THE SHIPS LOG OF NOAH'S ARK.

     CAPTAINS LOG:  Janus day 6, 3005 BCE. 1st dogwatch

"Hey God, is it Log or logue?"

"Who knows, write something, I'm not a damned editor, and English has not yet been invented.".

"But you are all-knowing"

"Noah, you do know I could arrange for you to be lost at sea?"

     Captain's LOG Wednesday 3005, BCE:

"This BCE thing, Before Common Era, what does that mean exactly? You are in this era, I'm in this era, everybody alive today, and soon to be drowned by your flood, is in this era, and there is no other era I can think of, so why are we using this?"

" Don't push your luck Noah, I could just as easily make Avram Lichtenstein captain of this ship". 

"Well God, he will be just as unprepared as I am. How many boat captains do you know capable of guiding a boat too tall for three decks of oars, no square sails, and not even a proper rudder? And filled with two of every kind of animal from predator to prey, not to mention anophIlis mosquitos and the bacteria causing river blindness."

 "Finish your captain's log".

The arc is being floated off of its strongback and we expect to be floating free by the time the sun is two hands above the horizon and rising. Aboard is my wife, Naamah, and our three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, plus a small coterie of local refugees that accepted their deck-hand jobs with no complaints once they learned the fate of the rest of mankind. I was going to invite some of my relatives but they teased me mercilessly. That'll show them.

     Our boat, an Ark, is 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. Don't ask me what a cubits is. God told me to build this beast, he told me what to buy at Nehamiah's Hardware emporium and gave me diagrams on how to build it. And all of the measurments are in 8ths: 1 millimeter is 8 8ths, one and a half millimeters is 12 8ths. Sheesh! Try to make sense of that. That's all I know. My brother-in-law, may he soon be treading water, told me that a ship of this size should have a beam one fourth the length. I have no idea how he got that idea, since we have never seen a ship of this size, the Greek trireme being tiny in comparison, but he claims to be a mechanical engineer. He learned it on Jew-Tube 

     Aboard, besides its crew, are two of every animal alive on the planet, because God is trying a fresh approach to populating the earth. The list of passengers includes a male and female Apatasaurus and a male and female velociraptor. My son Japheth assures me they are male and female, though I have no idea how to sex a velociraptor. At that point I was behind schedule constructing the Ark, and construction seemed more important, given the darkening clouds. The Apatasaurs stand over 12 metres tall. 12 damn metres! We had to cut an opening through the deck house to accommodate their heads, and because they weigh so much, some told me 1000 stone but who knows what in tarnation a stone is, we had to place them on opposite sides of the Ark so we don't roll this huge beast over with its keelson skyward. We had to house them in the cargo hold at the bottom of the ship with a portion of the orlop sawn away and then the cabin top. It might be okay but this atmospheric firehose has not let up and the water slides down the cabintop into the hold where it collects, sloshing around as the boat rocks.

It has been raining for five sun's already. The stretch of beach where we built Akbar, her name-meaning the great, is now flooded in about 20 feet of water. I almost made some caps saying "Make Akbar great" but decided against it as being redundant. There is 5 feet of water in the hold. It is useful for washing the animal dung out into the sea.

Captain's LOG : 3005 BCE, Janus day 6, 8 Bells. Akbar wallows heavily, but no major leaks. You should hear the groaning of the timbers. Crew has adopted to their new life, though they occasionally run for the rail to leave a tribute of vomit  to Neptune, the God of the underworld. God told me Neptune was not a real God, he's a metaphore or some damned thing.

I built a privy space at the stern of the ship, just forward of the turn of the stern. Except for a following sea, my bowel movements would be protected from the waves. That works pretty well. I designed this! My co-builder, my cursed brother-in-law may he be eaten by a Megalodon as he treads water, designed the bilge evacuation chute. That cursed device releases all of the animal dung being pushed out of the bilge every four hours, right over my head. Even if the chute is not releasing its load of shit (chute the shit, ha ha) the smell of what remains is oppressive. I will not go into detail now, but you would be amazed at the volume that these animals produce. The Apatisars poop out a pile as tall as a Nubian and as broad as Hottentot. The meat-eaters have the worst smell.

We are drifting away from the beach where Akbar was built. I can tell because the notch in the mountains that watched over our project is now further in the distance. There is a current carrying us I no not where. God said he would guide us and not to worry. I have no choice. I fashioned a big rudder for Akbar, but no one at Nehamiahs Hardware Emporium knew anything about where to find gudgeons and pintels to hold the rudder to the hull. We had a blacksmith for many years, Methuselah, but he died a couple weeks after we started construction. The rudder now floats nearby, sometimes bumping into the hull. Even if that damned rudder was inplace I would need a Sampson to steer the ship. So here we are, stuck on a boat going wherever it wants in a rainstorm that never seems to let up. Guided by God. 

Captain's log: 3005 BCE, Janus day 6. 12 bells. I don't know why we are going by bells, we don't have enough hands to man the ship in four-hour watches. The four-hour watches would be nice. We mourn the loss of Nimrod today. He was a hunter and fisher when we were connected with land, as well as forager. One of the Velocirapters layed an egg. Nimrod saw the size of that egg and sought to sneak into the cage to steal it. There was not much left to bury at sea. There were two nests of eggs in that cage. I fear that Japheth might have captured two females. "Life finds a way".

We are drifting further from the notch in the mountains where construction took place. That is encouraging. What worries me is that I can't see anything on the horizon but clouds.

Captain's log: 3005 Janus day 7, 1st dogwatch. We had a rude awakening this morning. We nearly capsized on a huge wave. God called it a rogue wave. What would I know from a rogue wave and a normal wave? We were heeled over on our side, nearly to the tipping point but one of the Apatasaurs stepped backwards, towards the center bulkhead of Akbar and she slowly righted herself. Ballast. Everything is ballast. Naamah made a celebratory meal of cooked grains supplemented with ground nuts. Ham had been fermenting some barley grains and we had a toast to our lord.