Seas the Day

A Day in the Life

2012-01-29T10:01:00.000-06:00

For those of you who are curious just what it is I do everyday, here's last Wednesday.

Tuesday

2350 Lee wakes me up for anchor watch

2352 I roll over with every intention of getting up

2355 I make it on deck to relieve Lee on anchor watch

Wednesday

0000 Boat check

0100 Boat check

0115 Realize we are over 300 feet from the anchor, the wind has picked up and I can’t see the stars anymore for the clouds

0117 Wake the mate

0120 Stand around in the rain with the mate while we decide whether or not we’re dragging anchor

0130 We’re not dragging. Chris goes back to sleep.

0150 Wake Patches for his watch

0155 Relieved by Patches on anchor watch. Go to bed.

0600 Woken by Travis to weigh anchor

0615 Climb in chain locker to flake chain. Not the best way to wake up, but possibly one of the dirtiest

0700 Stand bow watch

0800 Entice passengers to help set sail

0830 Eat breakfast

0900 Clean the heads. All the bleach makes me sneeze.

1130 Strike sail

1200 Set anchor in Rainbow Bay

1215 Lunch!

1300 Take the passengers ashore to go snorkeling

1330 Surface to clear mask and get salt water out of snorkel

1335 Surface to clear mask and get salt water out of snorkel

1337 Nearly run face first into a needle fish

1340 Surface to clear mask and get salt water out of snorkel

1345 Surface to clear mask and get salt water out of snorkel

1350 Surface to clear mask and get salt water out of snorkel

1400 Give up, swim to shore, read book

1630 Head back to boat via small boat, traipse about schooner in sarong, swimsuit and rig belt

1800 Dinner

1910 Herd crew and passengers into small boat to go ashore

1915 Wet landing on the beach in nice clothes

1930 Jam four passengers and three crew members into nice Australian man’s car

1935 Arrive at Rainbow Inn, where Kevin buys us all a round, Dr. Seabreeze is playing music and someone buys us tequila

2200 Return to schooner

2355 Patches wakes me up for anchor watch

Bahamas!

2012-01-16T17:43:00.000-06:00

The maze of Nassau’s airport leads through temporary drywall barriers and construction before opening into a mass of people loosely organized into ten or so lines, packed into the coral pink room, tapping their feet to the live three-man band playing in the corner on a manufactured front porch, steel drums and microphones hidden behind a white picket fence. Blockaded in my attempt to text my excitement, I realized just the kind of removal from the rest of the world I'm going to have here.

I walked out with my luggage and saw first my friend, and new captain, Carlos, second the sign he was holding: “LIBERTY CLIPPER.” I’ve always wanted to be picked up at the airport by sign. Two others were also being picked up: Carmine (or Bluto), a deckhand, and Inga, a girl from the office who was being sent on the trip so that customers could “hear the sunshine” in her voice over the phone. We piled into Bahama John’s van cab. He pulled out of the taxi lane, and the trunk flew open. I grabbed the top suitcase and shouted. John stopped, ran back and closed the trunk. He took off at speeds I don’t entirely think are legal. Bahama John is a big man with the deep voice of a man even bigger and skin several shades darker; he is connected to everyone and everything on the island. His ears stick out at right angles from his head and he loves gyros and greek salad. I was so distracted by his driving that it took an embarrassingly long time before I realized he was driving on the left side of the road, as was everyone else.

Before Bahama John could deliver us to the boat, we had to solve a slight luggage mishap: one of Inge’s suitcases (the one containing the ship’s new radar) had accidentally been picked up by a tourist and we had his suitcase in our trunk. Somehow, all of this had been figured out at the airport and all we had to do was swing by the hotel. We blazed through downtown Nassau, John got himself a gyro, and we eventually made it to Nassau Yacht Haven, where Liberty Clipper lives on the less than two days a week that she’s in port. There wasn’t yet a bunk cleared out for me, as the coming week was nearly full with passengers and the fo’c’sle is suffering from termites, so I laid my stuff on deck, got a quick tour, got changed and got to work cleaning out a giant deck cooler.

The rest of the crew, with the exception of the cook, is all male and freshly tattooed. The captain, Carlos, is also relief captain on the Dennis Sullivan in Milwaukee and drives ferries in Chicago in the summer. He’s short, an avid photographer, claims the best job he ever had was DJ on a college radio station and has been sailing tall ships for fifteen years. Chris, the first mate, is tall with sun-dyed dreads halfway down his back. He just got off the Bounty after two trans-Atlantic passages, has been on and off Clipper for years, has a great sense of humor and calls all cute things “puppy.” Don, the engineer, has just replaced Joabar, the previous engineer who had been aboard for thirteen years. He’s also fresh from the Bounty, has been sailing tall ships for three years and has held an astonishing amount and variety of jobs. The cook Tina told her kids she’d be back in a couple months when she got on her first ship three years ago. She’s from Oklahoma chain smokes before and after every meal and sailed with a lot of my friends on Highlander Sea this summer.

Lee, a deckhand who has been on and off ships for eight years, is a smart guy and a fellow literature major who has offered to share his books with me. He knows his stuff and he and I will both gripe about and rave about the relaxed nature of the boat. Chris (Patches) is a deckhand six months into his first boat. He’s funny, has an infectious giggle, and will need to learn some discipline, should he ever get on another ship. Owen has been sailing since this summer, starting on the Sullivan, and got and left for this job within 48 hours. Tall and lanky with long blonde hair, a full-sleeve color tattoo on his left arm and the style of a rocker, I was amazed to learn that he’s thirty. The assistant cook, Hank, is from upstate New York and has a fauxhawk and a sense of humor that is so dry, I almost couldn’t detect it at first. His second-to-newest tattoo reads, “Whatever happens to me is my own damn fault.”

I replaced Johnny Slanga, a boy with lots of tattoos, his own tattoo gun and presumably a whole lot of personality, though I only knew him for a few hours. The tattoo gun on board was responsible for three of the boys getting matching palm tree, machete and coordinates tattoos on my first night aboard. Carmine, after having gotten his stuff aboard, found out that his grandfather died while he was on the plane and flew back to Georgia the next day.

I fell promptly asleep my first night aboard, having not slept much since leaving Mystic at 10:30 on Friday, meeting up with Tanner at about 12:30 in Boston and flying out of Boston at 6:30 Saturday morning. Sunday morning, Lee and I bent the mainsail back onto its boom, newly replaced since it had broken on the transit down. As the boat had just had a week of maintenance, there was a lot of clean up to do before our passengers showed up at 5. We managed everything and threw on our nice clean white polos just in time to meet and greet and offer booze to our twenty passengers for the week.

I met a nice family from Iowa, who not only had heard of Grinnell, but in fact was next door neighbors to Chris Hade’s family. The father was a Drake administrator planning a trip for twenty two Drake students aboard next year and continually picked our brains about educational programming. There was an old rancher from Nebraska who pulled out one liners as though he belonged on A Prairie Home Companion, and his wife, who never seemed to be happy. An elderly brother and sister, he living in Florida, she in Mexico, for a reunion of sorts. And twelve more whom I could probably all summarize, if you asked.

Our week consisted of nothing more than sailing, exploring the beautiful beaches of Rose Island and Eleuthera, lots of small boat rides, swim calls, a couple glasses of Sky Juice and an ear-splitting game of dominos at Ronnie’s at Governor’s Harbour, swimming with wild dolphins at Rainbow Cay, playing with sea urchins and sea stars at Rainbow Cay, a couple nights at anchor and a couple underway and hardly any sleep for the crew. But it was great. We saw an octopus while snorkeling, accidentally caught several hermit crabs, had a couple of noodle fights and even got some sailing in. On the ride back into Nassau harbor, I saw a ray jump several feet out of the water. Once we were back at the dock and all the passengers off the boat, all the deckhands were in the headrig, unbending the inner jib. Suddenly, Patches noticed the four-foot long loggerhead turtle that has surfaced below us. The turtle took a breath, dipped its head, popped back up for another breath and stayed up long enough for us to notice a large chip out of the back of his shell. Then he dove down into the murky waters of the headrig.

Later that afternoon, while we stripped all of the beds and organized the laundry, I found a sarong in a trash bag of old ship’s linens. I claimed it before Lee could and told him it was my favorite pattern, free. I had been on the lookout for a sarong anyway.

This week is another one of maintenance, though we are short Owen, who has left for snowy Milwaukee, and Hank, who is on a two week vacation back home. Today we unbent the main foot again, so that we can paint and varnish the boom and painted the jibboom. We also took a twenty minute trip off and back on the dock so that Andy, the owner, could decide if Chris the mate is good enough to become Chris the captain in a month when Carlos leaves. He appears to have passed. Someone new comes tomorrow, a kid named Travis. And we’ll be doing maintenance until Sunday, when we leave again for Eleuthera and its marvelous beaches.

Life could definitely be worse.

Boat life.

2010-11-20T07:35:00.001-06:00

I haven't used the boat blog for a while. I'm not on a whole lot of boats right now, you see. Instead, I'm going to use this (for a while anyway) for the comics I'm drawing about boats and boat life. Enjoy.

This is approximately what happens in my head whenever I wear foulie pants.

I'm thinking I'm going to make actual boat comics soon. Anyone got a clever idea for a title, or more ideas for content?

Breaking the Boat

2010-04-10T13:54:00.002-05:00

We should have known something big was going to happen. According to the boat's history, every time Captain Dwight's brother comes aboard, something breaks. And he came sailing twice. The day after his first sail, the engine wouldn't start as we came into dock. We had three sails down and no engine and were floating toward the island and the dock. We readied the anchor, but got the engine started and continued as usual.

Yesterday, the day after Dwight's brother's second sail, the same thing happened. Only we had a boat full of kids. And the engine did not start. At all. We readied the anchor, and after much shouting from Dwight, dropped it by cutting the lines holding it up. So now the anchor is in the water, and we are a few hundred feet away from the dock with a bunch of kids on board. We told them they were going to get to experience what our life is like and dressed them all in life jackets and ferried them ashore in the small boat. All the while, Tanner, Peter and Dwight are attempting to fix the engine. The rest of us are trying to figure out things to do. We eat lunch quickly and clean up the boat.

