The North Sea, A Sister, Camera Reclaimed

9/2
Anchored, waiting out yet another nasty North Sea gale that has interrupted our passage from Bremerhaven, Germany to Ipswitch, England. This is nearly exactly the same place we took shelter in our passage to Den Helder. As we push deeper into autumn, these gales become increasingly familiar.

The Bremerhaven Tall Ships festival went well enough. Lots of people, lots of vendors, and a pretty good time, too. The crowd was funny. Most seemed more interested, nearly obsessed actually, with getting their festival booklet stamped by all the ships than actually seeing the ships. People were vicious about it. I had one grown woman hip-check a kid who couldn’t have been older than six in order to get her stamp first. And if the stampery was less than pristine, Good Lord help you because those people cast the devil on your soul with their scowls.

My sister, Katherine, was able to join us for the weekend, which was far and away the highlight of my time in Germany. She is in Brussels studying abroad for the semester, and serving as an economics intern at the EU headquarters. Accompanying her were two schoolmates, all staying aboard for a good taste of what Tall Ships festivals are like, and a little glimpse of why I love calling Picton Castle home as well, although, since they didn’t go to sea with us, there was only so much to show.
Saturday night we had one last Picton Castle Tall Ships bash, inviting our friends from the crews of the other ships. We were on the brink of falling into a comfortable pattern with these things, mingle, reggae, mingle, reggae, dance, dance, fireworks, crazy dance, cakewalk, purple, reggae wind down, party over. Then came the musicians from Shebab Oman, the flagship and military training ship of Oman. They brought with them native drums, and a set of bagpipes (adopted during the British occupation of Oman). The band fired up and played a type of bagpipe music I’ve never heard, with exotic Arabian strains replacing the familiar highland tunes I’m used to, drums thumping and driving it along. Nadja and I jumped on the hatch, started dancing, and soon the hatch was full of people, Dutch, Scandanavian, French, American, German, and of course Omanian, dancing, jumping and cheering, the three musicians in blue turbans bestowing Picton Castle with yet another exercise in just how surreal the real can be. I’ve had more of these moments since going to sea than in my entire life before.
The next day I said goodbye to Katherine and her friends, and we geared up to get underway, though we were delayed a day due to the bottleneck of traffic trying to get in and out of the small harbor, and the silly way of handling/not handling it.

9/10
Alongside in Ipswitch. We’re delayed again due to a gale that is making its way east along the English Channel. It would be pointless to try and push against it. In shallow water like this, any wind at all pushes the seas up into nasty little two meter spikes of water, and it is neither fun nor easy to steam into. We’ll save some fuel, and probably a few lunches as well instead.

The gales that had us pinned for nearly three days at anchor off the Netherlands last week, ended up delaying us a day on our arrival to Ipswitch. Fortuantely we arrived in time for the mayor’s reception aboard, where he bestowed honors on the Captain and the ship, who, in his resurrection of her in 1993, stayed here nearly six months while repairing, fundraising and (surprise) waiting out gales. In their time here they made a lot of friends.

One of those friends is the knot master, Des Pawson. He’s published books on knots and ropework, and is one of the best knot-tiers on the planet. He had us over to his house yesterday where he runs a small ropework museum, and has a workshop where he makes all sorts of things out of rope and sells them for a living. I found my camera, thankfully. It had been misplaced in a shipmate’s backpack during the basketball tournament in Bergen. Some photos from the passage through the fjord to Bergen: