The Agrinautica

   So this past January one of my former shipmates happened to pass by and visit, and we got to reminiscing and recounting stories of the misadventures of our crew, and it got me thinking that one of the most dramatic, filled with sculduggery and scandal, I don't think I've ever put to writing before. While I had livejournal even back then, I was very very busy and a lot didn't make it into writing. And my memory being what it is, even these memories might fade if I don't put them down before it's too late so... only 13 years later, I give you a true story of crime and mischief, plus also the slightly tangental story of the closest I've ever come to being turned into hamburger meat.


this not my ship nor off Coupeville but I feel like it captures the feel of the pleasant summer evenings there

   By way of background: for seven months in 2010, April through October, I worked on a traditionally rigged sailing ship (ie looks like a pirate ship) the Hawaiian Chieftain. The ship's mission was education programs for school groups during the week and taking paying passengers on fun sails on the weekends to make ends meat. We were a crew of 12, mostly all exactly 27 years old for some reason. I could probably write a whole book about all the adventures, but I'd have to thoroughly scramble all the identities because most stories make at least one person look really bad.

   Anyway, I like to begin this story arc in Coupeville, Whidby Island. It was an idyllic place, a cute seaside town in the Puget Sound at the height of beautiful summer weather (it being late August). The only thing particular of note for this story arc though is that at one point I got on the ship's laptop in the aft cabin to do some work pertaining to my duties (I was education coordinator / steward -- basically everything pertaining to bookings of either passengers or school groups went through me). I needed to find an email I had written from the official yahoo email address and the easeist way to do so was search my name in the email search function since my name was sure to be in the signature line of an email I sent. But when the results came back my name was only mentioned in the body of one email, and then I realized I wasn't in the ship's email but the first mate's own email.
   The first mate (whom in a grudging concession to changing names I'll call uh Kevin I guess) had been with the organization for over a decade. He was actually more experienced than the captain and had been captain himself in the past but in a sort of counter-intuitive arrangement he'd been made first mate to support the current captain who was new to being a captain. "Kevin" had actually begun with the organization as an "at risk youth" before becoming a full fledged at risk adult -- notable for constantly trying (and often succeeding, it's fish in the barrel for the captain) to seduce any young women who came aboard as crew -- which I'll note is probably an abuse of his position but I digress.
   So anyway in his email he was complaining about all of the ship's officers, saying we were all totally worthless with the sole exception of "James," the purser (ship's accountant). Now "James" was a likeable fella, an immenently likeable fella, in fact, an incredibly likeable fellow. I think he'd maxed out his charisma stat. At one point I believe he had slept with all seven female members of the crew, and on at least one occasion I was aware he had slept with a different girl for four consecutive days. And guys found him very likeable as well. You couldn't help but like the guy. Anyway, so that was that, we'll circle back to this.

   At our next port of call "Kevin" got tired of our actual captain cramping his style and got him fired, thus becoming our new captain. This dramaz could of course be an entry all its own.



   By and by we found ourselves leaving the Puget Sound in September and also developed a small leak in the bilge trough under the port side propeller shaft (the vessel had two propellers). Repairing this was a very tedious task that could only be addressed while we were in port -- we'd pump out the bilge trough entirely, to the degree that then we'd dry it with rags and blow dryers, to get it literally dry so we could apply some sealant that would only work on a dry surface. Because this involved working right around and under the propeller shaft, at first it was always made sure that both keys that could turn on the engines -- the one in the engine room and then one up at the con -- were out and in the captain's pocket. But as the problem continued into its third week of repair efforts apparently things got sloppy...

