My AB card came in the mail today. That was a happy surprise. I had resigned myself to disappointment, and by and large forgotten about the whole thing, when an envelope from the U.S. Coast guard is handed to me and, voila, question answered. Thankfully it was the good kind of answer.
We are staying here in Lunenburg a bit longer, delayed till Saturday. There is a string of gales coming up from the coastal States. It would not be the right foot for starting a voyage, especially with so much green crew. Everyone is excited.
These last few days before our departure have been surreal. It’s hard to believe, after all winter, and all the work we’ve done, that we are so close to departure. These few extra days will be great for spending some more quality time with beloved friends and former shipmates here to visit and see us off. It will be hard to leave them behind, and hard for them to watch us go, no doubt too.
5/23
It’s my last night in Lunenburg – I can’t believe it. It’s been some kind of winter; it’s been a fantastic winter. I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I came here in October, but I’ve learned so much and had so much fun, and grown so close to the people here that now, a few hours away from this highly anticipated departure, I find the whole thing fairly bittersweet.
We celebrated our last night at the Grand Banker, and then on the dock, a long round of tearful hugs and kisses goodbye from Picton Castle family who won’t be leaving with us tomorrow. “Start wearing purple! Shanananana!”
And then we’re gone for a year. I’ve never been to sea for a solid year before. I can’t even imagine how I will grow, how things will change, and what will stay the same by the time we are headed back into this same harbor next year.The focsle is buzzing with energy, like a room full of kids on Christmas Eve. It’s a clear, mild night, and in the morning we embark across the ocean. Next stop: Ireland.
5/24
Set sail, bound for Cork. The mayor of Lunenburg came aboard this morning and blessed the ship, her crew, and the voyage, and then after the ceremony, we began to get underway. As hands went up to loose sail, Stephanie, Finn, and Amanda rowed out in a dory. As we hauled back the anchor, they circled around us, yelling and cheering and sending us love. Then Bluenose II joined us and saw us off as we passed the breakwater at Battery Point and on out to the ovens, cliff caves just outside the harbor. Bluenose II’s second mate, Zander, led the crew in cakewalking around the schooner’s deck. All spring we’d been calkwalking in to town. Today we were cakewalked out of town. They have a good crew there for the summer. We look forward to seeing them all again soon.
The Ovens, caves in the cliffs outside Lunenburg.Lost sight of land just after dinner tonight. Won’t see the stuff again till Ireland.
The trainee crew is very well trained already. We’ve been doing safety drills every day for the past two weeks. Most everyone already knew not only their knots, but eyesplices and whippings as well before we even left the dock. There were almost no hiccups in setting sail and getting underway, a very relaxed and comfortable feel without the atmosphere of controlled chaos that is typical of first days at sea with new crew.
Sailing along, continuing across the Atlantic bound for Ireland. Conditions are perfect. Sunny, crisp, clear, and a freshening wind kicking up scattered whitecaps and registering a solid force four on the Beaufort scale. If Beethoven had his fifth, then Beaufort has his fourth. Making six knots, which isn’t super fast, but it’s a very happy speed for this little barque.
We’ve been on the same tack for nearly two days now. It’s been like tradewind sailing, but we aren’t in the trades at all, just chasing the bottom edge of a string of low pressure systems coming off the continental states. Let’s hope for more fair winds.
5/28
Weather’s turned slightly snotty this afternoon. It’s nothing very dramatic, but the winds have picked up, and the swells, which have been increasing in size the past few days, are pushing eight feet easy. Not too bad, but still nice and lumpy. We’d been running dead down wind which causes the ship to roll more, and with every really good roll you could hear the people on scullery duty yelp as they dodged the crashing pots and pans that had suddenly taken flight. Towards the end of our watch the wind shifted northerly, and we braced up sharp, greatly reducing our side to side motion and simplifying the work of after-dinner clean-up.
At one point on watch tonight we had a sail handling frenzy, as the chief mate, Mike, shouted commands from the bridge and we all scurried around the deck to haul or cast-off the appropriate lines. There has been noticeable improvement with each sail handling evolution, and the learning curve continued its upward path as the crew handled the lines quickly and safely, and the job was done smartly. Striking this, bracing that, then resetting some and up and stow!
Afterwards I made my way up to the quarterdeck to coil and hang the main braces, and was just about to say to Mike, “That was fun!” before he grinned at me and said, “That was fun!” I concurred.
5/29
During deckwash this morning I went to pick up what I thought was a glob of seaweed that had been washed aboard under the smoker’s bench on the well deck. Instead what I got was a fistful of soggy dead bird. One of the ship’s cat, Chibley’s, victims no doubt. Not a nice thing at 0630.
5/30
Wind went light early this morning. There was talk of setting the deis’l and motoring a while, but thankfully the wind perked back up a few hours into a nice15-knot westerly. A weak low-pressure system has finally passed over us, and now we are catching the top edge of the incoming high.
We’ve been learning a lot here, and improving daily, and of all the learning that’s been going on, some of the most fascinating has been the lessons in weather analysis, both in weather faxes and studying the sky overhead, and then how the ship’s adapts to the observations and predictions. One of the most basic fundamentals of this process is the direction the systems rotate, low pressure systems rotating counterclockwise, and highs clockwise. The way we catch these winds is very much like surfing wherein we want to ride on the northern edge of the highs, and the southern edge of lows for fair winds in our passage east across the North Atlantic. So far it has been going well, and today, as the high moved in and the winds shifted from northwesterly to southwesterly, the skies cleared and the air warmed up enough that people could shed layers and walk around barefoot. It feels good padding around the sunny deck without shoes, feels natural.
And after our 4pm-8pm watch I sat on the Aloha deck with Bruce and a bowl of cereal and watched the sun set behind us, the high wispy clouds turning to steel as the blushing tangerine glow skirted away, drawn slowly behind in the ceaseless parade of fire westward. Though we’ve only been gone a week, the voyage so far has been fantastic, due in no small part to the quick camaraderie and fast learning of the hands aboard
6/2
Bent on the fore royal this morning. We were preparing to bend on the main, but the weather got too snotty, and Captain told us to wait.
Mike and I spliced on new braces for the fore royal yard, but in order to do that, the old ones had to be taken off. We lashed the yard to the royal backstay, but it was still awfully loose. We took turns helping to hold the yard steady for each other, as we laid out on the yard arms to unshackle or reshackle the braces, but even still, it swung around a lot. I didn’t notice it at first, but at one point when I was wrestling with the shackle I looked down and saw the whole ship seesawing back and forth, 90 feet beneath me. For an instant it was a little alarming, but then I figured I was fine before I noticed it and nothing had changed otherwise, so I finished the job and slid inboard to the mast to do the splice. Pretty fun, really.
6/3
I think I need to stop eating so much whole grain cereal.
6/4
Stowed the fore royal. I’d forgotten how much I love the royals. Best view on the ship, and the sail is so easy I had it halfway finished before I even realized.
6/5
Spent the day playing in the rig with the other watches in lieu of my usual after breakfast nap. There was a lot of rigging work to do today, the Bosun said, and I was happy to lend a hand.
Being of the 4-8 watch, we really don’t do a whole lot of day work like the 8-12 and 12-4, so it was a lot of fun to stay up and work. Usually we clean up at the end of the day, maybe wrap up a couple projects, and keep the ship clean with deckwash and an after dinner galley scrub.
During the day, with all our coils of rope splayed about on the hatch, with the main royal being prepped for bending on, Nobby, the chief engineer had himself a nap in the midst of all the deck stuff, the stuff of “damned rope pullers” as he lovingly calls us. It’s been a dream passage so far as we work across the North Atlantic, but when the chief engineer’s sawing logs on some sunny manila, you know the sailing is good.
This afternoon, after working on the various rigging projects, I had a little time to lay down and get a nap before my next watch, but a happy interruption came: first a loud cry of ahhs and wows from on deck, and then Erin, a trainee, ran into the focsle and shouted, “Killer whales! Starboard beam!” I jumped out of my bunk and scurried on deck and sure enough, there they were gliding right along next to us, two shadows under the surface twenty or thirty feet away, one big, the other bigger. They sounded, catapulting their glossy black faces with white jaws and famous white marks over their eyes into clear view. I was ecstatic. Every since I’ve known about these creatures, my imagination’s been captivated. I’ve seen some in tanks at Sea World, but always dreamed of seeing one up close and personal in the wild. Wild, intelligent, and sleek, these hunters share the same aspects of awe as the sea, with their frightening power and singularly entrancing beauty, they should be feared, marveled at, and experienced. There’s a reason people worshiped these things.
6/9
Turned Northwards for Ireland yesterday. We came within 30 knots of the Azores. Captain didn’t plan on coming this far south, but a strong low has been following us and we’ve been racing to stay on the right side of it.
Dolphins have accompanied us nearly every day, and yesterday a sperm whale was sighted. Captain said he hadn’t seen one in ten years.
Yesterday we had a kite flying contest, with kites made from junk in our bunks or wherever (just no ship’s supplies!). Mine was an old plastic shopping bag cut in half with a stick as a spanner to hold it open. It worked OK, but the wind kept catching the edge and it would briefly collapse, and dive-bomb all the other contestants’.
6/11
I hope they have Snickers bars in Ireland.
6/13
We’re motoring tonight, trying to get out from under a low that is forming over us.
I got a haircut today. It feels good. I liked having long hair, but it was starting to drive me crazy, always being in my face and tangling up and generally feeling gross. Nikki, one of the trainees, is a professional hairdresser and did a really nice job. I almost never like haircuts right afterwards, but I was pleased with this one.
New haircut, shaved a couple days later. I may need to dust off the photo I.D. again for shore leave.
6/15
We’ve hove-to, and are sitting at about 50 degrees North, a few hundred miles out from Ireland. We’d been steaming ahead for the past day to avoid the low forming on top of us, but it’s here, and now we’re bobbing in the ocean, in force 6 conditions, waiting for it to hit and pass. The wind and seas are coming straight on our nose, so we would be burning fuel and wasting time trying to push through it.
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The winds have shifted. We wore ship and are now sailing on a port tack. We’d been riding the fair winds on a starboard tack for nearly three weeks, the entire way East, and then on our turn Northward, until this low formed overhead and forced us to do weird stuff like sail handling.
6/16
We saw a big pod of pilot whales today. They looked like living submarines.
6/17
Here we are nearing Ireland, the swells building and rising, breaking beneath us, and pushing landward. We have crossed the Atlantic, seeing the ocean it at its best and avoiding its worst, all by the hand of our ship’s master.
And now Ireland emerges on the horizon, first a shadow of mass shrouded in haze. Then, as we approach, the famous rugged cliffs and green hills appear – it really is so green! All are smiling, a bit giddy. Since I’ve known about Ireland I’ve wanted to come here, and I can’t think of a better way to do it. Seeing a new place come over the horizon for the first time is by far the best way to visit the world, way better than first setting eyes on new land at an airport terminal.
6/18
My first day in Ireland. Stereotypes are generally regarded as negative things, but today every stereotype I’ve held about Ireland has been blissfully confirmed. The green hills, the ruins, the little coastal town with three little cozy pubs, and the Guinness really is better here. After landing ashore in Baltimore and doing some quick online work, we got some lunch and relaxation time at Bushe, our patron pub. Then Chris, the chief engineer, Susie, a trainee, and I went for a hike up the hill. We were looking for some shipmates, but kept going, and then decided to make our way up to the ruins way up atop a cliff by the shore.
We crossed big fields of tall grasses and wildflowers, discovering another ruined house along the way, saw ponies, bulls and cows, I was zapped by an electrified cattle fence, Susie fell into a patch of bush over her head, and we had to figure out how to cross a gorge, but eventually we made it, and were rewarded with a stunning view of the countryside, the ship, and the ancient fort.
From there, after our three hour detour through the countryside, we met back up with our friends and ducked back into Bushe for dinner, a recounting of our adventures, beers, and just generally relaxed, talked, and enjoyed a stellar first day in Ireland.
Made this slide show of the first day in Ireland.
The song I put on crapped out, so put on your own soundtrack.