Someone realizes that we are drifting. We have to get to the dock. But the engine won't start. So, we run out 400 feet of dockline to a cleat on the dock and wrap it around the windlass. One of the few powered things still available to us, the windlass is normally used to haul of the anchor. Of course, we had to advance on the anchor in order to pull it up. We used the dockline to pull ourselves closer to the anchor, and hauled it up as usual, securing it in its normal place. We then continued to pull ourselves the 400 feet to the dock using the windlass. As soon as we could, we threw over our docklines. I was on our after spring line, essentially keeping tension on it as best I could. I hauled us in in tandem with the windlass on our bowline. Having gotten that line into position, I belayed it and ran back to the stern line. I threw that one to the dock and as soon as it was on the cleat, began pulling in the stern.

Yes, we pulled the boat to the dock with 400 feet of line. And docked it with no power but the windlass and the muscles of deckhands. It was kind of amazing. This will be one for the memoirs.

On a less exciting note, the boat was quite broken, we all got yelled at for being irresponsible and unobservant and we had to cancel our 8th grade trip to St. John this weekend. But, the boat is fixed, Dwight was less angry in the evening and we've rescheduled for next weekend, which though it has ruined a lot of plans, is great for the the kids.

In other news, I am both really excited and really sad to be leaving. I am sad that I am leaving earlier than I wanted to, leaving Eden hanging with education stuff, but I'm also glad that I'll have a chance to be home for a good amount of time, to relax, to see friends and to get my life together before the next adventure.

Sometimes things break

2010-03-30T20:13:00.003-05:00

There's this thing. I'm not sure exactly what it's called. Gamoning iron, gamming iron, gamon iron, something like that. Between the captain's Boston accent and the first mate's North Carolina accent, it's particularly hard to tell. Anyway. This thing, this iron, is what holds the forestay to the boat. The forestay, if you missed that entry, is what holds the forward tension of the masts, maintaining the precarious balance of any schooner and keeping the masts upright. So it's important. As is that iron thing. Thing is, iron rusts. Yesterday, we discovered that the gamming iron was rusted through entirely on its port side. Luckily, it connects in two places, but that's still a little scary. We canceled the next two days of sails, called welders and spent today trying to fix the boat.

First, Captain Tom dismantled the whole thing, then the welder took it away. We pulled the bow in really tightly to the dock so that he could work sort of from the dock. Of course, this meant that the dock gouged a small hole in the hull. I spent a good chunk of my morning preventing the worsening of that hole. And nailing a leather cover on to a block.

My afternoon was a good deal slimier, and not just because I finally remembered to put some sunscreen on. Despite being my skin being a brown that no one of Irish descent is supposed to be, I still burn sometimes. Anyway, I then took the leather off the clapper of the main gaff. The clapper is, essentially, the part where the gaff (the top spar of the sail) slides against the mast. The leather, I discovered, was worn through, so I am replacing it. Even better, as the mast is covered in a slimy sludge of vaseline, penetrol and linseed oil, so is the clapper. And so are my hands. And my tiny crowbar. Tomorrow, I'll cut out a new piece and then nail it on.

Yesterday, I also ended up as the cook again. Somehow, Jess's days off have worked out so that I've been the cook aboard three days so far. "Sea Cook" was never something I thought I could check off my list, but I've made pizza and tacos and other things while underway to serve 8ish people. That's an accomplishment if ever I've had one.

Sunday night, we went to a party up in the rainforest. It was exactly like a dance party in Gardner Lounge in Grinnell, only in a grass hut with cockroaches running over my feet and a mean age of 35. It was great. Unfortunately, I'd faceplanted earlier in the day by tripping over the main sheet. So I was rocking out on an injured leg. Totally made that feel great in the morning.

My plan is to enjoy the time I have left and to follow the advice I give to people: Make the "bad" decisions and make the most of them. Though I don't think I'm going to jump on the Cramer, a brigantine in town and sail home with them, even though it would be awesome.

2010-03-18T05:16:00.000-05:00

Some days, I feel like my life needs to be expressed in Tweets; as though Twitter’s tiny snapshots are the only thing that could capture how ridiculous and non sequitur my life so often is.

I went to the shore head today. Of the two bathrooms we can use on land, one had no lights, one had a mutilated dead pigeon on the floor and neither had toilet paper.

I spent my afternoon elbow deep in Vaseline, cleaning out 19 containers of petroleum jelly.

I spent my morning patching the main and sewing the main throat back together.

In the middle, I made tuna melts for lunch, because I was the replacement cook for the day.

I made pizza totally from scratch for the first time today.

“Cook on a schooner while underway” officially checked off my Bucket List.

I got a box to mail my books, socks, and other things I can do without home. It’s amazing how much will fit into a tiny box. And how few books I have. And how rarely I wear socks.

2010-03-14T09:44:00.003-05:00

It's been nearly a month, hasn't it? What have I done in that month?

Well, a lot. I told Captain Dwight that I wasn't going to do the transit north, because I needed some time to be at home and relax and get myself together before heading to Windy for the summer and maybe a Fulbright in the fall. He had made it seem like I had a choice, but then flipped out when I mentioned that I was going to another boat, threatening me with breach of contract and all sorts of things, though I'm fairly sure I did not sign a contract. This seemed improbable, but it definitely got me worked up. After consulting my lawyer uncle, an old captain (Tom!) and my parents and friends, I have decided to go ahead and buy my plane ticket. I'm leaving on May 1st, to go home and have a break. I have been working on boats for nearly 10 months straight. I would like a vacation. I'm going to give Dwight about two weeks notice, which is not even legally required, so that he can't screw me over by taking away my place to sleep for those last couple of weeks.

Sadly, I really do love sailing down here and working with the kids. I love learning about patching sails and foul weather sailing and watching kids get excited and overcoming seasickness. I don't want to leave early, but the way I've been treated, I want to. They preach trust, communication, teamwork, self-esteem and respect to these kids, very little of which I see them using with the crew. I was left at the airport in Boston when I arrived, a breach of trust that I was willing to overcome, and the crew never knows what's coming next and we are not respected. Maybe having such an amazing community in Grinnell and even on Windy has raised my expectations too high, but, really, what's wrong with high expectations for this sort of thing?

Other than that, I've been having a great time. This weekend was the St. Patrick's Day celebration in town, one of my favorite holidays. I am recovering by researching graduate school options and catching up on people's lives as much as I can. I can't wait to be home.

Adventure is exhausting

2010-02-20T17:55:00.002-06:00

Everyday, it is harder and harder to get up at 7:00 am. Or the occassional 6:00 am. Or even 4:50 am (that was a bad day). It's not that my life is hard or that I don't want to get up (ok, that might be a lie), but that I am just exhausted. Teaching seventh graders of varying intelligence, enthusiasm and seasickness for three hours a day, then maintaining an 85 year old wooden schooner for another three hours and then entertaining adult passengers for another three hours is tough. That mainsail weighs over a ton, and some weeks, we raise it three times a day.

I appreciate that I am helping these kids, I love working with them. Watching them nail a three-point fix or the speed of the boat or really understand buoyancy is amazing. Getting to be with them over the week while they overcome seasickness, fear of heights, fear of boats, shyness, and everything that plagues a seventh grader is amazing. I love to hang out with them, bonding over our brightly colored Converse or ridiculously oversized or dorky sunglasses, catching glimpses into who they are and will become. They teach me as much as I teach them. This week, I learned how to kill an octopus (you pull its head inside out) and the dance to the Halle Berry song. They are fun, but maintaining the hyperbolic levels of energy and excitement needed to keep them motivated exhausts me. And if there's anything I'm good at, it's hyperbolic levels of energy and excitement.

I love that I am learning about this boat. I have been patching up the mainsail the past few days. Have I ever patched a sail before? Not really. I told our new mate that I mostly knew what I was doing, so he let me loose. Before I knew it, I was measuring and cutting a patch, sketching my stitch, painting contact cement, drilling pilot holes to sew, and sewing a rather good-looking (if I do say so myself) patch on to the main. Being the de facto bosun for this boat, I have several other projects at the same time, including adding chafe gear to docklines, servicing terribly squeaky blocks, making heaving lines (a monkey's fist at the end of a long thin line) and any other sort of small thing that needs fixing and includes rigging. It's awesome, I love the responsibility and the challenge. But hot dang could I use a nap.

The adults, they're fun. I get to crack jokes that are inappropriate for the kids. I learn about the rest of the country. I get all sorts of affirmation that I am on the right life-path for now. But the pressure from the captains is to work for tips, which I don't like explicitly doing.

Then there are my weekends. I like to use my weekends to relax, to sleep, to catch up. Instead, I have been learning to SCUBA. It's amazing. It's the closest I will ever get to being in outer space. And, since I'm learning to dive in the Caribbean, I see amazing things, never get cold and don't have to wear a wetsuit. Last weekend, a barracuda circled us while we swam through underwater hoops for fun (another diver was doing her Peak Performance Buoyancy, so she had to swim through the hoops. I thought it looked fun). Today, I took part in the St. Croix International Sailing Regatta. I scrambled from rail to rail, hanging over the side to provide ballast. At the end of the race, though we didn't win, we all downed margaritas made specially by the captain of the Hotel California, the boat we were on. It was a great day, but now it is just after 8 pm and I want to go to bed.

Some day, I'll slow down for a bit and rest. Probably not for a couple of months though.

A Challenge! Sort of.

2010-02-06T12:26:00.004-06:00

We have each been commissioned to write an article about our lives on Roseway and try to get it published in our friendly neighborhood newspapers. Two things: one, I don't think the article I would work up is going to be quite what they want - for so many reasons - and two, what do I write about?

Maybe my adventures in getting SCUBA certified. I have had to defy medical questionnaires, spend a $2 bill on a cab out to a doctor's office and realize the pains of not actually having health insurance. After spending $85 for the doctor to tell me it was fine to dive, just be careful, I had no cash to spend on a cab back to town. So I walked the two miles along the side of the road, crunching broken glass under my flip flops. Definitely the recommended shoes for this sort of intrepid hiking. I only encountered one violently loud homeless man, one guy who rolled up next to me at an intersection and creeped me out, and one one-legged man with three crutches who shouted, "Hey white girl!" once I was a good thirty feet away. A pretty normal day.

Maybe that whole island culture thing. Last night, I saw Valentine's Day costumed Mocko Jumbies dancing to a song consisting primarily of the lyrics: "Halle Berryyyyyyyyyyy Halle Berry." The same one from Three Kings, if you remember. After declaring my life complete, I sat in a fake Irish Pub for two hours and drank real Guinness while attempting to learn a Boston accent, despite the obvious Canadian overtones in my voice.

Maybe working with kids all the time. This week, our kids were one of the best groups we've had. They were smart, attentive, well-behaved and excited. And I was faced with the challenge of teaching four Navigation lessons and one Buoyancy lesson, two things I knew practically nothing about at this time last week. I had a blast teaching the lessons as I learned them and managed to make "Science" the favorite class for many of the kids. They nailed three-point fixes and remembered everything I taught them. At the end of the week Relay Race, they insisted on calling our team "The Christines". Kimberly drew a picture and wrote a poem for and about us, declaring me the one she most admires in her heart. Nadia and I were pink Converse buddies, and Antonique and I shared a love of big sunglasses. Sometimes I think I become a ridiculous exaggeration of myself around these kids. But that's really the whole fun of it.

Maybe overcoming that dastardly fear of heights. Yesterday, I tangled a flag up in an antenna aloft. It was maybe 70, 80 feet up. So I grabbed a harness and climbed up in the dark to free the flag of Maine. Once up, I had to clip in and hold on with one hand while leaning back off the shrouds to reach the flag with my other hand. It's always scary, but it's getting better. Like the other week when I finally bested the futtocks. Really, you just have to do something that terrifies you every now and then.

Maybe anything else that has happened to me since October. So many choices. Any ideas?

Tour?

2010-01-24T09:38:00.008-06:00

I am sure many things have happened since my last update, but instead I'm going to give you all a glimpse of the boat.

This is the boat with a sunset and clouds for sails. I thought it was pretty.

Next, the open hatch down to the fo'c'sle.

The ladder to the fo'c'sle.

The fo'c'sle! It's a lot like summer camp. But forever.

The kitchen cupboard down to the engine room.

The ladder down to the engine room!

And, now, I am bored of loading pictures, so I'm going to go get some lunch. Pictorial tour will be continued another day.

Hawseball

2010-01-16T07:26:00.002-06:00

I forgot a very important part of this past week! Hawseball!

Wednesday, we had only two people on the sail, so Cap cancelled it. Instead, we went out and had an anchor drill. It just happened to coincide with mandatory swim time.

We started out entertaining ourselves by throwing a tennis ball to each other while jumping off the side of the boat. Then it turned into Hawseball. Essentially, it was a free-for-all with each person trying to throw the tennis ball through the hawsepipe, the hole in the side of the boat through which the docklines (or hawsers) run. It was fun and a total workout. At one point, Tanner was winning, so we tied his feet together and gave him flippers to wear. He still managed to win. The one downside is playing in saltwater, which gets in your eyes, your nose and your throat and stings. A lot.

Once we tired of Hawseball, we hung a bucket over the side and played bucketball with a flat pink soccer ball with Wilson (from Castaway) drawn onto it.

Climbing back on to deck, we started to dry off when the Jolly Roger, a catamaran, sailed by. Cap ordered Tanner to swim over. So he did. Then Chris did too. They both scored free rum punch and then swam back, successful pirates.

It was a good day.

Aloft

2010-01-15T16:47:00.002-06:00

Every now and then, you just have to look your biggest fears in the face and say, “Fuck it.” Or perhaps, in the less modern sailor vernacular, "Avast!" That’s what I did yesterday. Going aloft has long been my nemesis. I’ve never really been a fan of heights. Particularly precarious ones. Anyway, you can see how this may be an issue, working on a tall ship. I have slowly been conquering this fear, choosing instead to revel in the awesomeness of being aloft. But even so, there have been limits. That limit was the futtocks.
The shrouds are the rigging that run from the rail to the top of a mast. Often, there are ratboards or ratlines that allow sailors to climb the rigging like a ladder. Hence the phrase “Shrouds and ratlines,” or whatever it is they say in Master & Commander. Anyway. The top of the shrouds dead ends into the mast. But there is still more mast. There are spreaders attached here, which are horizontal pieces of wood or metal which go out from the mast about four feet to port and starboard. New shrouds run out to the end of the spreaders, making a 45 degree angle of a ladder, going out from the boat. To climb up here, one must swing oneself around from the top ratboard to the bottom of the futtocks. Unfortunately, there aren’t really hand holds. Or footholds. Or places to clip in your harness. So, for someone with a slight fear of heights, it’s a bit terrifying.
Terrifying or not, I was told to climb aloft and detach the forward boat falls, shackled up to the foremast spreaders. So I grabbed a harness and some tools and went up. I got up there to find Mike had beaten up. Granted, I went slowly, because the part where the ratboards become as wide as your feet is a little scary. At any rate, I reached the futtocks to find an audience waiting for me. I looked up at him, standing on the spreaders on the other side of the mast, and wondered aloud, “How exactly do you do this, anyway?” Mike coached me through the process of clipping up into the futtocks, making a handhold out of nothing, putting my feet in what felt like the wrong places, and hoisting myself up. It was a little painful, wedging my foot into the crux where the futtocks meet the mast, but I managed to clamber up onto the spreaders to unmouse a shackle and release the whole boat fall assembly (a 3-to-1 purchase block and tackle attached to a metal cable shackled to the spreader). I climbed back down to deck and lowered the assembly to deck.
The rest of my project is less scary: disassemble the blocks, sand, prime and paint them, reassemble the blocks, tar the metal cable, rerig the entire thing. It’s actually quite a bit of fun, and I’m learning a lot about how blocks work and how to tar things. I also now smell like pine tar, just like a jack tar of old.
When I write a book, there’s going to have to be so much explanation to make it accessible to anyone. Sorry about these overly nautical entries. Let me know if things are confusing. Or use google.
Today was a rainy rainy day. I tried to work on my block project, but painting doesn’t work well in pouring rain. I used a break in the rain to tar the cable, but otherwise I cleaned and continued to adjust the lifting system for the small boats. We cancelled our evening sail and have been hanging out on the boat.
I finished my book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which was quite good and have written this, and now I guess I’ll relax for a while.

2010!

2010-01-07T19:21:00.005-06:00

It’s hard to not like a new year that has brought so many crazy things into my life already.

On the first, we sailed with Jimmy Carter and his entire family.

On the second, we drove to Frederiksted to watch the Three Kings Parade. The Adults’ parade. In rebellion against Jess’ war on sugar, I began my day with a slice of pizza and three jello shots. Then, we waited anxiously for the parade. Of course, we’re on Cruzan time, so it was awfully late and awfully slow. We hung out and took pictures instead. Then the parade showed up. People in floats kept dancing to this ridiculous song. The words we could pick out were “Halle Berryyyyyyyy Halle Berry” and “Put your hands up! Put your hands down! Spin around!” and “Walk up with your two hands up!” It was catchy. Apparently, they pick one song every year and everyone dances to it. So we heard this song for the duration of the four hour parade.

There was also a bouncing truck full of steel pans.

And Mocko Jumbies!

Afterwards, we went to the carnival for a bit, rode the Tilt-a-whirl then decided to go get dinner. Mike, Tanner and I walked back to the other side of town to discover our car had developed a nasty flat tire. And that the jack and tire iron were not in the car. So, we made friends with passing motorists and changed the tire. Then we got lost on the way across the island. Eventually, we made it to Cane Bay and I finally retrieved the Rocket Widget from the inside of a Guinness bottle after dinner.

On the third, I discovered that my friend Emily from high school is on this season of the Real World, in DC.

On the fourth, it was my birthday. I scraped, sanded, painted and sailed. But then Jess kicked me out of the galley, so that my dinner would be a surprise. I had already figured it out, though. Sushi! Plus, rice noodle soup and edamame, which were surprises. Then, though, she brought out my cake. Sugar-free, yes, shaped and decorated like R2D2, yes. I was speechless. I'll the pictures soon. It was amazing. We headed into town for drinks and found an awesome latin reggae band playing at Brew Pub.

On the fifth, I don't really remember what was awesome. Oh, it might have been that I got to do some bosunry projects. Splicing, knots, figuring out little problems. I love doing those things because I can make something. I hate painting and scraping because it seems like an unskilled task that I am doing because they need someone to do it, not because I am good at it.

On the sixth, I got an island phone, so now I can use a phone like a normal person. And I got to talk to Anna in Indonesia for the first time since she left.

On the seventh, we had our Tapas sail, featuring Jess and her amazing cooking. It went amazingly smoothly and everyone was really happy. And I finally updated my blog.

This is my bunk space. Luckily, I also have a bottom bunk for my clothes and luggage. Normally, a sailor has only this one space.

Sunset under the staysail. Only it's a fishing schooner, so the sail is called the jumbo. I have no idea why.

A New Year

2010-01-01T18:59:00.004-06:00

2009 was many amazing things. I turned 21, I took a trip back to California and finally went to Disneyland, I took a trip to New Orleans for a real college Spring Break, I published some photography, I graduated. I became a sailor and a pirate and lived in Chicago. I did an Atlantic off-shore transit and now I live in the Virgin Islands.

2010 is off to a rocking start. On the first day of 2010, I saved Jimmy Carter from falling off my boat twice, his wife told me she liked my monkey's fist necklace and his great-grandson became my new bff because of his "Han Solo Frozen in Carbonite" impression.

Yes, that's right. I spent my evening with former President Jimmy Carter, his wife, their extended family and the Secret Service.

Life, what are you coming to?

In other news, I spent New Year's Eve on watch. Stuck on the boat, cleaning and looking after things. Luckily, it was docked for the night, so I didn't have to ferry people around. However, that means that it made a lot more scary and disturbing noises than usual. It also rained all day long. Our sail was one of the most exciting things ever.

It's so hard to find the words to describe how amazing sailing is sometimes. That feeling when it's you and your foulie pants against 20-25 knots of wind, a rainstorm, 6 foot swells, and puking passengers. Rain pelts your eyes as you climb into the headrig to pull in a sopping wet and heavy jib and try to flake and furl it. I love the rush of being on a tall ship in rough weather. There's nothing like it. If 2010 doesn't continue to have adventures like this, I don't know what I'll do.

Oh, yes, and Jess, our professionally trained chef (she studied at the Culinary Institute of America), has decided that she is bored. Therefore, she is giving up processed sugar for the next month. Therefore, so are the rest of us as long as we eat on the boat. Yesterday, six of us ate our last tray of brownies and killed a gallon of ice cream.

Caribbean Christmas

2009-12-26T19:32:00.001-06:00

Ah, the hallmarks of the holiday season. A foot of snow covering my car in the morning, turning in that final paper that means I am free from one more semester, carols that I have been hearing since April finally seeming appropriate, bundling up in a warm hat and blanket and sitting in front of a fire with hot chocolate and a book, 24 hours of A Christmas Story on TV, a tree that barely fits in the living room, testing all of the decorative Christmas lights, ransacking the storage room for the Christmas boxes we only open once a year which contain the wrapping paper and tree ornaments.