   We exited teh Puget Sound and sailed down to a long inlet called Grey's Harbor which is named after a person but I cant' remember seeing it looking anything except extremely grey. At the back end of the inlet a river named the Chehalis (which I was told and thereon believed was local native american for "Stink of Death" but current google seems to refute this) enters the bay is the town of Aberdeen/Methlaberdeen/Aberdoom. Aberdeen was known as the "hellhole of the Pacific" by 1900 and hasn't gotten any more cheery since then. Aberdoom was the home town of Kurt Cobain which explains a lot. So in this cheery place I was doing my duty one day trying to dry the bilge trough near where it disappeared into the aft bulkhead of the main hold. There was a big boxy thing on the propeller shaft here, the purpose of which I have never really understood, but it made it uncomfortable and difficult to get to the area under the shaft. I basically had to wrap my body around it working upside down in extremely constrained space.
   This being very uncomfortable, presently I extracted myself to stretch. And while so doing, to my absolute horror, the shaft began to spin. First slowly and ponderously for a turn or two but within a second or two of total elapsed time it was whirring around fast enough that the boxy part was a blur. I would have been absolutely ground into hamburger meat if it hadn't been that I was stretching at that moment! I darted up onto deck, probably white as a sheet, to find "Kevin" casually twiddling knobs on the con.
   "What are you doing?? I was DOWN THERE and you've turned the propeller on???" I demanded
   "What? It shouldn't be spinning the other key isn't it" (or something, I forget the exact reason he thought it shouldn't be spinning)
   "Well it IS!! I'm taking a break" I said and rushed myself off the ship. One doesn't generally shout at the captain and I'm not a big fan of shouting at people when what's done is done anyway.

   An hour or two later I was working on the ship's computer in the aft cabin when "Kevin" came in, and having forgotten what happened earlier he asked me with a tone accusing me of being skulking my duties asked "weren't you told to clean the bilge?"
   I honestly didn't remember why I had aborted that task myself at first, and at first found myself at a loss to explain it, until I remembered and told him "Yes remember you turned the propeller on on me? I'm sorry I really don't feel like going back to that today." -- which again is not how you usually talk to the captain but he seemed to concede I had a point and retreated grumbling.


   A few days later, still in Aberdeen, I was in the aft cabin until late at night reading, as I was wont to do. In a lot of ships the aft cabin is the captain's cabin but in our vessel it was a communal room and the ship's computer lived on the desk in the corner there. On this particular evening I was doubtless reading one of the later books of the Master and Commander series, until about 2am. Then in preparation to go to bed I went to the shore head (port-o-potties on shore in this case) -- I ascended to deck and disembarked, walked along the floating dock, up the ramp and onto shore. Coming back probably only five minutes later I remember, I distinctly remember, standing for a moment on shore admiring the ship. The night was dark, some street lamps across the river cast a warm sepiatone glow amid the fog, and moored just before me was this beautiful ship, the aft cabin windows still glowing with the light I hadn't yet turned off.
   I quickly turned off teh aft cabin light and went to my bunk in the main cabin. About five hours later I was back in the aft cabin where we would have breakfast every morning. I immediately noticed there was a blank spot on the desk where the laptop should be. That seemed very odd, it had definitely been there five hours earlier. But maybe "Kevin" had taken it into his own cabin earlier that morning to do some work. When he came in I immediately asked him if he had the laptop "what? no?" ...the laptop was never found.
   And here's the thing that really creeps me out. Whomever stole the laptop clearly had to wait until I went to bed. When I was standing there at the top of the dock in the dark and mists of night, someone with criminal mischief in the heart was almost certainly watching me from the darkness.

   While the crime was never officially solved I feel pretty confident about what happened. Remember "James," the charismatic purser? He'd apparently been told there'd be a routine audit the next day, and he was leaving the ship himself anyway a few days later (maybe it's standard policy to do an audit just before a purser leaves?). In the coming days and weeks after he left a significant amount of money turned up to be missing, especially among the petty cash and tip jar fund ("the widows and orphans fund"). I strongly suspect that he sunk the laptop into the stinking mud of the river bottom to avoid being caught out by an audit. And to circle back to the very beginning, it's always amused me looking back on it all, that "the one good officer" "Kevin" held out for praise was in fact the one officer committing serious crimes against the organization.


Not our dock but one near it that I feel like captures the atmosphere of Aberdoom


(see also: as recently as 2017 I visited the boats again and there was just as much skulduggery as ever)

   Hello from San Francisco! We sailed in under the Golden Gate Bridge around 2am the morning of last Friday, having been at sea since the prior Monday (up at Ilwaco in the mouth of the Columbia).

   I stood the 4-8 watch (which is of course both 4-8 AM and PM). It's a pretty decent watch since you get every sunset and sunrise and dinner at 6pm doesn't interrupt your off time. You just gotta go to bed right at 8pm if you want to get eight hours of sleep before your next watch (which of course ends at 8am, by which time it's daytime again!). The 8-12 watch has a better deal in terms of they get to sleep during normal sleeping time, and then the other watch, 12-4, doesn't have any redeeming qualities that I can think of.
   I didn't get to be a watch leader this time since we had a third person with a master's license so they made him the third watch leader. But instead I got to man the wheel for hte majority of my watches. In the watch before mine apparently three of the four people were avid singers and they passed the time by singing all through their night watches. Ours we barely talked at all, preferring to all sullenly gaze off at the horizon as the hours passed by, with an occasional comment on the weather to be answered with an agreement followed by more silence. Not that I'm complaining, it was altogether a very decent transit. Quiet watchmates are better than annoying ones, the weather was nice, and we made excellent time. I've got pictures of most of the sunrises and sunsets, most of them being picturesque. Later maybe I'll put them all up.

   Arriving down here we moored up at Jack London Square in Oakland for the weekend. The highlight of this location was THE bar that I've heard experienced old hands talk about up and down the coast -- Heinhold's First and Last Chance. The bar opened and has been in continuous operation since 1883, and many objects inside are original. It was built from the timbers of an old whaler, and was frequented by sailors from the beginning (it was their "first and last chance" to get a drink before shipping out or upon arriving). In the great 1906 earthquake the entire building shifted and settled at a steep slant, and they've kept it that way so it has an extremely unique slant to the entire place. The clock on the wall is stopped where the quake stopped it.

   It's Fleet Week in San Fran which means there's been a lot of boats about and on Saturday and Sunday the Blue Angels put on an airshow over the bay and we had "front row" seats as it were right in the middle. I got to skylark aloft for some of it, putting me right at eye level of some of the tricks! It was pretty awesome.

   Today we moved over to Pier 40 on the San Fran side of the bay. If anyone is around and wants to visit, just remember that Pier 40 is NOT anywhere near Pier 39.


   We got a new captain right before the transit, this fellow Jake, who is pretty laid back. Now that JB is transferred to the other boat to take over as captain over there I have room to reflect that his sullen moody demeaner was rather unsettling and I'm pretty sure he despised me.
   In addition to this the crew is nearly 100% different from what it was a month or so ago (as tends to happen), and while I've always liked the crew here, for awhile I think too many members of the crew were just a bit TOO charismatic, particularly Tyson and Will, and I had been really starting to develop a complex about being the most boring personality-less person on the crew. Not that the current people aren't interesting and full of personality, but one way or another I haven't been feeling quite so out of it lately.


   I'll only be on the boat for about another week -- getting off sometime after we arrive in Sacramento. From there I'm not exactly sure where I'll go. I really want to visit gratefuladdict in Modesto, I also need to get my car from Monterey, where my cousin has apparently run off with it after naming it Grendel or something, and then of course I need to get back down to southern California.
   On October 30th the schooner Spirit of Dana Point will be transitting from Santa Barbara down to Dana Point and I think I should be able to get myself on it for that. (:


Picture of the Day


Joel cleaning the fresh water tank. To keep it as clean as possible the cleanest article of clothing on the boat was requisitioned for the purpose -- Will's spotted onesy pajamas.


I just uploaded the pictures from two weeks ago that I never got around to putting on flickr due to computer troubles.

   In theory I'd catch up on the internets and the world when I have days off, but my last day off I spent in the car with my parents, and the one before that I was in Roche Harbour where the internet wasn't working, so we're looking at at least six weeks between having a solid day to catch up on things.

   And there's so much I COULD write about, practically every day is an adventure worth writing an lj entry about, but I rarely have access to the internet and also rarely have free time. Well I have "free time" as in time I'm not working usually at least four days a week from 6pm or so until as late as I feel like staying up but there's always something going on (the other three days we're working from 8am to 10pm or so usually).


