed and it was decided that we probably had enough water on board already but it would be nice to top up the tank and because I wasn’t necessary to any part of this conversation I helped bring luggage to guest cabins.   And then in very quick succession, the water was turned on, the tanks were topped up, the pilot arrived, potable water hoses were disconnected and stowed, I fired up the main engines and the forward generator for the bow thruster, the deck crew lifted the gangway and we were off.   After that it was fairly quiet until we arrived at the first lock in the canal (Gatun Locks, heading south - because we all think of the canal as running east-west, but really because of the shape of Panama it runs more north-south).  Our bow thruster is powered by our forward generator and can only be engaged or secured in the engine room (once it’s running it is controlled by a switch in the bridge).  For various reasons it can’t be left to run too long, but we need it to get into the locks and then to move between locks, and so for me the canal involves standing by, waiting for the order to engage or secure the bow thruster.  The second mate is a knitter, and was also spending our lock time standing by, so I decided that I could stand by just as well whilst knitting, and we had a lovely evening of knitting punctuated by quick dashes to the engine room (me) and answering the occasional operational question (her).  

After we cleared the locks, and I was cleared from standby, I went about my normal evening routine of transferring fuel (we have a fuel centrifuge to clean the fuel before it goes into our day tank) running the Oily Water Separator, and attending to any small issues that cropped up, including a condensation drip in 304.  The guests in 304 turned out to be from very nearby Portland, Maine,  and as we chatted we discovered many other points of contact in common, so while I couldn’t fix the condensation drip that night (it involved taking down a ceiling panel) we had a really lovely visit. 

There was nothing else terribly pressing that evening, so I knocked off a little early and made use of the exercise bike on the sundeck. By this point we were at anchor amongst a field of tankers and freighters and massive container ships, and as I peddled away in the still night air I pondered their contents and nationality and where they might be going and global trade generally, as one does.  I failed to come to any conclusions on the subject, beyond the obvious wonder at how much stuff gets moved about the globe. 

And that was Saturday. 

 


Bound for Costa Rica

by Sarah Lake Upton in


We are through the Panama Canal (for this week at least, we’ll be back through at the end of next week) and bound for the cooler climbs of Costa Rica. 

The canal is just as surreal this year as it was last year. On each side there are the famous locks, but in between are miles of very narrow waterway, punctuated by wider lakes which seem like they could be anyway in the tropical world, until two very large freighters come around the corner and find themselves in a passing situation in a channel less than a boat length wide.  (It is very hard to judge scale in this photo, but trust me, these ships are HUGE). 

Two Freighters Crossing.jpg

The locks have two lanes.  Part of the fun of the canal is watching the traffic in the other lane, taking photos, waving to their crew, or just marveling at how big a “Panamax” ship really is, and how entirely a ship can fill a lock chamber and still move.  

 

I have yet to figure out how to properly photograph at night, and the lighting at the locks provides its own challenges, plus the scale of things is always impossible to convey, but this stack of shipping containers is actually the stern of our lock buddy, the Panamax freighter Tokyo Express.  In the photos one can just make out the row of lights to the left of the lock house and stacks upon stacks of shipping containers - that is the rest of the ship. 

Tokyo Express.jpg

I have found myself lost in the maw of end of year inventory, in which I count every spare part and random fastener and provide a list to the office, carefully organized by account code.  Between four engines (two mains, two generators) and a myriad of other equipment, never mind the whole hotel department, we have a lot of spare parts, and a lot of fasteners, and a lot of random plumbing bits.  The end is not yet in sight, but it is giving me a chance to organize things a bit more around shipyard. 

At some point I will decide that I don’t care that it is too hot to knit down here and go back to working on a pair of gloves that I am designing using my 5-Ply gansey yarn, but for the moment I am getting my knitting fix by reading knitting blogs and sighing at patterns on Ravelry.  Two of my favorite bloggers recently posted about Sanquhar knitting, Kate Davies here, and TomofHolland here.  I am not quite brave enough to try my hand at designing my own Sanquhar gloves yet, but I am incorporating the genius little finger gussets into my next gansey glove pattern.

Wishing you all the happiest of holidays. 

***Our satellite internet is currently declining to allow me to upload my photos.  For those of you who follow me on Instagram, this is why I have stopped posting of late - our internet does not generally move quickly enough to upload photos, no matter how small, but sometimes I catch it on a good day.  I will try again in a day or so. 

 


A Belated Thank You

by Sarah Lake Upton


Thank you to all the folks who made the Highlands on the Fly knitting retreat so much fun!  I had a truly lovely time meeting so many enthusiastic fiber folk.  This was my first fiber retreat, and I can't wait for my next one.

During my Friday indigo dyeing demonstration, Deb Cunningham managed to capture the magical moments of transformation, when lueco indigo becomes indigotin as yarn is removed from the dye bath and exposed to oxygen.  

The white skein comes out of the dye bath a weird yellow green.  Over the course of the next 30 seconds or so as the indigotin reforms it darkens to a sky blue. Photo Credit Deb Cunningham.

The white skein comes out of the dye bath a weird yellow green.  Over the course of the next 30 seconds or so as the indigotin reforms it darkens to a sky blue. Photo Credit Deb Cunningham.

And on Saturday vendors set up shop.  

I realized, as I attempting to creatively display my many yarns, that I have never actually seen all of my yarns in one place before.  I come home, dye a variety of colors and yarns, tag skeins, carefully bundle them into bags when they are dry, and then disappear back to the boat.  Sometimes I get a glimpse of the range of colors I work with when yarn is drying on the rack, but that is nothing compared to seeing yarn carefully laid out for display. 

A rainbow of 3-Ply Cotswold x Romney fingering weight.  I took this photo rather late in the day.  By this point I had sold out of at least four colors. 

A rainbow of 3-Ply Cotswold x Romney fingering weight.  I took this photo rather late in the day.  By this point I had sold out of at least four colors. 

I was very pleased to see how well my various colors work with each other.  It was truly wonderful to watch complete strangers poke through my yarn and play with color combinations.

I genuinely had a wonderful time!  Thank you. 

Also, at the behest of the far more socially savvy Sarah Hunt, Upton Yarns is now on Instagram (as Upton Yarns). d

 


Come See Upton Yarns (and many others) at Highlands on the Fly – October 24-25th

by Sarah Lake Upton


Upton Yarns will be hitting the road and heading up to the New England Outdoor Center in Millinocket, Maine on October 24th for the Highlands on the Fly knitting retreat, hosted by the wonderful Sarah Hunt of Fiber Trek (Swenstea on Ravelry).  In addition to vending, I will be doing a sort of rotating indigo dyeing demonstration, by which I mean that I will be working with my indigo pot for an hour or two, while hopefully having interesting conversations about indigo dyeing with anyone who stops by to watch (I get really excited about indigo).  It may end up blurring the line between “demonstration” and “performance art”, but then, what doesn’t?


In addition to my normal yarn inventory, I will be bringing along a number of never-before-offered-for-sale small batches of yarns, including:


Worsted weight Corriedale x Montedale

Worsted weight Corriedale x Montedale

Fingering weight Corriedale

Fingering weight Corriedale

And swatched

And swatched

And some of the mountain of Romney > Cotswold fingering weight yarn that I dyed the last time I was home.

It's somewhere in this mess of yarn...

It's somewhere in this mess of yarn...

 

For more information, check out the Highlands on the Fly website, or if you are on Ravelry (and if you are a knitter with a computer, why are aren’t you on Ravelry?) join the Highlands on the Fly group.