My first Christmas away from home featured none of those hallmark moments. I woke up Christmas morning in my bunk in the fo’c’sle. I was sweating from the heat, but turned off my fan anyway, to conserve electricity. I stumbled sleepily up the ladder on to deck, finding not a snowy morning, but ominous thunder clouds approaching over the island of St. Croix and a surprisingly calm ocean surrounding me. I walked into the galley to find my chipper crewmates, all wide awake and well caffeinated, cooking Christmas breakfast.

I am accustomed to fighting my brothers to get to the Christmas presents first, but as all of the crew is away from home, there no presents under a tree. There was no tree. There were no stockings. There were mimosas and fruit salads and a rain shower. After cleaning up breakfast, Tanner and I took a dinghy ashore to find some beer for our Christmas afternoon aboard the boat his parents chartered. We dropped off a few local brews on their catamaran and swung back by Roseway to pick up the rest of the crew.

I climbed back up the ladder lashed to the hull of the schooner. As I cleared the rail, I spotted a Boy Scout Popcorn box sitting on the bench. I knew it had to be for me. I immediately tore it open and was assaulted with an intoxicating amount of holiday familiarity. A selection of Christmas presents from my parents and brother, wrapped in the same Harry Potter wrapping paper that has been used for my presents since early high school, sat on top of my stocking, personalized by me back in fifth grade. I had no time to bask in the homeliness and excitement, as my crewmates wanted to leave.

By the time we had dropped anchor at Buck Island, I had raised and dropped the tiny mainsail of the catamaran and gushed over the luxuriousness of the quarters in each of the twin hulls. My Christmas adventures rarely extend beyond a Nerf battle in the living room. Normally, I lounge with my brothers, eat candy and watch my mom cook and my dad make pie. This Christmas, I snorkeled for manta rays, but my mask was foggy, so I came back up on to the boat and read the Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook and argued with some of its ideas.

Once dinner time rolled around, we were up in the hills of the island at the home of a friend of the boat. They left for the holidays, so we used their kitchen and house. Jess made us an amazing dinner, as usual, and I felt kind of awkward and left out. I have yet to connect to these shipmates in the way I did my last crew, and celebrating such a family-oriented holiday such as Christmas was odd. Especially because dessert wasn’t a pie that my dad had spent all afternoon making nor did dinner feature ham, cranberry sauce or yams. Overall, it was probably good to be able to spend a Christmas away from home; it has made me appreciate home so much more. Familiarity and the ability to go home are two things I have really missed during this tall ship adventure and two things that I am really looking forward to having back.

Revelations

2009-12-22T19:26:00.001-06:00

I spent all morning sitting on the deck alone, scraping at paint in the hot sun. I reached two conclusions.

One: I want to live in a city again. I decided this when I was in Grinnell, and when I lived in Kirksville. I like cities. I should live in them. Not on tropical islands, though they are good for my tan.

Two: Even though I know only too well that the life of a professor is not whip-wielding adventure, I want to become a professor of Medieval Lit because, if I try hard enough, it could be.

2009-12-22T18:37:00.000-06:00

I find, unfortunately, that the longer I wait between blog entries, the harder the next one becomes. Even more unfortunately, I am often so exhausted at the end of the day that writing things out either on the computer or in my own journal is simply too much.

These past two weeks, we have had two groups of kids per day: one group from (in theory) 8:30 until 11:30 and the second from (in theory) 12:30 to 3:30. Of course, we are all running on Cruzan time around here, which is a good deal slower. Our morning group regularly showed up an hour late, the afternoon group stood us up one day and brought only six kids another day. We also had our evening public sail at 4. Needless to say, it was busy. And needless to say, a one-ton mainsail gets awfully heavy after raising it about once.

To add to the troubles, our kids were, though generally fun, also rowdy and very seasick on the whole. They were difficult to get through to, but by the end, they were all much better. I also feel rather mean to force them up from the rail to come learn things, but many of them are simply tired and not actually sick.

I spent this past weekend on a different beach each day. Saturday, the boys and I went out to Sandy Point, a nature reserve and turtle nesting ground. It reminded me of the beaches of Northern California; the smell, the breaking surf and large stretches of sand, shell and seaweed. It was awesome. Tanner brought his surfboard and attempted to surf in rather choppy waves. Kai and I swam in the waves, diving under white caps and trying to body surf.

Afterwards, we were kicked out of the beach by the volunteer park ranger. We headed out on the rocky and pothole filled road and drove up to the rainforest. The Virgin Islands Sustainable Farm Institute, based up there in a beautiful mahogany lodge, hosted a six-course meal, made primarily from foods grown on the farm. It was delicious. Of course, it cost a pretty penny of donation, but it was well worth it. A six-course meal with hippies focused on permaculture and the sustainable farm movement? It was like being surrounded by Grinnellians. Oh, and using the bathroom involved a Transformers flashlight, a dark path through the rainforest and a lot of bugs. Hiding inside the bathroom stalls were some of the largest cockroaches I have ever seen. Ants crawled all over my flip flop clad feet while I tried to read the excerpt from Joseph Campbell’s Power of Myth posted on the stall door. Adventure!

Sunday, the girls and I went to Cane Bay. It was much more touristy, with scuba divers and a beachside restaurant. We got some food and then attempted to hitchhike home. Luckily, we found Kai at a beachside bar and he drove us home, with a pitstop for homemade ice cream.

These next few weeks, the kids are on Christmas break, so we are doing maintenance all day until our evening sails. I will probably be able to catch up on things. I hope. We also have internet on the boat again, so that will help I my online endeavors

Last week: Not a Rig Journal

2009-12-06T14:49:00.001-06:00

This week has been a week of challenges. Of course, all the rigging and bosunry projects that I mentioned in my last entry were a huge part of that. Among the other challenges: our kids this week were all ESL students with varied degrees of English and I speak no Spanish; another crewmember was let go, Kai was bought a ticket home on Tuesday; the strange dynamic of this boat continues be its own monster.

However, what is a tall ship sailor if not one who can deal with challenges. Tanner managed to do his navigation lessons with the remnants of his high school Spanish, I made sure to simplify and carefully explain everything that I was teaching, and by the end of the week, they had had a great time. They may not have understood all of the names of things, but they knew the concepts, which was a great accomplishment on everyone’s parts, and they gave us gifts at the end. All the girls got St. Croix collector’s spoons, and the boys, Caribbean beer cozies. The evaluations said that the crew was their favorite part of the whole week. It gave me all sorts of warm fuzzy feelings, to be sure.

Kai was bought a ticket home, but managed to delay it a month and found a job and a place to stay on the island until then. We can still see him sometimes and he is able to stay on the island until his parents come to visit for Christmas. Besides, he had planned to quit after then anyway.

The boat dynamic is getting better, I think I have turned a corner with Captain Tom and we are getting along now, which makes things much better. The crew as a whole is getting closer and while these sailors are nothing like the Windy crew, I’m liking it much more than I was a month ago.

Yesterday was the communal day off, but I was on watch, so instead I stayed on the boat and painted and then hung out by myself and enjoyed some much-needed alone time. I have come to a sort of zen epiphany about this boat. I’m glad that I’ve come here and that I have this chance to do what I’m doing, and I’m going to work through it, despite the difficulties, because it is an amazing chance to learn a lot about tall ship sailing and change the lives of kids who really need it.

Now, today is my day off, and I’m perusing the internet, catching up on lives, buying a couple of Christmas presents and feeling the most relaxed that I have in a long time. It might help that I’m at a café drinking a raw chocolate smoothie, eating chocolate chip cookies and listening to smooth jazz in the background.

Also: pictures.

Rig Journal

2009-12-05T19:24:00.002-06:00

A summary of the past week: The Rig Journal version.

Mast hoops: Mast hoops are very much what they sound like: wooden hoops that go around the mast. They attach to the sail on one end and allow it to raise up and down smoothly. Part of the reason they work so smoothly is that both they and the mast are covered in sludge, a mixture of Vaseline, penetrol and linseed oil. Which can be very messy. Anyway, I first got to rub linseed oil into the new mast hoops that Emily and I had put on back in Boston, to preserve the wood. Then, I got to try to spin a breaking mast hoop so that its breaking piece was at the back and no longer under so much tension. That was when I got really dirty. So dirty that I felt guilty using the sink.

Hank Stopper: Hanks are the small metal fittings that attach any staysail to its stay. The hanks on our jib have been getting caught, so I seized a couple small pieces of wood just above the catching point to stop it. Of course, the jib is the forwardmost sail, so I got to stand on the end of the bowsprit, facing the boat, with nothing to support me, and work to tie something that was only about as high as mid-thigh.

Boltrope: While I was out making the hank stopper, I discovered that a good few inches of the boltrope had come unsewn from the jib. Boltrope lines the edges of our sails, probably as both reinforcement and chafe gear, though I’m not sure. At any rate, it had to be sewn back on. My first attempt, I underestimated how hard it is to sew through four or five layers of sail canvas and a rope while at a funny angle and balanced on a bowsprit. For my second attempt, I brought a pair of needlenose pliers in addition to my sail palm and was able to actually pull the needle through.

Turnbuckle mousing: I bet neither of those words make any sense. A turnbuckle looks like this. According to Wikipedia, it is a “device for adjusting the tension or length of ropes, cables, tie rods, and other tensioning systems.” Anyway, to keep it from coming loose, it is moused. Mousing entails taking mousing wire, wrapping it around an eyelet of the turnbuckle and through the metal loop, then cinching it by wrapping it around itself (called a frapping turn) and then twisting it tight. All this explanation is to say that I had to mouse a turnbuckle on the bobchain. The bobchain is the chain that pulls the tension of the bowsprit down to the water line. Basically, I spent over an hour lying facedown on the bowsprit, wedged beneath the furled jib and reaching as far down as possible to mouse the turnbuckle basically one-handed. It was fun, but terribly uncomfortable.

The best part about all of these things is that I had done none of them before. My favorite thing about tall ships is the opportunity to do new and exciting things, and the fact that the new first mate, and therefore the captain, is trusting me to do these things is making life aboard this boat so much better.

Holiday Season?

2009-11-26T19:52:00.000-06:00

Thanksgiving, huh? Somehow the 80+ degree weather does not allow me to realize that it is actually coming into the holiday season. Christmas is going to be strange.

The kids didn’t have school this week, so we only had our 4 o’clock sunset sails. We spent all morning doing various maintenance projects. I got to make new lifelines for the aft deck. It was quite a process that involved a lot of eyesplices, using a come-along and moving chafe gear all over the line. First, I’d make a life line and put it on and tighten it up and put on the chafe gear, then Captain Tom would tell me it wasn’t tight enough, so I’d undo it, tighten it, and adjust all of the chafe gear. The chafe gear is firehose common whipped onto the line, so it’s kind of a pain to take off and move and reattach. But! I finished both port and starboard sides on the aft deck.

We spent our afternoons at the dock, finishing up projects and getting ready for our evening sails. I would shout over to Rebok, working on the Corwith Cramer at the same time. It’s strange having an old shipmate working on a different boat. It’s strange that I have old shipmates.

I have not yet had any more fun snorkeling adventures, but I assume they will come soon. I’m hoping to buy a waterproof camera so that I can get some pictures up soon; I’m feeling a little stifled without any sort of artistic outlet, even if it is just snapping a photo.

We were treated to a Thanksgiving lunch by some friends of the boat. A full turkey dinner, with mashed potatoes and gravy and green bean casserole and cranberry sauce and pie and ice cream. And we got to sit on couches and chairs with backs. These sorts of things are much more exciting than I think landlubbers realize.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope that I can settle into a blog routine soon, that is some sort of summary of my regular pen-and-paper journal entries and perhaps a bit of explaining what exactly my life is actually like. I feel like I’m spewing out bits and pieces without any solid picture of what’s going on. That’s partly because that is just how I feel after a twelve-hour day of manual labor, but I think I can remedy it easily enough.

Another day off

2009-11-22T09:50:00.000-06:00

I woke up today a little groggy after an interesting Ladies Night Out. I stumbled out of the fo’c’sle in my pajamas with no contacts. Tanner said to me, “Christine! Look who’s here!” as he pointed across the harbor. I glanced up to see Corwith Kramer, a brigantine out of Massachusetts. Even better, this boat brought with it Rebok, one of my crew mates from Windy. I got myself together, went to breakfast, dropped off some laundry and then headed to the dock. There was a bunch of activity as we walked up the dock, but I didn’t see Rebok. Within a hundred feet of the boarding ramp, however, I saw someone scurry down and start running to me. It was Rebok! We had a very excited reunion, but then she got sent off to do the crew laundry.

So Tanner and I headed off to Kmart. We bought shorts and Easy Mac and made it back just in time to catch a boat to Buck Island with the rest of the crew. I was hesitant at first, because I had no idea what we were going to do there. Luckily, I went along. On the trip out, they distributed snorkel gear. We ended up snorkeling along the national park coral reef that surrounds the island. Yes, I am a little unnerved by knowing what I’m swimming with, but it was amazing. I saw a lemon shark, a great barracuda, amazing growths of coral and beautiful and colorful fish.

Snorkeling is so much more amazing than I had expected. It really is just like entering another world. You’re insulated from it by the mask, but still so fully immersed in it. You can watch a shark swim past but not worry about it (which I normally do) and chase a barracuda through elkhorn coral with no consequence. Barracudas, by the way, are unpleasant and scary looking creatures. He was actually meaner looking than the shark I saw. They’re glittery, but they also have sharp teeth in large mouths that they keep opening and closing at you as you swim nearby, threatening to chase you if you make a wrong move. According to the book I looked at later, great barracudas, like the one we saw, actually do sometimes attack people.

Anyway, after snorkeling, they took us back up onto the boat, and then around the point to hang out on the beach for a while. It was the softest sand I have ever felt. For a while, I just sat at the breaking point in the surf, being washed back and forth on and off the beach. I found pieces of dead coral and a shell, and we might have seen a manta ray. I finally understood why people live in places like this. Most jobs aren’t as stressful as mine; twelve hours of hard labor in the heat every day with hardly any reprieve. Some jobs just take people out to snorkel and then hang out on a beach for a few hours every day. That’s awesome.

And I still don’t have a camera.

2009-11-17T18:38:00.000-06:00

Saturday was my first day off since leaving New Orleans. I woke up late, at 8 am, so everyone else was gone. I went ashore and dropped off my laundry and then attempted to wander the town of Christiansted. I eventually found the library, a haven of books and air conditioning and armchairs. It was amazing. I sat down with a Star Trek novel and was content. Then, I was interrupted by the security guard, who, noting my “Where the hell is Grinnell?” shirt, said, “Oh, it’s in Iowa, right?”

So, I stopped reading for a while to let him talk to me. He is 58, his name’s Stephan, he went to school in Fort Dodge, is from LA and has lived on the island for about five years. He told me a lot about the history of the island and informed me that as soon as he gets tires on his car, he’s going to take me all over the island. Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, I moved the ring Emma gave me two years ago (she found it on the sidewalk, and handed it to me, saying, “keep it secret, keep it safe”) to my left ring finger. Just to be safe. He then insisted on taking me out to lunch at this cute little Puerto Rican place and then to a reggae/rasta record store called Riddim. Riddim was actually pretty cool and seems to have a lot of interesting local music, so I’ll go back some time.

I left Stephan under the pretense of needing to go get my laundry, which I actually did need to do. I headed out, and walked about for a while, hoping to make it to a bookstore. Being me, I managed to walk into a hole in the ground and sprain my ankle quite painfully. Then I decided to stop exploring and just get my laundry. I managed to catch Tanner, and we headed back to the boat for dinner. We headed back out to get some drinks, and ended up talking and venting about the boat, which was quite nice and refreshing.

Sunday, we had an Open Boat, so we hung out, were presentable and showed off the boat and what we do. I met a lady who lives in Colfax, IA, between Newton and Des Moines. I also met a couple from Rochester, NY. It was a nice pseudo-familiarity to have around here.

Our evening sail was enjoyable as well, and with a reduced crew, I felt like I was actually useful. I even got complimented by the captain, which probably did more for my enthusiasm to be here than he realized. I’ve been really frustrated on this boat, moreso than I remember being for any sort of experience this early on. And that’s been disconcerting, and I’ve been thinking of finding something else, but I might be finding a place here.

World Ocean School

2009-11-10T19:10:00.002-06:00

We have finally started teaching! Two days ago, yes, but it has been an exhausting couple of days and I have not had time to update.

Our curriculum includes lessons on knots, the science of sailing (lift, buoyancy, etc.), the skills of sailing (throwing heaving lines, coiling, etc.), charts and extras like poetry and tours of the boat and climbing the rig.

If no one has read the website, the goal of the World Ocean School program is to foster various skills and values in underprivileged students. Each day has a theme, which we try to incorporate and exemplify; things like communication, teamwork, trust, self-worth and reflection. It's a pretty neat program and it's great to see how much it means to the kids. Granted, this is our first group, so things are a little rough, but it is rewarding and entertaining. Besides, I like working with kids who are enthusiastic about things much more than with exhausted deckhands and frustrated/frustrating captains.

So far, I've taught knots, and my heaving lines lesson was replaced by a tour of a U.S. Coast Guard Cutter, the Ocracoke, which was docked on the same pier as us. The kids loved it, and I really liked getting to be on a boat with air conditioning. Even better, several of the Coasties came on the sail with us, so we got to chat with them too.

Tomorrow, the kids don't actually have school, so we'll just be working all day, I imagine. Thursday, I'll get to teach Poetry of the Sea and try to coax them into writing their own poems. Friday, Margo and I will help them to prepare skits about what they've learned this week. Should be entertaining.

St. Croix, or A Summary of my real-life journal

2009-11-07T19:50:00.002-06:00

It seems that last time I updated, I forgot to mention important things. Like dolphins. And sailing with dolphins swimming next to the boat. And fishing off the stern of the boat and catching mahi which we then had for dinner.

So, this time, I intend to summarize the journal entries I made each day of transit, to make sure I don't miss anything.

Day 1: In which I am useful.
There was a lot of confusion as we left, between messing with the anchor and customs and daylight savings time and everything else, but we finally managed to figure it out. About halfway through my first watch, I noticed the jib was doing something funny. It seemed to be wrapped up all around itself and the stay was really loose and was flogging around in the wind. I alerted Jack, the first mate, immediately, and he got the Captain. Turns out, the turnbuckle which held the stay was working itself out. It would have been very bad had that actually happened. But, it all got fixed. I felt very useful.

Day 2: In which I neglected to make an entry.

Day 3: In which I muse upon colors.
I thought I knew beautiful sunsets. I was wrong. There is absolutely nothing like watching a perfectly orange sunset to starboard and a simultaneous and also perfectly lavender moonrise to port. Or a sunset that turns the ocean as yellow and orange as the sky and melts to complete darkness for over an hour of amazing stargazing before an orange harvest moon oozes out of the ocean.
I also went to play on the bowsprit and, while out there, discovered that there was also work to do. So, I hung out on the bowsprit, fixing the widow's catch for about half an hour.

Day 4: In which I was not eaten by sharks
My morning watch was spent discussing how excited we were to take saltwater bucket showers. This is a very important thing when you're not allowed to shower, to conserve water. But! At lunch, Captain Dwight informed us that we were going to stop for half an hour and we were allowed to swim. As long as we weren't scared of being eaten. The Atlantic Ocean is this amazingly pure blue color, and when you swim in it, you realize the water is also perfectly clear for at least 25 feet down. And that tall ships are really tall from the water and the sails are intimidating.
Later that night, I was on bow watch, contemplating zombie attacks, klingons off the starboard bow, and knife fights when Emily ran up to me, handed me a bowl, and said, "Here, have a brownie sundae!" I stammered a very grateful "Oh man" and called that she had made my night as she ran off to get her own.
I must say, having Jess, a professionally trained chef, as our cook, is amazing. Especially in moments like that.

Day 5: In which two fish died
My day began with finding a dead flying fish underneath the steps to the galley. Which was a surprise that I made Jessup deal with, because I do not like touch dead fish. The rest of the day was rather boring, and it began to be really really hot in the fo'c'sle (a trend which has unfortunately continued). Around dinner time, we caught a tuna, which Jess turned into sushi before dinner even began. Oh, and we adopted a barn swallow. We gave him water and peanuts, and he camped out under the rail.

Day 6 (early morning): In which I am graceful
Just in case you were worried that I had started to become graceful: while closing down the boat in the face of an oncoming squall, I tripped on a jackline (a line running from bow to stern for us to clip in to at night or in bad weather so that we don't get thrown from the boat) and faceplanted hard on to the deck.

