Can You Knit on a Submarine?

Blogger will only allow me to upload one picture today, so I guess that is some small improvement. This is me, of course, and the purple sock on the pier at Catalina Island last Wednesday. Our ship is in the background. The harbor is too small to let such a big ship in, so we had to drop anchor and get shuttled in by small boats. This is called "tendering". Tendering is a mixed blessing. It's a necessity to get on shore, but trust me, it's an adventure.





Whoa, Blogger's going to give me another picture! This is Annie on the tender. Annie does not look happy. Neither do the rest of us. It is cold, it is windy, and the freakin' tender boat is bouncing like a wild bronco. We are being tossed every which way from heck and beyond. (They stopped tendering for an hour and a half after our boat went into port because the sea was so choppy.)

We were very grateful to get on shore. Catalina is a very pretty island, and we were looking forward to a morning of walking around, sightseeing, and me in particular of checking out the local needlework shop. It was on my shopping map and I knew just where to find it. HOWEVER, we had an initial stop planned -- an underwater submarine tour of one of the harbors to see the plant and fish life.

While waiting for the submarine-boat-thing to show up, I knit on the deck. Now, I had brought with me all kinds of extra yarn on the cruise in case I should run out of something, but it occured to me, sitting on this pier, that I might have misplanned. Looking down at this pier, with the cracks through the wood, I realized that if I dropped a needle, it would probably become a permanent underwater fixture in the bay. And I hadn't thought about extra needles. Hmmm. I kept knitting, but very carefully.

Finally we got on the little submarine. It is a boat with the underwater part nothing but windows, so you can see the fish. While waiting to cast off, I pulled out the knitting again (no cracks in the bottom of this thing). The girls fussed at me to put the knitting away. (Repeat of infamous comment about not knitting on vacation.) No one would take a picture of me for "extreme knitting". I suddenly got the feeling, however, the queasy feeling, that knitting with little needles on a small bouncing underwater closet-sized cubicle was not, I repeat NOT, a good idea. So the knitting did get put away, for good this time.

We finally pulled out into the bay. It was pretty exciting at first. We saw huge fronds of seaweed and hundreds of fish. This lasted for about ten minutes. Then slowly but surely it wasn't as much fun anymore. There was only one kind of seaweed, and that was pretty boring. There were lots of fish, but only four kinds, and only one kind looked cute. And everybody was starting to look pretty green. Extremely green. I was feeling pretty warm. Starting to sweat, in fact. Is there any fresh air on this thing? And the boat-submarine was bouncing. Like...a bucking bronco. The tour guide suddenly got concerned and opened the top hatch to let everyone on deck. It was a stampede. Green people hanging onto the outer railings. Kodak moment.

Once we got off the freakin' boat we were too sick to walk any further. We only wanted to get back on the big, safe, comfortable cruise ship with our pillows and non-moving beds. I had lost all desire to find the needlework shop. (This alone should tell you how desperate the situation was.) Fortunately, they were tendering again by this time and we made it back to the mother ship.

Meals were a little tricky, though, the rest of the day. It took most of us the rest of the afternoon to recover, and, in Annie's case, the rest of the night, too.

So, can you knit on a submarine? Yes, but not for the faint of heart. Or stomach.

Next time, Susan Bates has a Mexican escapade.