Sailing in the Pacific Northwest

   As you may or may not have gathered, I spent most of the last month on a boat. Specifically a replica of the 18th century Lady Washington. 68 feet long on deck, 11 sails (13 if you count the ones the coast guard won't let us put up), and between 11 and 15 crewmembers during the time I was on her. In fact you have most likely seen her -- she was the only real boat used in Pirates of the Caribbean -- she was the HMS Interceptor (the other boats were sets, and models).
   The Lady Washington is operated by a non-profit and sails around, paying for herself through taking paying passangers on three hour adventure sails or from point to point.

   As usual these days, actual regular updates went up at my other blog, and over here you only get a summary (hooray!).

   I caught up with the boat* in the Vancouver that is across the river from Portland. Arrived in Portland on Friday and spent the weekend hanging out with my friend Mike. Signed on to the LW on Sunday (Nov 29th), just in time for the daily adventure sail.
   Next day we sailed down the Colombia River a bit to the the little town of Kalama. Kalama is a tiny town with three restaurants, a 24 hour laundromat/espresso bar with wifi, and three or four antique stores. A mural on the freeway underpass happened to include our ship. Got my first taste of the deck being slippery with frost in the morning, but was still getting by with only two or three layers.

   After a day or two there we moved on down the river to the town of Cathlamet. A small town just like Kalama, but much more quaint. Kalama was dominated by the freeway and railroad tracks, but Cathlamet is a much quieter cute little secluded town. In Cathlamet we didn't even have cell phone reception unless we walked downtown!

   Next up was Astoria, by the mouth of the Colombia, a much bigger town. Here we were scheduled to stay for most of a week, but then it turned out our next scheduled port, Ilwoco, had silted up too much to be accessible to us so we ended up spending more than a week in Astoria.
   In Astoria we had to tie up to a fixed pier. There was an 11 foot difference here between high tide and low, which means the distance between the boat the the top of the pier keeps changing, which means the mooring lines needed constant readjustment 24 hours a day the entire time we were there. Additionally strong currents and winds constantly bashed us against the pilings and made bringing the ship in difficult. Our sprits'l yard (ie the yardarm on the bowsprit) got smashed and some chainplates got busted, necessitating repairs. A replacement sprits'l yard was driven down from the ship's home port (Aberdeen) and rigged in to replace the broken one.
   See also, another shipmate's entry about the "devil pier"
   The entire time we're in Astoria the temperature stays mostly below freezing, typically around 26f. Everyone's wearing at least five layers. I'm wearing two socks on each foot, sweatpants under my normal pants, a t-shirt, long sleeved shirt, sweater, heavier "period attire" sweater, AND peacoat, even while belowdecks because we don't have shorepower, therefore don't have heat. One day it gets up to the 40s and it feels warm enough to walk around in a t-shirt.
   On the plus side the marina office has wonderful clean, spacious, and HEATED restrooms and SHOWERS only a few hundred yards away. Showers have never ever felt so wonderful.
   There's also a bar a few hundred yards away, but it closes at nine typically, even if there's a dozen of us in there. They also have wifi allegedly but won't give us the code, so we have to walk about half a mile to the Holidy Inn Express to use the internet. As someone says, "this bar sucks! I'd totally boycott it, if it weren't so damn close!" Being a bigger town there were other bars though, but even Saturday night all but one closed pretty early, so we ended up bar hopping with crewmembers from the nearby research vessel, who happened to be wearing plastic viking helmets.
   On one morning enough frost could be found on the deck to make snowballs. A wasp was found in the refridgerator, where we joke it was trying to keep warm. We named her Kendrick after the captain of the original Lady Washington, and I picked her up and breathed on her until she was warm enough to fly off.

   After about a week of freezing our asses off (which is all part of the fun of course), a couple came by, who having sailed on tallships themselves, took pity on us and invited any of us who wanted to to come to their place in the evening to get warm and experience civilization again. Several of us took them up on their offer and their hospitality was indeed unmatched. Of the two of them Misty had actually been on the Lady Washington for two years around 1992, and Darren had served two years on the Coast Guard Eagle, so they had many many interesting tales.