   When last I reported in we were in Roche Harbour, this little marina full of giant yachts and not much else. Lots of people came by when we were open for tours but the scrooges didn't leave much in the way of donations and ticket sales to go on our sails were absolutely dismal (I think most of them had about six people on them).
   From there we went to a small town named Coupeville where everything was sold out (all 88 tickets sold to fill both boats). Donations, which had been about 12 cents per person who came on tours in Roche Harbour were sometimes as high as $1.09 / per person in Coupeville and never less than 66 cents per person at the end of the day.
   But moreover the people in Coupeville were just awesome. The dockhands consisted of this awesome young fellow named Max (17), his 15 year old sister Emilia, and 11 year old brother Gus (as seen here, Gus and Max being the two lads acting like brothers and Emilia the one giving the peace sign), and they were the nicest most awesome group of siblings I've ever met. Another family that happened to come on a sail with us later invited the crews of both boats over for home made pizza, and then apparently didn't learn any better and invited us over again the next day for icecream! (Of this family, AJ is the one with purple hair in the above picture and her mom is in the background behind her.) In fact, as I had galley duty, AJ and her sister Claire helped me do all the dishes from dinner so I could come over for icecream and telephone-pictionary.
   And in a THIRD example of Coupeville friendliness: my parents were visiting (expect a report from furzicle soon) and all lodging was booked up due to a arts and craft fair so they were stuck in the apparently infamously bad local inn. When they mentioned where they were staying to a couple who were on one of the sails the couple immediately offered that they should stay at their house .. which I gather was a very nice fancy log cabin affair or such.
   Also Will got facebook stalked by no less than two girls in this town. Friendly indeed!

   On our last sail in Coupeville we had the whole dockhand family, and the whole family that had had us over for pizza, as well as some other noteables (such as my parents, and the harbourmaster (whose daughter Maryam would go on to find Will on facebag despite having never gotten his last name from us)). Max, Emilia, Gus, AJ, Claire and Maryam all got very involved in helping us haul lines and it was piles of fun.


Max, Will, Maryam, Emilia, Claire, & Gus
"Board sheeting" the headsails, for which one really does lie down on deck like that in an attempt to pull the headsails as flat as possible.


   The next day the boat transited to Brownsville (a place most people who even live only half an hour away have never heard of). I was given the day off to go with my parents to take the cook's car by land to Brownsville.
   There is nothing here in Brownsville. Nothing. A small marina, a deli, a "yacht club" which is really just a big lounge which allows riffraff like us to hang out there (: But it also seems super friendly. Sales for the sail we had that night were pretty good (circa 65 ppl), and the local (some kind of official position attached to the marina, or something?) has scheduled various things such as a bonfire for us, and tonight they served us piles of pizza in the yacht club, and have opened up the aforementioned yacht club for our use, and have said we can get snacks and sodas from the deli on their tab... !
   And yesterday we picked two buckets of blackberries and made fresh blackberry cobbler. :d

   So that's just the happenings of the last few days. Keep in mind that pretty much EVERY day for the past four and a half months have been filled with as much activity (though not necessarily as many awesome shoreside people as Brownsville and Coupeville).

Sunrise in Coupeville

   This will be ultra fast because I have revielle in 7 jingles at four bells 7 minutes at 1000. Been in Gig Harbour, a cute little place. Had battle sails 6-9pm both days here so they were 14 and 12 hour days, so been busy.
   Crew is now up to 15 or so, seems really crowded after so long with 9. We had a bunch of visiting crew the other day so sailed with 19 crew!

   The other day three of us took the small boat (rubber raft) across the little bay here to the bar (which had its own dock). It was a fun way to get to the bar, weaving between all the sailing boats here.


Picture of the Day

Kelly & Sabrina

Been taking a lot of pictures and got a lot of them posted, especially of my shipmates, so check it out (:

   And now it's time for me to run back to the boat! We're off to Olympia today

   I'm in the galleyhouse washing the dishes from lunch, through the window in front of me I can see the skyscrapers of Seattle across the sound, the boat rocking gently side to side, when over my the music I have going on the galley sound system I hear some moaning and groaning from elsewhere in the ship. "That sounds like zombies!!" I say to myself, grabbing the rolling pin I just cleaned and stepping out.

   Sure enough Sabrina, our newest volunteer (a trapeze artist from Canada!?) is stumbling up the steps out of the main hold. I promptly pretend to whale on her with the rolling pin until she's pretend out of commission. I then turn my attention to Pony, who has emerged from the other companionway. As long as all the zombies are belowdecks I have them in kind of a chokepoint since both companionways come up pretty close together and with the rollingpin I can take them out one by one by killing the zombie emerging from one companionway and then the other. Nevertheless the push me around the side of the galleyhouse. I'm just bashing the brains out of the last one one, and someone in the background is saying "I think Kris just single handedly stopped this zombie uprising!" when Noah grabs me through the galley window. I'd forgotten I was standing next to an open window!

   We do love our zombie drills.


   Saturday was our boat's 22nd birthday. After we finished our workday we made hawaiian punch with a gallon and a half of rum in it, put on some Hawaiian music (we played IZ - Over the Rainbow on loop for a long time with the specific intent of annoying the Lady crew :D ), rigged up hammocks, and those who had them donned hawaiian shirts. Since we're getting close to the longest day of the year now the sunset lasted for about two hours of beautiful pink sky. It was a wonderful evening.
   And meanwhile the crew on the Lady was still working -- they had an evening charter that kept them out till 9pm, by which point our crewmate Will was already passed out!




other recent photos

   So we were in Newport Friday evening (or at least I was) through yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon. From my already-getting-foggy recollection I believe we sailed about on both Saturday and twice on Sunday, Monday just did maintenance, and just had dockside education programmes on Tuesday.

   Monday evening we got a vip tour of the Rogue Brewey, and our first round of drinks at their very nice restaurant were bought by the GM. The food at the restaurant was highly delicious, much like Stone Brewery, Rogue appears to carry on their dedication to only the finest products to all the food in their restaurant. They also have their own creamery (making Rogue Cheese!) and distillery (try their "pink gin" if you get a chance! It was aged in pinot noir barrels, it is excellent! Also I just plain like the design of their rum bottles).

   Otherwise have ended up at the Rogue Pub every evening. The Brewery is across the river from us but the pub is just across the way. Got to know Reuben (the manager of the pub), Danny (the manager of the hop farm (did I mention Rogue has its own hop farm?)), Paul (one of the brewers), and Tyson (one of the distillers). The latter two were quite eager to have us fire off a cannon for them but alas it was the last evening and we were due to leave in the morning. They tried to bribe us with promises of copious amounts of booze and beer. We resisted, but the captain (who it turns out is himself quite a fan of high quality beer, was a local chairman of some Committee to Save Real Ale or something back in jolly olde England) had to excuse himself to bed in order to resist their tempting bribery. We did give them a tour of the boat though, which they were excited about (which I thought was funny because to me what THEY do is so exciting).
   And being as they already have a creamery and hop farm, and they do use honey in some of their beers, I did ask if they had their own apiary or were interested in starting one ;) (turns out all anyone I asked knew was a local town it comes from).


Everything a Tourist Needs To Know About Newport:
Where to Stay: the Rogue Inn! Above the Rogue Pub! Comes with complimentary BEEEEER.
Where to Eat: (1) There's this quaint little coffee shop called "THE COFFEE SHOP" just at the end of the marina. All their food looked delicious. I got a pasty there, which is a delicious pastry I haven't seen anywhere since Ireland. (2) Rogue Brewery! Their food also all looks, smells, and tastes delicious!
Where to Drink: do I really have to answer this? Rogue Pub!! or the brewery itself! Also the distillery apparently gives tours with free samples!
Where to get free Wifi: Rogue Pub! ("Emo-snal now sponsored by Rogue?")
What to Do: During the day? I don't know they don't let me off the boat during the day! I'm sure there's stuff.


Transit to Garibaldi
   We were scheduled to leave Newport at 09:30 Wednesday (yesterday) ... but the Coast Guard said the bar* conditions did not permit us to exit yet and to check back with them at 12:00. *bar in this case means the shoal or sandbar or just plain hazardous conditions formed where a river meets the sea and creates extremely dangerous conditions. So we all trotted over to the coffee shop across from us. There I got to talk to an old shipmate of mine from the Lady, Jesse, who happened to be in town visiting his dad. At noon we were postponed again and finally by 13:00ish the Coast Guard gave us a "it's as good as it's going to get."

   Heading out between the breakwaters out to sea, watching the waves crash over them, everyone was a bit tense, and hardly anyone talked. When we finally got out there there were certainly big swells, but it wasn't really that bad.

