By Chelsea McBroom
March 6th, 2013
I was woken up this morning at 3:30am aboard the Picton Castle by Simon with, “It’s moist with a chance of rain.” After asking him to repeat himself while in the dark foc’sle with a surprised “What did you say?!”, I giggled, still half asleep. The word ‘moist’ happens to bother some of our crew, so some are using it as much as possible. It popped up in the log book weather descriptions (but never again) and phrases like “moist away!” or “moister by the hatch!” are being used.
I can’t help but laugh because I can recall a phase where my sister couldn’t bear the word either (and maybe she still can’t and I kind of hope she’s reading this).
But besides the lowering standards of our sense of humour, the word really does apply these days. The air is dense and humid. I find myself crawling half out of my bunk at night so my head can be right beneath the foc’sle hatch to catch a breeze, and although the rain does cool things down, it means turning away the cowl vents and closing the hatches and then the breeze is lost. The Captain himself is on his last pair of dry socks and last night at muster he stood by the scuttle doors in the shadows to avoid splashes of water coming onto the deck. I was so very pleased with my dry pair of shorts this morning but I’m sorry to say every surface one can sit on is covered in drops of rain, so now is the back of my shorts.
The sky is so often overcast that it’s been days since we’ve seen the moon or any stars. Just last night I took over Doc’s position at lookout on the bridge, asking if he had anything to report – and to my disappointment not even glow in the dark mermaids or pixies could be seen – and when I commented that we couldn’t even see the moon, he pointed out the faint few stars that he had noticed, one not even a star at all but planet Venus. So I suppose we get little peeks now and then at those lovely shiny things in space, but we’re ready for clear skies and predictable weather (if that’s even a possible request).