   Eventually it came time to leave Astoria and sail up to Gray's Harbour. This journey was estimated to take at least 20 hours and bring us across the infamous Colombia River Bar ("Since 1792, approximately 2,000 large ships have sunk in and around the Columbia Bar." -wiki) through the "Graveyard of the Pacific" and across the Gray's Harbour Bar. Fun!
   We left Astoria around 3am. I stood bow watch for the crossing of the bar, but there wasn't much to see in the dark. Had watch again 12:00-16:00 as we were coming into Gray's Harbour. Pulled into the town of Westport about 24 hours after leaving Astoria. Another small town, but had a tavern (Knotty Pine) that was universally beloved by the crew. That evening most of the crew let loose in said tavern and shenanigans were had.

   From there we headed across the harbour to and arrived in Aberdeen.

   Wiki tells us: "By 1900, Aberdeen was considered one of the grittiest towns on the West Coast, with many saloons, whorehouses, and gambling establishments populating the area. Aberdeen was nicknamed "The Hellhole of the Pacific", or "The Port of Missing Men", because of its high murder rate."
   ... and now we call it "Methlaberdeen!"
   From another site that paints the REST of the area in rather idyllic light: "In the hopeless town of Aberdeen, Washington, where the downtown seemed to have completely given up and moved to California, I sped past a muffler shop advertising a concrete statue of local son Kurt Cobain, who got out of town as quickly as he could. I could have gotten off and checked it out for an hour, but I decided to follow the rock star's lead and stay on the road."
   So yeah, that's Aberdeen. But life on the boat doesn't change and it was actually a bit warmer than Astoria had been, and the Pourhouse was a decent bar.
   See also: an entire entry about going into the Aberdeen Walmart to use the restroom


   Signed off the ship on Sunday (Dec 20th) and embarked on a 100 mile journey to Seattle. Had to first take a Gray's Harbor Transit bus to Olympia, then a Sound Transit bust to a park and ride outside Tacoma, and finally a Pierce Transit bus into Seattle. Crashed with my friend Janelle overnight, next morning light rail to the Seattle-Tacoma airport, flight to Oakland, another flight to Orange County, and finally home.

   Not sure what my next plan is.

* interesting fact, I wasn't sure if it should be called a boat or a ship so I looked it up. Apparently as far as sailing ships are concerned it needs three masts to be a ship, the LW is a two masted brig

See Also:
My twitter - for more random thoughts from the trip!
My pictures on flickr
"Bob the Fox"'s pictures
My pictures on Facebook because I know half of you are reading from FB and are probably loathe to leave the site.

[s]Green[/s] Red Room Holiday Party!

   It's that time of year again, time for the Emo-snal Green Room Holiday Party Emo-snal Red Room Holiday Party! You see, Idolists will be familiar with the LJ Idol "Green Room" (apparently named in reference to something on some obscure television show), wherein people just sort of hang out and comment to one another idly and eat fictional cookies.
   Well this entry is Like That. Just hang out and comment to one another and enjoy the fictional cookies (gingerbread, in all kinds of strange shapes!). But it also is apparently nothing at all Like That, because as we learned last year the LJI green room is a sacred and holy place and taking its name in vain will result in a dramapocalypse. Well I don't agree that it's better to throw no party at all, but let's be clear, this is a "wildly unofficial totally unendorsed nothing-to-do-with-lj-idol greenroom-like Holiday Party," just like last year.

There will of course be glögg, and also hot apple cider. gratefuladdict is in charge of warm apple pies and whirled is in charge of strategic placement of mistletoe. And there will once again be a rousing game of "pin the wreath on clauderainsrm"

Feel free to bring your own cookies and/or other holiday accessories!

Edit: ruaalien2 has taken charge of the whipped cream, uhoh!

Edit 2: Cookies from cookie_chef!