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Editor’s Log: Zero-Gee, High Seas

By Kat Tanaka

As I write this, Ulysses is rolling and pitching, and it’s raining outside while the wind blows—vivid reminders that I'm on a sailboat and not in a spaceship. Still, the settling-in process has highlighted the ways in which some of my current challenges do have strong parallels with spacefarers. Everything has to be stowed securely on a ship. Whether it's zero-gee or the action of the waves, it's like living in a place where little earthquakes happen constantly. On land, if you leave something lying about, it's likely to stay there until someone moves it—doors left ajar here swing about wildly. As a result, everything must fit into a proper space, and there's only so much of it available. Piles of papers to be filed or laundry to be folded wouldn't do well here. Even though boats on Earth are dealing with earth-normal gravity, things need to be secured vertically in addition to laterally, because sailboats frequently lean over far enough for items to spill out of the tops of storage spaces.

Loaded with gear aboard a dinghy, headed straight toward S/V Ulysses. Photo by Kat Tanaka

It's not just inanimate objects that need careful handling on a boat. Moving about on a surface that's rocking requires more care and thought, the same way that maneuvering in space does. The sort of abstracted walking that one can do on dry land can result in bruises here! While there are a few doors around that would seem familiar to land dwellers, my days start off with lifting up a hatch cover and climbing up and out, somewhat like crawling from one capsule to another on a space station. Doing this while sleepy results in stubbed toes, banged heads, tugged hair, and clothing caught in hinges. It's best to be more aware than sleepwalking.

Dropped tools are more of an issue here, too. They won't go off floating into outer space, but retrieving something that's fallen into the ocean is no small task. You can at least see where something's floated off to; you'd be surprised at how opaque water can be. Better to prevent the issue beforehand by having tethers on things. It's an interesting change to be driving screws when the “ground” is moving around under one. I suspect that these sorts of mundane tasks are similarly more complicated in a weightless but not massless environment, too.

Humans are adaptable, and the boat is “me-sized”, so nothing so far has been truly daunting, but I'm about to go ashore where the ground moves oddly compared to the rock-steady boat. See you next month.