Day 6: In which land is found
We spotted land around 0330, but went directly to sleep after watch anyway. Waking up around 7 or 8, we were directly in the middle of the U. S. Virgin Islands. Then I slept again until St. Croix, which is about 40 miles south of the rest of the Virgins.
Having finally arrived, we discovered that we are accidentally local celebrities. And that is a very strange feeling. I have been greeted five or six times as "the new Roseway crew" and I've only been ashore twice. It's so weird.

Anyway, it is bed time, I have watch in the morning.

Bermuda

2009-10-31T14:45:00.002-05:00

Well, I'm in Bermuda. It's probably impossible to actually give any sort of a real idea of what even just that short four day transit was like. Tomorrow morning, we're setting sail again and heading down to St. Croix, a voyage that should take about six days.

We left in the afternoon of the 25th, setting sail as we left Boston Harbor. All four sails remained set for several days, we only dropped the jib when we some weather in the Gulf Stream. As we headed out, we split into our watches. Each of the three watches had three crew members and a captain, and each watch was on for four hours at a time, then off for eight, except for two "dog" watches in the afternoons which were two hours, allowing for some rotation among the shifts. The shifts (in military time) were from 0800-1200, 1200-1600, 1600-1800, 1800-2000, 2000-0000, 0000-0400, and 0400-0800. Any of the day time watches weren't too bad; having to be awake, on deck, at night was difficult for me. I was nearly lulled to sleep several times.

Anyway. Each watch had to take care of bow watch, helming the boat, boat checks and logs, charting our position and various boat cleaning and maintenance.

For the first two days, I was a little seasick. Not so seasick that I actually threw up, but enough that I was kneeling at the rail for a while.

Because we are sailing the Atlantic Ocean, we have all been issued inflatable life jacket safety harnesses, and have to clip in to jack lines run along the deck whenever we are on deck at night or in bad weather. There were at least a few times that I'm fairly sure I only stayed on the boat because I happened to be helming and clinging to the wheel. The rolling ocean waves tipped us over enough that we lost about half our plates and several mugs. It definitely caught me off guard at least once and I hit the table in the main salon with my thigh and slid underneath it. Which was fun.

We spent about half the trip on a port tack, meaning that my bunk on the port side was on the high side of the boat. I felt as though I were going to be thrown out of my bunk several times. Luckily, we tacked at some point, and were on a starboard tack, so I was instead being thrown into my bunk. That was actually better, but bouncing up and down on six foot waves still makes it rather difficult to sleep.

We came into port, the first time in days I had taken off my foul weather gear for a reason other than sleep, and anchored in St. George's Bay. We spotted a three-masted barque sporting a Norwegian flag.

Later that night, at The White Horse, apparently a very famous bar, we were drinking Dark and Stormies, when we met up with the Norwegian sailors. I had a moment of, "How did I get here?" And then I remembered.

I sailed here.

Roseway

2009-10-24T09:28:00.000-05:00

I have moved from one of the more modern and nontraditional boats in the ASTA fleet to one of the most traditional wooden schooners still sailing. Essentially the difference is in the amount of work. A traditional boat like the Roseway requires nearly constant maintenance and cleaning. Since arriving here on Tuesday, I have scrubbed the entire deck by hand, on my hands and knees, twice, and scrubbed the floor of the fo’c’sle and of the main salon in the same way. I have scrubbed the cabin house (which contains the main salon, the galley, the head, and the captain’s quarters) clean at least twice as well.

I have also learned to replace mast hoops. Mast hoops are wooden hoops that take the place of a sail’s mast lacing on wooden schooners. On the Windy, all the sails were laced on with line to the spars and to the mast. On Roseway, the sails are laced to the gaff, simply tied to the boom and seized to mast hoops to the mast. The mast hoops are covered with a greasy sludge which allows them to slide up and down the mast easily. However, the substance also covers your hands and clothes while you work with them. My work pants are covered in the stuff; I even washed them today, but it will not come off. I have almost accepted that I will have to buy an entirely new wardrobe once I settle on land.

Speaking of the sails, they are once again a traditional set up, with peak and throat halyards on either side of the boat. Also, the mainsail weighs literally a ton, so it takes a good eight crew members to actually lift it. At least. The foresail is comparatively lighter, but still really heavy, and the jib and jumbo (a fisherman’s term for the staysail) are probably twice the size and three times the weight of Windy’s. So that’s fun. We did sail trainings over the past couple of days, and I got to learn a new way to furl head sails. I must say though, Roseway’s headrig is much more secure feeling than Windy’s. For one, it’s a good fifteen feet shorter (no jibboom) and their widow’s catch, though not recommended to stand on, sags much less and scares me much less. Besides, I love the headrig. Always.

Anyway, I have only another hour to complete everything I need to do before we leave for St. Croix tomorrow, so I’m going to have to conclude this. Tomorrow, I set sail for the Bermuda Triangle. Wish me luck.

2009-10-01T19:55:00.004-05:00

There is really nothing like good foul weather gear. Aaron and I went and bought good fluorescent yellow overalls for rain and other bad weather. They're great, totally waterproof and all windproof. I also bought some good waterproof shoes and a coastal jacket. "Coastal jacket" means that it is rated for coastal sailing, which I'll be doing a lot of at the end of this month.

Our timing with our new foulies was also great, as today was a terribly rainy day. But I stayed nice and dry, running around in my new pants, new jacket and new shoes despite the pouring rain and the tearing winds.

I also got to make up a program on Marlinspike Seamanship on the spot this morning for our sail training. I particularly love that four months ago, I had no idea what was going on, and today, they said, "Here, you know more about this stuff than anyone on the crew, go make something up." I showed off splices, some knots, a marlinspike, and a bosun's chair that I had rigged to the shrouds. All in all, I think it went well. The kids were entertained, at least.

2009-09-29T00:05:00.004-05:00

I remember, once upon a time, I was scared of heights. Particularly heights with unstable footing and a high chance of falling.

Yesterday, I ran out into the headrig off the bowsprit in three to four foot waves and a 30 knot breeze. The downhaul for the staysail had come loose, and the jib needed to be gasketed. So, I handed my cell phone to a girl scout and climbed out there. I managed to fix both problems without even slipping on the metal stays or the widow's catch netting. I had initially climbed to the leeward side of the jib, which was dumb, because it meant that the jib nearly pushed me off the stay. So I switched sides and wrangled it in. It was the most exciting thing I had gotten to do in a while.

Two days before that, I rigged a bosun's chair to drop myself over the side of the boat to clean out a drain. I tied a double block to the shrouds (the metal stays running from the side of the boat to the top of the mast), ran it through a second double block, and shackled it to the bosun's chair. Then, I had Aaron spotting me while I climbed over the side, supported only by this thing that I had created in the past five minutes. It was great.

I have also been climbing up the rigging a lot recently, to shout at passersby on Navy Pier, which is quite fun. Those rope ladders get awfully small towards the top, and some of the rungs have slipped so that they are farther apart than my legs are quite long enough to handle. But, the Roseway has a topsail that has to be set and furled from aloft, so I will have to get used to climbing 85 feet in the air while underway and possibly in rough weather.

Tall Ships: Face your fears.

2009-08-23T14:58:00.000-05:00

Two important things have happened in the past week: I got promoted and I got a new job.

I am now a Senior Deckhand on the Windy. That means, primarily, that I just have a lot more responsibility than I used to and am actually expected to know things and to be able to solve problems and the like. Today is my first official day as Senior Deck, but yesterday was my first sail. We had five to six foot waves out past the breakwall and a race to sail on the Windy. We had a large charter group. Captain Bruce said, as we approached the start line, “This is a bad idea, but I’m going to jibe.” So, he jibes, but never catches the wind again, so the spanker is slamming back and forth across the deck and I control it as best I can, but it is soon apparent that we have four holes in the sail, two of them major tears. We got people taking it down as soon as possible and had to withdraw from the race. Even better, though, because we had rough seas, people were getting seasick all over the place.

Earlier, we’d had a Boy Scout group on board, and had gone out to test the waters beyond the breakwall. Several of them also got seasick, and I caught one as he was sliding towards the edge of the deck, ready to fall off.

However, even more exciting, I nabbed a position as a Deckhand on the Roseway, a 137-ft, two-masted schooner sailing to the Virgin Islands for the winter. I’ll set out from Boston at the end of October and sail to Bermuda and then to St. Croix. I’ll be there as a Deckhand and educator until May.

I'll write more when I have a bit more time.

2009-08-01T20:37:00.002-05:00

Sailing in 15-25 knots of wind on a boat meant for tourism instead of transit means that we are quite careful and only fly two sails. However, we still made over five knots with only two sails. Which is pretty great, considering that some days we fly eleven sails and barely make 1 or 2 knots.

Starting with that, today was awesome. High winds provide an actual challenge that we don't normally have and make me feel much more confident in my abilities as a sailor. It took four people to raise the staysail without hurting anyone, but it worked like clockwork. One person on the halyards to lift it, one on the port sheets, one on the starboard sheets, and one to keep on an eye on everything.

On our very first sail, we managed to lose our sound-proof headphones that we use for firing the cannon. The wind just slid them right off the boat. Dan marked it on our GPS with the man overboard button, and then we took a few minutes debating whether or not to go back. Eventually, over a thousand feet away, we decided to go back and run it like a man overboard drill. Once again, like clockwork. We had the ladder down, the sails dropped and every passenger recruited as a spotter by the time I spotted the headphones (the size of a softball and dark green and black) floating in the waves a couple hundred feet away. We recovered a small thing the color of the waves because we're awesome. Basically.

I guess sometimes I could update this

2009-07-27T15:21:00.001-05:00

This morning I woke up at 8 am to do shipboard duties, which include cleaning the galley and the heads, doing boat check, uncovering dockside and running up the flags. Normally this is fine, but today I woke up with a terrible cold, so I went back to sleep afterward. I then woke up again around 11, still feeling pretty crappy, for lack of a better word.

Instead of doing things, I took a shower then sat in the aft cabin to relax a bit and eat some breakfast and have some tea. Partway through the sail, Maggie walked into the aft cabin and said, "Brian's out fixing the jib and told me to come get you." So, I got to go help Brian fix the jib. We moused hanks onto it. Mousing is basically a very secure lashing. Hanks are the metal clips (or sometimes not metal) which attach the jib (or any sail on a stay) to its stay by the grommets. Now, the jib is the furthest forward of our lower sails, which meant that I got to climb all the way out on the bowsprit while we were underway. Then stand on the bowsprit and hold on to the stay and the hank in 15 knot winds.

Once we fixed it, we came about while Brian and I were still out in the head rig, then they raised the jib right above my head. It was great.

I'm still sick and coughing, but, man, do I have an awesome job.

Quick update

2009-07-07T23:13:00.004-05:00

Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it?

Well. The past few weeks have been examples of just how dangerous and how awesome sailing tall ships can be.

First, about two weeks ago, Rebecca was climbing up the stay of the staysail to fix the rigging of the jib topsail while in the boatswain's chair attached to the fore topmast. I understand that that means little to you all, but imagine a triangle. The top of this triangle is the fore topmast, and the top of the boatswain's chair, which is a board on a rope attached to a pulley. The side of the triangle is the fore mast itself, all the way down to the deck. The hypotenuse is the stay. Rebecca is climbing up the stay and is about halfway up when she realizes she can't climb the rest of the way under her own arm strength, and starts to go back down. About eight feet up, she slips and the angle of the chair and the stay swings her back toward the boat and she bounces off the bowsprit on her sternum.

Long story short, she fractured her sternum in two places, and is still unable to lift more than twenty pounds.

The next day, we had really heavy winds and tore three sails and ripped the sheets off the staysail. But, because of that I learned more about dealing with sailing emergencies and rigging sails. Which is good.

In the last few days we finally rigged our last sail, the spanker gaff topsail. It is deckset, which means that we have to tie it up on deck and haul it up every time we use it. It's a lot of fun.

And! Anna visited me over the weekend, and we got a chance to on the Red Witch, which is the other boat that Bruce and Karen own. It's a two-masted gaff-rigged schooner and it's all wooden and very boaty and awesome. We got to attack the Windy during a battle sail, and it was awesome. I'm totally going to own a boat like it some day.

The photo up there is one I got from the Red Witch during the battle sail.

2009-06-23T22:44:00.003-05:00

Summer has finally hit Chicago, it seems. The past two days have been quite hot and sunny and it is a radical change from the cold and rainy weather we've had for the past month.

We celebrated by taking an architectural tour on one of Captain Tom's other boats, the Skyline Queen. It was odd to be seeing everything from the vantage point of a power boat.

When I got back to the boat, I learned a cool new sailor trick: how to make a baggywrinkle. A baggywrinkle is a bunch of scrap line cut into foot long pieces and separated into strands, and then cow-hitched to a piece of sailing twine and totally untwisted.

It serves as a protectant against chafing, especially where lines meet up with sails. They also make cute little pets if you add googly eyes to them. This is not one that I made, but it's basically what they look like. We're going to put them up on a bunch of the shrouds so that the sheets don't chafe. The shrouds are metal cables, and the sheets that rub against them are often just ropes, so they get worn down pretty quickly.

2009-06-19T21:17:00.002-05:00

Today, we started our day with a sail training that turned into an indoor and dockside sail training because of those clouds to the left there. We watched two super-cell thunderstorms come in and just barely miss us. The rotating clouds were awesome and we kind of expected to suddenly be in a tornado all day.

It also hailed, and Roscoe and I put mixing bowls from the galley on our heads and ran around the deck in the hail. It made some great noises on our makeshift helmets. Our poor sail training group had to hang out in the aft cabin while we played in the hail and had a large puddle fight on the dock. Luckily, most of us have nice foulie gear and didn't get too wet, but none of us were wearing shoes.

The weather was weird all day, with crazy wind and unpredictable temperatures, finally ending in another storm for our charter sail. A charter sail complete with a Jack Sparrow impersonator. We had to storm gasket all the sails in the pouring rain and storm just in time.

It was a lot of fun.

Photo Post! part 2

2009-06-14T21:59:00.003-05:00

Hanging out in the Widow's Catch during transit. Rebecca is pretending to fly.

Rebecca, Abbiey, Captain Wayne, Marie, and I in our pirate gear. It's too bad you can't also see my giant knife.

Captain Wayne and Rebecca attempting to sell some tickets in Port Washington.

Sunset during transit. Alex is a little bit short to be steering from where she is.

Sunset!

boat check!

2009-06-12T22:48:00.003-05:00

After the return from Port Washington, life here on the Windy has sort of settled into a routine. We work with a morning watch and an evening watch. The early watch does boat prep and then sails until about 3 or 4:30, when the evening watch takes over and then sails until close and closes up the boat.

My days have become pretty similar, full of sail trainings and pirate sails and things like that.

I have gotten to the point where I can do boat check (and pretty much everything else) by myself, which is almost as exciting as simply being on the ship.

Boat check involves several steps. First, you have to go down to the engine room and find the Engine Log notebook. Then, you have to climb all over the engine to find the various dipsticks to check oil. And you have the platform over the engine that has to be moved to be able to get to the engine coolant. Then you have to get into the generator, which is on the other side of the engine, to check its oil and coolant. Then you have to check the hydro. I'm not entirely sure what that it is, but it has something to do with water.

Oh, yes, also, you have to check the engine bilge. If it's too full, we have to do a bilge pump.

Once everything is replaced in the engine room, you have to go to the water tanks. This means closing the watertight door to the engine room, climbing up the ladder out of the tool room, and going down again to the crew quarters, where a breaker and the water tank reader are.

We have four tanks, each of which holds 45 inches of water. Tank 1 is blackwater, or waste, and if it's in the high 30s or so, we have to do a pump-out. This is a very exciting process involving poo hoses, smelly buckets and very very careful handling of hoses.

Tank 2, 3, and 4 are all water that we draw from, for things like sinks, showers, laundry, or whatever else takes water. And we have basically have to make sure that they're are all mostly full.

After that, it's to the main bilge, which is under a floor panel in the hallway. Then, the forward bilge, which is under a floor board next to my bed.

And that is boat check. Yay for boat check! Today, I got to learn how to add coolant to the generator. It was quite exciting. I learned a lot about how engines work.

Today's weather was actually nice, so there were people on the pier, and they came sailing, and we had a lot of fun and got good tips.

2009-06-09T11:28:00.001-05:00

I was going to open this post with a comment about Sunday had brought about both my best and worst moment in sailing so far. But then I realized that waking up at 2 am, attempting to get myself together for watch despite the bitter cold (intensified by the steel hull and the fact that my bunk is below water level), and then helming a 148 ft schooner while a large thunderstorm rolled in over the coast to starboard was actually pretty darn cool.

My best moment had been nearly twelve hours earlier, just at the beginning of our transit back from Port Washington. Brian, the Chief Mate, mentioned that though doing the Titanic move in the bow of the boat is pretty fun, lying facedown in the Widow’s Catch with your head and arms through the netting and pretending that you’re flying is awesome.

The Widow’s Catch is a net below the bowsprit of a boat, intended to catch you should you fall off the cable stays which position the bowsprit in relation to the boat. However, it is also quite comfortable for a nap or pretending to be superman.

We had five or six people out in it, in four or five foot swells, watching the water below us and the boat behind us. Eventually, people thinned out to go eat, and I laid facedown in the netting, and soon realized that the waves were getting bigger and that soon I would get wet. So I came back in. Besides, the rest of crew was starting to actually work, and the Widow’s Catch operates on a buddy system.

Transit was exciting because it gave us a taste of Tall Ship Sailing can be like: just the crew, the ship, and the water. I learned to take latitude and longitude and plot our position on the nav charts below. I got to run boat checks periodically, climbing into the engine room and checking all of the bilges. I helmed the vessel, after being advised of my course heading and being warned not to hit the lighthouse.

At one point, the wind was at the wrong angle, so we lowered the spanker off-center. That means that we didn’t secure it before we dropped the sail, and the boom nearly knocked me off the liferafts you stand on to reach the sail. After I sat down, it swung to my head, and I dropped to my back, watching the boom rocking back and forth a few feet in front of my face. It was pretty exciting.

The weekend of being the main attraction at a pirate festival was quite entertaining, even though we had to leave early to try and avoid the storms we ended up racing to Navy Pier. Now, we’re nearly back to the regular life of the Tall Ship Windy. Today was a maintenance day. Tomorrow, we have to finish up some maintenance, and then we’re going to the Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry, and then perhaps swimming or Frisbee playing, and then to the boss’s house for a barbecue. All in all, it’s been a good few days, and I’m excited to get back to sailing on Wednesday.

2009-06-05T10:15:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was, as many of my days out here have been, a day of firsts.

We had two school groups yesterday, but only two experienced crew members on duty, so Marie and I each had to teach lessons for the first time, without any sort of practice runs. I lost control of my first group of fifth graders, but got it together for my next four lessons. It was actually quite fun.

Next, we threw the boat together for our transit and took off around four for our transit to Wisconsin.

I'll update more later, for now, I have to get back to the boat to prep for our pirate sails today at the pirate festival.

Building Community

2009-06-01T21:56:00.001-05:00

The best part about this ship is that it is such a wonderful learning environment. I cannot believe how much I have learned in the week that I have been here so far.

I know right-of-way laws for the water, how to tie an eye-splice, how to trim sails, all sorts of nautical terminology, the advantages of inland sailors over ocean sailors, and how to dress like an amazing pirate.

Roscoe has been kind enough to take it upon himself to teach all of us newbies knots. As such, my bowline, rolling hitch, round turn and two half hitches, clove hitch, and eye splice are all rather awesome at this point. Learning an eye splice today was very exciting, as I never thought I’d be able to tie a rope into itself, but I managed it.

Orion is an expert on period piracy and helped me throw together my outfit today while thrift shopping. He also encourages everyone to be as ridiculous and excited as possible all the time.

The whole crew is amazingly supportive; even when I totally messed up the raising the mizzen sail, no one was upset. They just made sure that we figured out the problem and fixed it quickly, assuring me that I had done nothing too wrong. I had switched up the halyards (the lines lifting the sails) and we were pulling up on the wrong one and couldn’t figure out why the throat was stuck until I realized my mistake.

It feels like I have been here so much longer than a week and like I am many more than two weeks out of being a college student. Jumping straight into this kind of community has meant that I haven’t had time to get lonely or to really miss Grinnellians. It’s a very strange situation.

Photo Post!

2009-05-30T23:34:00.006-05:00

Some pictures today! I can't figure out how to put them in the correct order, so here they are, as blogspot wants them to appear.

This first shot is out the fore cabin door, where my bunk is. You can see the mizzen mast, and part of the spanker mast, plenty of rigging, and, of course, the Chicago skyline.

A shot straight up to the top of the main mast (on the left) and the mizzen mast with some of the main sail below.
This is our night view of the city. It's a little blurry, but it's beautiful, especially out on the water.

