aggienaut | 02 of 30 - Underhanded

   Hello from Port Orchard, WA! We only just got here yesterday so I don't know much about this town. Seems to be the typical small seaside town up here though -- one main street with shops on it, a disproportionate number of which are antique shops, four bars, only one coffee shop (and it is more like a well lit plastic table sort of restaurant than a coffee shop). But this coffee shop has free wi fi so I'm going with it.

   Our boat's been very underhanded lately. Err I mean shorthanded ;D. Crew's been down to 9 and for a day 7 .. whereas the normal crew is supposed to be 12 and minimum operating crew is supposed to be 10. Meanwhile every day our partner vessel the Lady Washington seems to get 2 or 3 more crewmembers -- they've been up to 15 or 16 I think.

   Other than the fact that having so few crewmembers means we get fewer days off I really don't mind it. It means more running around to grab lines during sails, but hey that's the fun part! And it's nice having a close knit crew consisting entirely of people who are awesome and get along fantastically. Compare this to when I first got on board, the crew of 13 or so consisted of a number of pairs of people who hated eachother's guts -- it was not a close knit crew at all. And while the Lady doesn't have people that loathe eachother (to my knowledge), I don't think they all click with eachother like ours.

   Day before yesterday we finally got a new crewmember, a Canadian trapeze artist (!?) who has worked on other tallships before, and she seems like she'll fit in alright. Last night our new first mate arrived, he'll be taking over for Jimmy, who'll be taking over as captain, as today is our current captain's last day. So for today I suppose he's our 2nd Mate? And today we have a whopping 11 people.
   The new first mate, JB, has a long history with the organization, and has been captain before with Jimmy as HIS first mate. As the current captain has... at least not clicked socially with the crew I'm confident this new reshuffling will only make the crew dynamic even more awesome.

   We had a very fun hawaiian party for the ship's 22nd birthday last Saturday, and today to celebrate the changeover of captain and three crew birthdays within days of eachother we're going to have another epic party.
   In short, it's been good times.