Mystic Grey-Water

6/12
Some good sailing. I am getting familiar with schooner life. Lots of different tricks. At times I feel like a total beginner again. Thankfully though I don’t feel that way often, but it’s still more than I would like.
We have been skipping up and down the Narragansett Bay and Block Island Sound for the past couple weeks, taking different groups around on short trips. This week we have our kids, all in middle school, for six days. I have been enjoying getting to know them. It’s especially fun to get the ones who show what a friend of mine calls “sea-sensitive souls.” You can tell as soon as they walk on board. Their eyes get wider, they look up at the rigging slack jawed, they can sense the potential for magic in the ship’s wooden beams.
Last night we anchored at Tarpaulin Cove near Martha’s Vineyard, next to a simple, attractive lighthouse. We shuttled the kids to the beach for some exploration and shell collecting, did some work in the rig, and then relaxed until they got back.

When we pulled up the anchor and got underway, the front edge of a nor’easter had crept up on us and blew us fair, making our 36 nautical mile passage to Dutch Harbor, CT, in under four hours. Fast.

6/13
Today has been energizing. The morning brought with it gale warnings from the weather man. We gave the kids some time hiking around Dutch Island. After some salty boat runs back to the Gamage (all were in their oilskins as waves crashed over the windward gunwale with whitecaps all around), we hauled up the hook and made our way west, still riding the nor’easterly winds, bound for the historic seaport in Mystic, CT. The main is reefed, the winds are fresh, and we are making eight knots. Occasional waves make their way over our windward rails and keep us damp. The girls squeal, the guys all yell “whoa!” and the crew just stand there, stoic, collected, salty. If the spray gets us we catch an eye of a fellow sailor and quick smiles are flashed in quiet exhilaration.
After lunch I went over the lines on the ship with some of the students. There are about 40 lines in all. The kids were sharp. Some of them got the majority of the primary lines without being prompted, and almost none needed more than one reminder of a line’s name. Right after finishing my last go around the deck, Captain called for hands to take in the mains’l preventer. My guys handled the line themselves masterfully. I was very proud. It is energizing to have a group that is on long enough to begin to plug into the ship and how she works. The baffled and overwhelmed kids that came on four days ago are beginning to look like sailors. It’s a beautiful process. I know because I am a participant myself.

6/15
We arrived in Mystic, CT, yesterday morning, coming in with the tides up the Mystic River, docked in the historic seaport next to fellow Ocean Classroom schooner, the Spirit of Massachusetts, and the Charles W. Morgan, at one point the last working whaling ship in the United States, though it’s retired now and lives here at the dock. We leave first thing tomorrow.

Today has been warm. The sun came out, the winds were gentler, and it finally feels like summer. It has been cold and overcast for the past two weeks. I think all are thankful for the break in the weather.

Today we had a pin chase, where the kids divide into watches, a crewmember calls out a line, and the kids have to race to the pin where the line is made fast. My watch won.
This group has been fantastic. I am going to sad to say goodbye, but it has been a lot of fun seeing them develop over the past few days. The difference in them even in this short time is remarkable.
I have spent the last two days working in the rigging while the kids are off in Mystic exploring the museums and terrorizing the ice cream shop. It is always a good day when your feet are planted firmly on footropes and ratlines. Our starboard topsides got a fresh coat of paint yesterday, and today I finished off the bowsprit and then tarred the head rig and fore port shrouds.
At this point, I think it’d be in line to address what is known as grey-water. The Gamage, like all ships, has a grey-water tank/bilge. The label of “grey-water” itself leads one to imagine water that is less than pure, if not downright nasty, and one would be correct in assuming as much. Basically, grey-water is this: all food scraps and water run-off from the galley goes into a big tank and sits there, fermenting and rotting. Black-water, if you’re interested, is second-hand toilet water.
Yesterday while I was sanding the bowsprit, Cheyenne, the second mate, and Carrie, a deckhand, were in Odie, the smallboat, painting the topsides. Kirk, the engineer, was tinkering with the grey-water tank pump. He was putting the finishing touches on the refurbished pump and asked Carrie and Cheyenne to tell him if it was working properly. As soon as he flipped it on Cheyenne answered with a horrified wail, “SHUT IT OFF! SHUT IT OFF!” and so on, as gallons of stagnant grey-water were discharged directly into her mouth. Her helpless wailing prompted not a sympathetic off-switching of the pump, but rather rolls of uncharitable and wild laughter from Kirk and Chief Mate Shayma, who was also witness at the scene. For my part, I was wrapped tight around the bowsprit, giggling, trying not fall in the water.
Eventually the pump was shut off – we didn’t want to swamp Odie, after all – and Cheyenne temporarily suspended her painting duty to smoke a cigarette in the hopes of killing any remnant tastes of grey-water. I’d like to think I would have been quicker to jump up and switch off the pump than Kirk or Shayma had I not been at the other end of the ship, but then again I’d also like to think I could bench press 500 lbs and outrun mustangs. Oh well. It was funny.
Another glimpse of life at sea I suppose.