The full ship! Of course, no sails are out because it's coming in to dock, but the 148 ft silhouette is still impressive.

Solo sails

2009-05-29T23:32:00.000-05:00

Today, I was let loose on the spanker sail all alone for the first time. I got some eager children to help me hoist it and then managed to tend it the whole sail and only mess up once. It wasn’t even that large of a mistake, I just caught part of my sheet line under a cleat, and it got stuck, and I couldn’t really maneuver the sail quite that well.

The spanker sail is the furthest aft (or back), hangs a good ten feet off the end of the boat and is the heaviest sail on the ship, which I always tell kids to reassure them when they need an extra hand for the last few feet.

Then, I was left on the foresail on my own! While this is also exciting, working the foresail includes the staysail and the jib, which, as you may remember, are all the way out on the bowsprit. They also have their own sets of lines, which fly about. And they don’t have a boom or a gaff (large wooden pieces holding all the other sails in place) and instead are controlled solely by all of the lines. This morning, I was still iffy on the headsails (the staysail and the jib), but now I understand.

This whole week has been a trial by fire. A trial by awesome fire, however. This is definitely the best summer job I could have picked up. I cannot wait for our voyage to Port Washington next week.

Tomorrow, I will try to upload some pictures; but now, we are relaxing with Chicago deep dish pizza and Thief of Bagdad (1940). Tip money that turns into dinner, shore power and the internet card are all great things.

Thursday!

2009-05-28T23:07:00.000-05:00

I have made an important breakthrough in my sailing career: I climbed off both the stern of the boat and the bow of the boat on the various riggings to mess with sails.

Oh, and I wrangled six ten-year-olds into hauling up the mainsail for me. That was quite hilarious. Sailing with a hundred ten-year-olds is totally an enlightening way to start a day of sailing.

I began my day by taking my first Navy shower. There are two heads with showers on the boat, one in the aft and one in the fore. The one nearest to me (my cabin is in the fo’c’sle or forecastle in the bow of the ship) only has a 4-gallon water tank. There are ten people living on the boat, so we have to conserve water.

Then, Orion led several of us in Tai Chi out on the maindeck. Among other things, it was a great way to stretch out after the last couple of days. I have reached the point where simply moving is painful, so I just ignore it. I assume my muscles will adjust soon. I hope.

I also had my first sail off since Monday! That was exciting. I bought a gyro and walked and sat on solid ground for a while. Sometimes, the world continues to rock when I am no longer the boat. It can be a bit disconcerting sometimes. Most times.

Generally, I am off the boat to dock or cast off, to use a real bathroom on shore, or to try and entice people to buy tickets, so spending over an hour on dry land was really weird. I guess I have my sea legs?

Bryan showed a couple of us how to correctly furl the staysail and the jib, which involves climbing out and standing on the netting and cables around the bowsprit and the sails, 40 feet out from the boat, and I don’t even know how many feet above the water.

Lastly, we took our tip money to a restaurant on the pier and got some food in a place where we don’t have to do the dishes. Now, we’re having a computer/internet party in the aft cabin, talking about nerdy things, and Roscoe is reading Walker’s Tarot. I’m really excited for this summer.

Eventually, day-in-the-lifes will get boring or repetitive, maybe I’ll do little feature things on different things I encounter. Suggestions? Wait til I get boring?

Haul Away Main!

2009-05-28T00:27:00.001-05:00

There are a few things they don’t tell you when you come aboard a tall ship: A) you need pirate gear B) you should always carry both a knife and a flashlight on a lanyard on your belt and C) it’s really hard to drill through metal.

The first thing we did on Tuesday was a Sail Training. We brought out over a hundred middle schoolers to teach them some of the basics of sailing and the sailing life on the Great Lakes. Needless to say, I pretended to know what was going on, and deferred the more difficult questions to the actual crew member who I was following around.

Next, we took a quick lunch break, and then built things. For hours. We powered through torrential rains, I drilled through metal parts of the side of the boat for five hours, we built two giant benches, one ladder, and threw a jib topsail (perhaps also called a flying jib) and a fore topsail up into the rigging. Unfortunately, we need to build three more ladders and rig three more topsails.

We split into teams for each job. I was on Team Bench. And we totally won the race, as we built all our benches, and no one else finished their job. Granted, Team Rigging had to stop because of the lightning. Being over a hundred feet up on a mainmast is apparently not a good thing during a thunder storm.

We celebrated our building successes with a few traditional toasts of rum, as is the way for a pirate ship.

Today, we had our two other newbies, so I sort of knew what I was doing. At least, I knew slightly more than they did. Though, they are more willing to climb out on the stays next to the bowsprit (or the netting), but I’m getting there.

One of the main things we do with our sails is try to get passengers involved, so we almost always pick volunteers to help us hoist the sails. We put them on the peak halyard and the throat halyard, and then stand back. We take out about eight sails a day, so it gets a bit tiring for us, but they’re fresh meat. I got to instruct to volunteers on the mainsail today.

So, as our schooner is “gaff-rigged”, each sail has two large wooden things on it. One is the boom, which you might be familiar with. The second is the gaff, which goes along the top of the sail. The halyards first pull up the gaff and the sail, and then the last few feet (at which point we’ve had to jump in and help out because our volunteers are tired) involve lifting the boom, as well as everything else and tying it to the pins. Man, volunteers make life a lot easier. Even with pulleys, I don’t know if I could lift even one 600-lb sail eight times a day.

At the moment, I’m in the middle of training, so I have no time to post, but I’ll try to keep as best I can. There are more stories to tell, but it’ll take a while to gather everything together.

Day One

2009-05-25T23:21:00.001-05:00

I came aboard the Windy to some of the best weather possible: cold winds and torrential downpours. My 40 pound pack and I climbed on board and were given a whirlwind tour of the boat interior, including narrow passageways and ladders diligently disguising themselves as stairs, bunks.

I was quickly introduced to some of the crew. Notable is Orion, the education and artistic director and proud Hufflepuff who promised to head to the Harry Potter exhibit at the Children’s Museum with me. The entire introduction and conversation occurred without use of the words “Harry Potter,” thoroughly confusing the boat owner and captain.

Next, I had to learn how to sail. I shadowed Abby, raising the spanker sail, the furthest astern and the heaviest on the boat. By the end of the day, I knew the spanker, the mizzen, the mainsail, the foresail, the staysail and the jib all by name and position, and where all of their halyards tie off; I learned a Ballantine coil (though I’m not good at it yet); I learned a lot of terminology that have since slipped my mind.

Our last sail took us out past the breakwater, where I got to man the foresail alone, trimming it and sheeting it and all sorts of things that no one else understands.

Tomorrow, we have one morning sail, and then all afternoon will be carpentry work: I’m on Team Bench and we’ll compete for nonrainy space with Team Ladder, while Team Rigging will be left out 100 ft in the air, wet and cold.

On that note, I need sleep because sails are a lot heavier than I imagined, and I am going to have to get up early tomorrow.

Do the hand jibe, baby

2009-05-21T22:01:00.000-05:00

In my ever-deepening quest to avoid making a fool of myself next week, I checked out a couple of books from the library about sailing.

Now, I’d assumed I was fairly well prepared for this whole sailboat thing. I’ve grown up on motorboats, I’ve been sailing once or twice, I’ve seen all three Pirates of the Caribbean movies; hell, I’ve even been on the ride before. What more do you really need to know beyond not falling off the dock and being able to shout “Avast!” all the time? Maybe how to walk with a peg leg, but I’m sure that comes with practice.

(A quick aside: I’m going to have ask you now to forgive me for all the nautical puns that I will both intentionally and unintentionally make, effective forever. Sorry Steph.)

A chapter in to Sailing: The Basics, I realized I don’t learn things like this well from books, preferring rather a life or death sort of hands-on approach. So I decided to keep on reading. Perseverance and pure stubbornness have always served me well in the past, why wouldn’t they allow me to learn everything about sailing from one little book drowning in slightly (or totally) unfamiliar terms?

The attempt went about as well as expected: a couple chapters later, I began to skip whole pages, looking for pictures illustrating the after springline, the winch, the forward springline and the fenders. I didn’t realize boats had fenders.

Oh! Wait! Unless that means bumpers. Yes, that’s what it looks like in the two-inch square illustration. See? This is totally working.

As I skimmed for more pictures, I began to question my motivations. This book is for people sailing personal crafts, I’ll be sailing a 148-ft schooner with four masts. It’s not like it will tip over if I personally pull a flying jibe and send the boom straight into someone’s head. How important is it that I learn this stuff before I step on board?

I shouldn’t have to worry about the minutiae of sailing just yet; I can let the people who are going to be ordering me around do that. That’s what Captains are for! Enabling my inability to learn practical skills from books!

Luckily, just as my attention was waning, I found the pages about ropes and knots. I actually know things about knots! When I worked on an island, at a castle, I used to have the dock boys teach me rope tricks in our spare time. Thanks to Fish and HotDockBoy, I can tie a boat securely onto a cleat without ever bending over to actually touch the cleat, instead just throwing the rope at the cleat from five or six feet away.

I can make a few knots. Sometimes. A bowline, or a square knot. Just today, I learned to make a thieves knot. Oh, and a daisy chain. But those are all rather common.

Unfortunately, I am a one-trick pony when it comes to rope tricks. Hopefully, that one awesome trick is enough to endear me to my new Captain and disguise my lack of technical vocabulary and actual knowledge.

Get ready and set and ready and set

2009-05-20T22:30:00.000-05:00

Having just graduated college, I find myself faced with a problem that a four-year liberal arts degree has not prepared me for: what do I pack for three months of living on a tall ship?

So far the answer is several pairs of khakis, a few shirts and some sunglasses. Oh, and maybe shoes? But what kind of shoes? Will I need my computer? Do I have room for books? Will I have free time to read those books or use my computer?

My life on the Tall Ship Windy is currently shrouded in mystery. It's a 148 foot, four-masted schooner, and I'll be living in a ten-person dormitory style cabin with a plastic storage bin for my clothing and other belongings. But what does that mean? More importantly, will the storage bin look like the Dead Man's Chest? Or another famous pirate chest?

Probably not. But the fact remains that I don't know how much space I'll have, how much free time, how many painkillers I'm going to need for that first week in which I learn to sail the 148-ft schooner.

On deck for this week's adventures: discovering deck shoes, learning all about sail boats, packing all of my stuff for storage minus the stuff that's going to be in my backpack on the way to Chicago.

Stay tuned.