One Month

Today, it's been exactly one month since I arrived here in Juneau! It's pretty amazing.. it seems like the time just flew by. But I suppose that I have been pretty busy.

I finally completed my boat crew training. Soon I'll be giving whale watching tours by myself, so it's important to be a certified deck hand in the case that something happens to the captain while out at sea. If something happens, I have to know how to drive the boat to a safe location and radio the Coast Guard. I also have to know how to rescue people from the water, what to do in the event of a fire, and how to handle a ship that is taking on water. Hopefully none of these scenarios ever actually occur!

These are some of our whale watching vessels. The first boat is the Sounder. It's a much larger boat than the second one- the Voyager. These are the two that we practiced on for our training.

Captain Steve tells us about safety on board the boats.

This is a water-proof body suit that we filled with heavy bottles of water in order to simulate the Man Overboard drill. One of our guides chucked him off the bow of the boat and then we had to go through all the necessary steps to rescue him. It's really important to do this quickly; 5 min in the cold Alaskan waters can lead to hypothermia, and just 20 min is enough to cause death.

When we hear the splash and cry out "Man Overboard," we have to grab a red cushion and throw it into the water as close to the person as possible. This is a marker that will tell the boat captain which direction he needs to steer the ship in order to reach the person. Next, we have to grab a life preserver and try to toss it to the victim. The rope on the preserver is short and a normal person cannot throw it very far, so you have to be pretty close to the victim for it to be effective. If the preserver doesn't work, or the victim has lost consciousness, you have to grab a hook and try to move them toward the boat with it. Eventually, you can get the fallen passenger to the side of the vessel, where you have to physically pull them up. It's important to do this effectively, or you could become a victim yourself by falling in. Throw on a life vest, make a loop with a yellow cord and place it around your right shoulder, and have someone else hold on to the back of your pants. Next, you lower yourself out the side as closely to the victim as you can. Then you grab their arm with yours, transfer the loop onto their body, under both their arms, and yank them aboard.

Here's Emily, grabbing the heavy dummy and transferring the yellow cord around it.

Man overboard! I'm tossing the life preserver to the dummy.

I've looped the dummy! Now it's time to reel him in.

We also all took turns driving the boats. We practiced shifting gears, making turns, and steering toward objects.

Here I am taking the boat out for a spin before docking it in the harbor at Auke Bay.

See you out on the water!