   I didn't even feel close to sea sick when we went spent a day in a gale on the Spirit of Dana Point, and crossing the Colombia and Gray's Harbour bars on the Lady Washington I was positively buoyant and jolly throughout. However, I've oft heard it said that the Hawaiian Chieftain moves about in a particularly squirrely (they always say squirrely) manner, probably due to her very low draft (she only sits 5.5 ft deep in the water). I was fine until I had my second turkey pot pie for dinner, and then bam it immediately came back up again. I was able to hurredly finish washing my dish in the galley and scurry over to the lee scupper and calmy kneel down and puke on deck right beside it, exactly as we'd been advised to do on both the Spirit and the Lady (right by the scupper the waves will wash it off the deck in moments, and you don't risk your life by leaning over the rail, which also risks splatting it on the side of the boat somewhere the waves won't wash it off before it damages something). However the First Mate scowled at me and told me to lean over the rail next time. :X
   After that first puke it was all over though. I mean I didn't feel sick for any sustained period of time but after that if I was upright belowdecks for any period of time I'd be liable to have to suddenly run for a trashcan. ): Once I even had to spring out of bed, which I felt was a particularly cruel turn of events because I've always felt totally safe of sea sickness while lying down.

   Anywhom, had my watch 20:00-24:00. There were about four people per watch. One mans the helm and the other three mostly keep them company, but the person manning the wheel switches every so often, and every hour on the half hour someone does boat check and on the hour someone (usually the watch leader) goes down to update our position on the chart. Our watch leader was Pony, a large blonde fellow who reminds me of Captain Aubrey from the Patrick O'brian books if that means anything to anyone. He's the ship's bosun and I envied his chart updating due to my enjoyment of such in my recent coastal navigation class. During Boat Check someone (being as there's four of us and it has to be done once an hour for the four hours usually a different person each time) has to take down what several gauges on the con say, several gauges in the engine room (as well as inspect that the engines are running smoothly), and the bilges in several places, among other things. Engine room is where one usually gets sick because it's extremely warm in there and stuffy and smells of diesel and definitely has no windows to the outside world. I actually only got sick in the engine room once, and successfully made it to the nearest trashcan (by quickly finishing my note taking there, pulling open the watertight door to the focsle, stumbling to the laddy, up the ladder, and finding the galley trashcan just in time).
   Got to sleep 24:00-07:30, which really makes my shift the best there is, normal sleeping patterns ftw. Ate some breakfast purely for the sake of having something to puke out again and avoiding unpleasant dry heaving, but actually rather enjoyed the breakfast (I thought it was cornbread but others referred to it as "square pancakes?"). 08:00-12:00 shift was actually rather pleasant. Was a gray morning with intermittent rainshowers, and occasionally even spots of sunlight. For awhile I was at the wheel with the sun illuminating a valley gloriously to my right and a large rainbow to my left and I regarded it as a particularly delightful moment in time.
   We could have been at Garibaldi early in the morning but the Coast Guard wouldn't allow anyone across the bar until around 13:30 so we steamed on right past it for a few hours and then turned around. More intermittent showers and even some pea sized hail for awhile. One whale sighted.
   Finally we approached the bar around 13:30, and the Coastguard had two arranged two of their little wave darting "lifeboats" to meet us out there. Word from the Coast Guard wasn't even exactly "it is now safe to cross the bar" so much as "well we still don't really recommend it but if you're GOING to it's now or never and we'll be standing by to rescue you." We were all told to stand by on deck in lifejackets as we approached. Massive swells, actually breaking on the approach to the harbour entrance. I've never seen so big a wave towering OVER our deck and looking like it's about to break. We literally surfed a wave or two. Coast guard lifeboat scooted about behind us trying to take wave breaks and we managed to get into the harbour without incident.


