aggienaut | Back From Sea!

Pictured above, myself (among others) preparing to scramble into a liferaft which we have just un-capsized.

In "survival at sea" training for the Pilgrim we had to jump off the taffrail on the back, as pictured here:

First we just did it and all gathered up in a floating huddle, and then swim back to the dock.

The next time we had to jump off while blindfolded and gather up again while still blindfolded:

Then we could shed our blindfolds and swim to the capsized liferaft, uncapsize it, and climb in:

I was very anxious about this whole adventure because I don't generally do very well at all with cold water, but I survived and it was kind of fun. Not that I'm volunteering to do it again but it turned out not to be too cold and was interesting and kind of a bonding experience I think for those of us who did it. Crew on the Pilgrim all have to do it once, and it's offered once a year, so everyone doing it this year was sort of this year's "class" of new Pilgrim crew.

Special thanks to

furzicle for taking and posting the above pictures.

I just got back from 9 days of sailing about on the Pilgrim. It was heaps of fun and included, among other things, being forgotten on a deserted island (well for about an hour), cranking up anchors by hand, setting sail of course, climbing about the rigging, delicious food (our cook was a very skillful restaurant chef!), beautiful isolated beaches that can only be reached by swimming to shore, lots of other adventures, and yes swabbing the deck.

I have about 315 photos to go through and edit and post, but in the m!ean time I have one video and no idea how to edit it so I've gone ahead and posted it:

Tour of the main mast! Wherein I climb from deck to the top of the main mast with my camera in one hand taking a video! (: