8/24

Have I been remiss? Have I been lazy? No. I was made bosun. The responsibilities of ship's maintenance fell to me, so there was little time for journaling little things like my thoughts and feelings, or how pretty clouds are. Instead, my notebook is full of things like rig survey notes, or line lengths, or scrape and paint the starboard veggie locker, or overhaul and reserve the starboard inner jib pennant.

Rather than stressing about prose style, or rhythm, or good word selection, I stress about deckhands taking an extra yard of our good, German, four-stranded seizing marline when they are replacing ratlines. When we bent on our sails before heading out for Gloucester at the beginning of the summer, I noticed the starboard main royal clew had a twist in it. We were a day out of Gloucester and the Captain wanted to bring Picton Castle in with all sails set, and the night before, I had a Groundhog's Day series of dreams where I was fixing the twisted clew, or asking Mike if I could fix the clew, or telling Mike that I did fix the clew, or some combination of the three.

All that to say, as bosun, priorities and interests take a dramatic shift from those of the starry-eyed, existentialist lead-seaman. My personal journal entries are much fewer, and far more terse these days, bullet points of observations, philosophical rifle shots.

Though, make no mistake, the summer has been a fulfilling and challenging one. The new position has widened my seaman's eyes and brought me a new intimacy with the ship. I take great pride in this ship, and her upkeep is the ultimate motivator, followed closely by the pursuit of more knowledge; I have lots yet to learn. The good news is, I am excited to be learning it.

As for the sailing this summer, it's been fine. Lots of tall ships events in the first half, touring the province of Nova Scotia, and seeing friends, which is a good time guaranteed. But the time between ports was less than sufficient, and while in ports the decks were open for public tours in lieu of ship's work, which I endured with gritted teeth – so much rust to chip off! But instead we're stuck monkey-shining the same thing every two or three days!

We went to P.E.I. and a few of us rented a car and saw AC/DC play a show for 88,000 people in Moncton, New Brunswick.

We sailed under the Confederation Bridge a couple times. It's 12.9 km long.

We went to the Magdalene Islands where we had a blast making friends and discovered another fantastic band.

We bent on Buddy's new main t'gallant. It's huge. Half and again as big as the old one. It has a reef band. It's huge.

We just finished waiting out Hurricane Bill here in Burgeo, on the south coast of Newfoundland. Sails were triple-gasketed and we put crazy Schwarzenegger chafe gear on all our mooring lines, but thankfully the storm didn't hit us that hard.

And now we're just a few days away from Lunenburg and the end of the summer season. Time flies when your rigging and painting, and shopping for seine twine in your dreams.