Garibaldi
   Garibaldi is a town of about 276 I'm told. It is not named after a fish as I had hypothesized with wild abandon but is actually specifically named after the uniter of Italy. Now you know.
   It looked like the whole town was on the base of the jetty to watch us come in (/ get dashed against the rocks). As soon as we were tied to the dock people were lining up to come up for tours, and I counted 103 people come aboard (with ye trusty clicky thing o counting), which needless to say is a significant portion of the town.
   Then we were all invited to dinner with (some sort of local civic society? members of the museum?) some local town elders of some sort at the local museum. They even drove us to/from the museum! For a tiny town they had quite a nice little museum. They had quite a bit about the original Lady Washington (the first boat to enter this harbour)!
   Later on I proceeded on foot from the ship to find bountiful wifi. First person I came across was a gas station attendant, who said "oh you can probably get the wifi from my house right here! It's unsecured!" there was nowhere comfortable to sit and compute there though nor power sockets, but I thought it was a particularly friendly gesture, indicative of how friendly this town seems to be. He pointed me down the road to a hotel, where I am now sitting on a (probably fake) leather couch by the (fake) fire in the fireplace (well the fire is real but the lobby girl explained apologetically that it's not actually burning the (fake) logs in it, it is gas).

   Tomorrow (Friday) we have "all the school children of Garibaldi" on the schedule for to come down to the boat for an education programme.

   No new pictures because my camera batteries died as we were leaving Newport, and I don't appear to have the batteries I'd bought in NYC. ):

   "Oh look, it's the redcoats!" says Russel. I look down, and some 80 feet below us, on the shore, there sure enough are three people in "redcoat" uniforms with tricorne hats. Shortly they begin a fifing. "Redcoats!" I exclaim. What an amusing turn of events.
   Redcoats aren't a regular occurrence on or near the Pilgrim, but they tend to turn up on special occasions. In this case there was some kind of event afoot that was happening either elsewhere, later, or both. Their presence is kind of shlocky, in my opinion, since the historic Pilgrim had nothing at all to do with redcoats and likely was never near them (being engaged between 1825 and 1856 in trade in the Americas). The historic Lady Washington, on the other hand, did fight in the revolutionary war .. but it doesn't have redcoats. Anyway, the Pilgrim management seems to have no qualms about playing up people's "it's a pirate ship!!" ideas, and for things like the tallship festivals they put a bunch of actors in redcoat uniforms on the boat and act out a skit wherein pirates take over. So looking down and seeing redcoats was a very "aw, I'm back on the Pilgrim!" moment for me.

   The Pilgrim has a lot of less frequent volunteers, who typically only turn out on Saturdays for work parties, and this is when most of the maintenance gets done. Consequently, compared to the constantly-maintained Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain, I was taken aback by the flagrant need for maintenance obvious on the Pilgrim. I didn't remember it being in such bad need of repainting. And the brass! I had to immediately find some never-dull and obsessive-compulsively polish the bell. I'd say they should just loan out the boat to a crew from the LW & HC's mother organization (the GHHSA) for a month or two so that it would get caught up with maintenance ... but then I remembered the Pilgrim is barely seaworthy anymore (in need of major repairs to the hull due to rot. We still take it out but not very far or long).
   It was also nice to actually have people about that I now know more about seamanship then. Having been consistently the newest person on the LW and HC I was always the one who didn't know things, it was so refreshing to realize someone's asking me where the braces are, or that someone needs to be shown how to make a gasket coil, etc!

   The general standing orders given to new volunteers on the Pilgrim are: "mill about." A great deal of this occurs, but people also hop to on any maintenance projects that are being worked on. So things get done, and if you're looking to work you can stay busy, but absolutely no one is breathing down your neck. You could mill about all day and probably no one would look at you sideways. The volunteers typically consists of about a dozen and a half to two dozen persons, many of them retirees, so this laid-back atmosphere keeps them feeling like it's a thoroughly fun way to spend a Saturday morning.
   In contrast, when we're at sea the organization is more regimented than on the GHHSA boats. Everyone is assigned to a mast and each mast has a "mast captain," whom once orders are relayed from the Captain through the first mate the mast captain makes sure every individual on the mast is doing the right thing. On the GHHSA boats no one is assigned to anywhere -- when the first mate gives the orders one just runs about getting in people's way until everything is manned by someone. Eventually the crew sorts itself out and people figure out where they usually go and where other people usually go (for example eventually I was always the port side braces and usually the forward leading (mooring)line, though sometimes the after leading).
   Saturday I got to climb around in rigging extensively, as we were derigging the christmas lights. It was a beautiful warm day, making it positively delightful up there.


Goodbye the Hawaiian Chieftain
   Went over the the Hawaiian Chieftain to say goodbye to them, since they set sail back north this morning.
   Boat was lookin crowded, with four passeners who'd be on for the transit already aboard, as well as (at least?) two new crew, and a few more old crew also visiting.
   I found a number of crewmembers watching clips of "so you think you can dance" (or "dancing with the star" or ONE of those shows anyway) on the captain's laptop. Inspired, there was then some swing dancing in the main hold. Then Irving Johnson's classic "Around Cape Horn" (again I can't recommend it enough) was shown in the aft cabin for the passenger's benefit, and number of us sat in to watch it again. Only after one of the crewmates made some comment about "Sunday? We don't have sundays here!" did it come to light that one of the passengers is a pastor. Oops.
   Then we all hung out and chatted until one by one people snuck off to bed. I said goodbye to the boat and disembarked the sleeping vessel.


Remembering the Lady Washington

My crew on the Lady Washington, Westport, WA
That's me on the bowsprit.

Not my picture, "Bob the Fox"'s .. hence the inverted border!

   So I spent my New Years Eve watching fireworks bursting over the Queen Mary, from the deck of the Tole Mour. On the shore jubilant drunk crowds of girls in short sparkling dresses and guys dressed their best thronged about. Separated a safe distance from these "glamorous" people, we had our own little island of tallshippies. A few hours of drunken revelry had taken it's toll on most of the costumes, so people were by now missing critical props, but we were all definitely dressed delightfully oddly. Flogging Molly played from the ship's sound system.

   I just made myself the pope hat pictured above. Other costumes included a pilot, a polynesian, "the party," pinrails (by taping a diagram of the Hawaiian Chieftain's pinrails to himself), and my favourite: a fellow wore a mostly unbuttoned flannel shirt, messed up hair, and was covered in lipstick kiss marks -- he was "post-coital!"
   Present at the party we had the crew of the Tole Mour herself ("largest tallship on the west coast," with 124 foot deck length), the crews of the Ixy Johnson and Irving Johnson, the crew of the Hawaiian Chieftain, and myself and our captain and bosun from the Lady Washington. Among the other crews I additionally met three characters whom had previously been crew on the LW and I had heard stories about.

   But let's rewind a bit. I had only found out about this party earlier in the day when I ventured over to the Hawaiian Chieftain (pictured above) and they welcomed me as fellow crew and invited me to the party.
   My actual evening began by visiting gratefuladdict, who happened to be staying at a hotel not far from me and feeling sick. ): So I hung out with her for a bit. Incidentally I had spent the previous New Years Eve with her.
   Then I went and collected crewmembers from the HC in Newport Beach(another carload had already left. Car-rides are always in short supply for the crews) and we headed up the coast highway to Long Beach.
   I was planning on still trying to make an appearance at my friend Mark's party, which was nearby, but before I knew it there wasn't enough time to make it there and back before midnight. After midnight I was still planning on making an appearance, but before I knew it it was 2am and Mark wasn't responding to texts asking if the party was still afoot.
   As a consequence of always planning on taking off across town soon I only ended up drinking one beer, failing miserable at the traditional new year's goal of getting trashed.

   At around 11:58/59 we all realized none of us had a timepiece that gave seconds, making a countdown impossible! We were all in the midst of a panic over this when the fireworks burst out above the illuminated stacks of the Queen Mary and the crowds ashore burst into jubilant cheers and shouts. Someone hastily initiated a countdown of 3, 2, 1..!! and we considered that our midnight. Didn't have anyone to kiss at midnight (much like my year, the overwhelming majority of which I've had no love life to speak of ): ), but called a favourite young lady of mine who lives rather far away right after our countdown.

   Altogether it was a very fun evening though. It will definitely be memorable, spending new years amid the creaking of mooring lines and the red night-vision deck lights. I feel right at home among the tallshippies (a word I just made up for tallshipcrewpersons). In particular I really like the crew of the HC. I love my crewmates from the LW, but I feel like the crew of the HC made me feel like I was a member of their crew much more immediately than the LW crew had. They've been encouraging me to join their crew for the trip back up north (I'd do it in a second if it weren't that I rather need to make some money), and invited me to come sailing with them tomorrow (Saturday) (I'll at least take them up on that!).

   But yeah. New Years 2009/2010. What better way to spend it than on a tallship. (: