aggienaut: (Default)

   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)

aggienaut: (tallships)

   Thursday morning I emerged bleary eyed from the hold to find the entire crew of the Lady had showed up to bid us goodbye (the two boats had been moored out of sightof eachother). We sailed up the Sacramento river as far as a wee town called Antioch, where there were a surprising number of misadventures for the time we were there -- from the moment we got there in fact. As we sent the smallboat in to land people to catch our lines a police boat accosted them and extremely rudely berated them for not having more running lights (it was dark out), despite that we were very definitely in full compliance with maritime law (we double checked after. We were right. Police aren't known for their understanding of maritime law usually). During the night there were several boarders.
   Friday morning we set off to continue up the river. The shore for much of the way consisted of golden brown rolling hills topped with giant white windmills. The sky was completely blue, and the sun so bright you couldn't even look in that direction. Presently the rolling hills disappeared behind 30 foot banks on either side. As these banks were often quite lush with vegetation and you couldn't see beyond them, if one didn't know what was on the other side one might think we were travelling through tropical jungles.
   Arriving here we found that the dock is just below the balcony of a Joe's Crabshack, and said balcony was filled with drunk people shouting "ahoy!" "avast!" and "pirates!" There were some more such people on the dock itself, and as we came in a boat pulled up to gawk on the other side of us, leaving us utterly surrounding by obnoxious onlookers. Hooray for Sacramento! You can practically touch the Joe's Crabshack balcony from the course yard, and they play their music so loud we might as well be IN the crabshack. Additionally their music repeats every half hour. Welcome to the next two months of your lives my shipmates!!
   It's looking like all (six adults and a number of minors) my Davis relatives happen to be getting together tomorrow (Saturday) to celebrate a birthday, so I get to see them all at once! I'm not sure who else I know who is still in this area but one of my favourite people, my friend Shemek, dropped me a line that he's in town so I'll probably see him at some point. I think I'll leave the boat Sunday evening.. and I haven't quite determined how I'm getting home from here (either Craigslist or the train probably).



   I was going to edit and upload pictures yesterday but they turned the power off to the boat entirely much sooner than I expected leaving me most significantly unable to put up and post the pictures I was going to use for [livejournal.com profile] ljshootout, which had a deadline today. Having missed the deadline and two prior ones, due to the difficulty of participating from the boat, it looks like I'm out of the competition now. If I'd just been able to scrape by this week I'd have had smooth sailing as I'm returning to a land based life, but alas it looks like I may be this season's first casualty in fact. d:
   I suppose I'll still follow along as a noncontestant.

   But the pictures I was going to post yesterday I posted today, they can be found here and here.

aggienaut: (tallships)

   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 [livejournal.com profile] 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.

aggienaut: (Fiah)

   My writing is as little impaired right now because I have a bee perched on my right hand pointer finger. It's raining outside and I found her utterly soaked on the deck. Big drops of water on her wings. I actually towelled her off a bit by dabbing at her with the corner of a paper towel.

   So we're back in Aberdeen Washington, AKA Aberdoom, AKA Methlaberdeen. It is a dreary place, which was known at "the hellhole of the pacific" in 1900 and has only become more depressed since then. I mentioned this once before, but what I think I didn't mention at the time is that the river Aberdeen us on ("shewhalish" or something) actually means "stink of death" in the local indian language..

   Our organization's headquarters is here --the bee has taken flight!-- .. so you'd think we'd have some good infrastructure here right? Nope. The dock we've always used here (but our organization has never owned) was recently sold to Walmart. There are no shore heads, is no fresh water hookup, no power hookup, no sewage pumpout.. there is NOTHING here in the way of infrastructure. I don't know how the Lady Washington laid up here for three months this winter!

   Being as there's no power, our cook went over to the org's headquarters building (about a ten minute drive away) and then the crew was shuttled there. I have galley duty / boatwatch today. The good news is I guess I don't have to clean up dinner. The bad news is I have to stay behind on the boat. I certainly hope someone brings me some food ): (Presently I am the only one on the boat as they've all gone to eat)

   They've finally got a welder for to repai the port bilge / coolant tank. Unfortunately it's under my bunk so my bunk has been deconstructed. The good news is I get my own room, optimistically called "the library" -- the bad news is said room is really more of a hallway connecting no less than six highly trafficked doorways. So I'm kind of homeless at the moment d:

   The welder still dislocated his shoulder trying to get into the bilge.. AND the coolant tank in the OTHER bilge started leaking today!!


   In other news with no power I can't run my laptop, and on any account the lower third of the screen has been displaying garbled stripes of pixels. This might make short work of my participation in LJ Shootout this season d:

Coupeville

Aug. 20th, 2010 12:44 am
aggienaut: (tallships)

   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 [livejournal.com profile] 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

aggienaut: (tallships)

   So once upon a time we were anchored off Sucia Island. By once upon a time I mean the week before last. We had left Lake Union, Seattle, through the locks early that morning and arrived at the island around 1700 that afternoon. Coming in we passed the sea scout tallship Odyssey, -a pretty yawl almost as big as our own vessel- moored up to a mooring buoy in the little bay.
   We dropped our anchor, and after dinner we were allowed two hours or so of shore leave, being ferried to shore in groups of three by the small boat. Random fact about the small boat: the HC's smallboat is named "Pele," which amuses me because it's the name of my parents' cat -- what's more, both the cat and the boat are named after the same Pele, the Hawaiian god of volcanoes and mischief.

   Around 2000 or 2100 the Lady Washington finally caught up to us, having taken a different route that took them through Deception Pass, and having had to anchor for a bit down there to wait for the currents to be right to get through the pass. They rafted up to us (ie moored up to us as if we were a dock) and that night both boats stood an anchor watch. For anchor watch one person was on duty at all times (mine was 0400 to 0500). In addition to being on deck, everyone during their hour was to heave the lead line (6 and a half fathoms), note it in the log, take down the bearings of the same three points and note them in the log, note some other things in the log (est wind speed, direction, etc), check the bilges, etc. I got the hour before sunrise, so I didn't get the sunrise itself but I got the gathering pre-dawn light.

   Again that morning we had two hours or so on shore. The entire island is a state park and it's beautiful with really nice hiking trails. I was very excited by the thought that we'd be anchored off the island or one like it for a week for the then-upcoming youth camp.


   Returning to the rendezvous point around 1100 we see the Odyssey at the far end of the bay leaning over to a very alarming angle, and are informed our pick up is going to be delayed because the small boats are all busy pulling people off the Odyssey.
   It seems the vessel struck a rock as it was attempting to leave the bay. Attempts to motor it off only resulted in frying their transmission or some such. As the tide continued to go out the boat tilted at an ever greater angle until it looked almost on its side.
   Meanwhile our two vessels were full of boyscouts, hanging around nervously discussing how they'd miss their ipods and/or other prized possessions left on the boat, should it sink. For our part, while cheery music blasted from the ship's sound system some of our crewmembers took turns climbing to the lowest yardarm on the Lady and diving in from there, or swinging out into the water from "splashlines" coming down from the forecourse yard. It was basically like a pool party for us all afternoon.


   Meanwhile our engineers and command staff spent most of the afternoon working on mitigating the Odyssey situation. Park rangers had come out in a boat with an oil boom to put around the Odyssey but didn't know how to deploy it so our guys ended up doing that, something for which they'll apparently be paid by the state (much to their surprise)
   Low tide was at 1400, the Odyssey was pretty well sideways at that point. But water didn't come in the hatches at that point and from then on things would get better as the tide came in.
   Around 1700, once it was clear the Odyssey would be okay the Lady Washington departed for Blaine. That evening the Odyssey was able to float free from the rocks and we got her tied securely to the side of our boat (towed "on the hip" as they say), and we weighed anchor and proceeded south to Friday Harbour with the Odyssey in tow.
   Arriving there around 2200 we recognized the schooner Zodiac (picture is of it leaving the area the next morning) anchored in a little bay across from Friday Harbour and radioed them for the assistance of their smallboat. They readily sent it over (a zodiac from zodiac?) and we used our two smallboats to maneuver Odyssey on to the dock.
   For our efforts the Odyssey captain signed a salvage contract with us, awarding us "two cases of ginger beer, a bottle of rum, and merit badges" -- the latter in the form of the unofficial "superhero" merit badge apparently.
   Then we all went to the bar and drank copious amounts (but it wasn't as wild as last time we were there).




( More Pictures From These Adventures )

( The very very detailed official report )

aggienaut: (tallships)

   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

aggienaut: (tallships)



   "Fuck my life fuck my life fuck my life!!" I say, standing on the platform halfway up the main mast (the mast on the left in the above picture), looking out along the gaff (the boom sticking out at an upward angle from said platform).

   "You don't have to do it if you're not comfortable with it you know" says Brecken, also standing on the platform.
   "Yeah man you don't have to" adds Pony, the third person on the platform.

   "The idea terrifies the shit out of me, but I'm still all about it. I'm definitely going to do it ... but I can still say 'ooooh fuck my life!!'" I respond. You see, someone needs to go out to the end of the gaff to inspect the block (pulley) out there and tar the vangs (lines (ropes) that are attached to the end of the gaff). Well I'm not sure someone willing to go out there can always be found because the lines didn't seem tarred as consistently as everything else. Anyway the thought of going out there utterly terrified me. Way worse than going up to the top of the mainmast. There you can just shimmy up and there's lots of lines attaching to it. The gaff though... it's just fucking OUT THERE at this crazy angle with only a few lines attached to it.

   Eyeing the outstretched boom with great trepidation it seemed to be the boom itself was at too high an angle and too slippery for it to be even feasible. Then I noticed there were two relatively taut lines above it leading to the end of the gaff (you can also see them in the above picture) -- the main gaff topsail sheet and ... a gaff backstay? (that's probably not what it's called, forgive me Aaron! Anywhom it secures the top of the gaff to the mainmast). I called down to deck for them to haul all the slack they could out of the gaff topsail sheet, looped my lanyard around what we'll call the backstay and out I went.
   It was still precarious, especially towards the end where they became extremely close together and I had to straddle the gaff to get out to the last bit, and pulling up the vang to tar it was quite tedious. In the end though I accomplished my mission, was able to feel quite proud for having done so, and was given mad props by the rest of the crew.




Lady Washington also has a gaff.
(Lady Washington returning from its evening charter the evening we on the Chieftain celebrated our boat's birthday. Our captain waiting on their small boat to catch their lines.)

(more similar pictures, it was really hard to decide which was best)



Entirely Unrelated
   I forgot to add on my "Giving Up Coffee" entry the conclusion of the whole thing -- which is that I've called my official coffee embargo off, and am now not drinking coffee entirely because I like being caffiene free.

   ...it really helps that my job is very active and interesting, when I have to do paperwork on the computer it often occurs to me that I really don't know if I could work at a computer all day without coffee without productivity grinding to a miserable halt and possibly ending up face down on the keyboard!

aggienaut: (tallships)

   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

aggienaut: (Default)

   So plan 30 in 30 Against All Odds isn't going so well for me. It's hard to compete with a complete lack of internet most days plus being constantly busy..


   Been in Edmonds for a week now. It's a decent little town. By decent little town I mean it has at least one decent bar within walking distance of the boats, and isn't a miserable soulless place like Everett.

   We aim to run our boat with a crew of at least 12. 10 is considered the minimal number we should function with. Today we had a crew of 7. To be fair we weren't sailing today and two people had the day off, so we have a crew of 9 right now, but the Lady Washington got two new people on Saturday, 3 on Sunday, one more today, to bring their total up to 15 or 16 I think. Shenanigans!
   The Director of Marine Ops back in headquarters has put in his two weeks notice, which is a major event because that position oversees the operations of both boats, and would have relieved the captain of the Lady Washington when he goes on vacation soon. Rumour has it our engineer and pursar are about to break contract and put in two weeks notice as well. It's starting to feel a bit like Tall Ship Survivor around here.
   The crew we do still have around gets along extremely well though. It's a pretty awesome crew.

   The one bar in town we've been hanging out in here is pretty nice though. We discovered it when Pony and I were on a fruitless search for the intertrons. All the coffee shops (ie Tully's and Starbucks) closed at 7 so I decided to ask the bartender of this place where the internets could be found. He declared "right here!" and the rest is history. It's a super chill place with free wi fi, couches, pool tables, and the bartenders consist of the owner, his wife, and his son. The bartender informed us "treat this place like your livingroom and we'll treat you like family," something that might seem like trite crap at a corporate chain but it feels pretty accurate here.





   On Monday we're off to Port Orchard, a place I know next to nothing about.

aggienaut: (tallships)

   Two weeks ago -- "That uhh, doesn't look safe at all" I say, looking out at the cold water under the mizzen boom. It hangs about ten feet out aft behind the boat, and out at the very end is where the flag halyard apparently gets tied off.
   "Well of course it's not safe, this is a tallship!" says the captain, grinning nefariously from the dock. There's no way to get to the end of the boom except to either shimmy out on the boom itself or walk on the running rigging that runs out there, and one generally does NOT walk on running rigging. I don't consider myself very timorous about taking risks but I'm not dumb and that just didn't add up to something that looked safe to me.
   Nevertheless there was nothing to do but go out there and attach ye olde Stars and Stripes to the flag halyard and so out I went on that precarious line (but not before emptying my pockets of things that would be harmed by a fall into the cold water.

   Later I was in the aft cabin and Jimmy the first mate was there, and the captain came in and crowed to him "I pushed Kris beyond his comfort level today! (and aside to me: "rather on purpose actually") And he rose to it admirably!"


   Two days prior to my birthday (ie May 12th or so) -- someone: "George is completely fouled, won't come down" ("George" being the Washington State Flag, which features George Washington prominently)
   Me: "I'll go up and unfoul him!"
   Captain: "You've already had a beer! (and to the other person) just leave him up for now"

   The day before my birthday -- me: "Sir is George still fouled? He was up this morning when I came up to raise the flags"
   Captain: "Yep! Sounds like a job for the person with galley duty!" (as he walks off). The person with galley duty also has flags. I had galley duty this day. I really don't know if he recalled my enthusiasm for doing it the day before or had forgotten and was hoping to cause me trepidation again.

   That evening as the sun began to set I donned my harness and proceeded aloft. Up to the first yardarm (the main course yard), up past the lower and upper topsails, up to where the shrouds (ie what you use for a ladder) end.

   As you can see in the above picture, where the shrouds come together at the mast there is STILL a good ten feet of mast to go!
   I' reckoned the thing to do was shimmy, though I'd never really tried to shimmy anything. I climbed up to the very top of the shrouds, wrapped my arms and legs around the mast and tried to do this "shimmy" thing and immediately both my legs cramped up.
   I regrouped, stretched a bit, and tried again ... I slid right back down to the shrouds immediately -- I couldnt' get enough traction on the mast!
   I stood there looking at the flag. So close and yet so far. I could actually unfoul it from here, but that would be giving up a golden opportunity.
   You see, the very top of the mast is called the "truck," and tradition goes you are not a real sailor until you've kissed the truck. There are two impediments to doing this -- (1) it's rather hard to get to; and (2) excuses to go up there are hard to come by! At least on our boat, there's really no skylarking -- one doesn't go aloft unless one is doing some specific work. An extracurricular trip to the truck would be frowned upon. I wasn't about to let this slip through my fingers.
   Just above me the stays came together on the mast (you can see them in the above picture as the dark lines that meet the mast right before the white part). They were all also extremely slippery but I figured by bracing myself on two of them, by virtue of the fact that they get rapidly further apart, I should be able to climb higher. So gripping the mast some 80 feet in the air I put first one foot and then the other on the outside of the two closest stay (there's four of them, one from each of the four cardinal directions). One foot on one stay is deathly slippery but being on the outside of two of them seems to work. By so doing I am able to pull myself up the mast until I'm where they meet the mast.
   Now I do have a lanyard on my harness which I have wrapped around the mast (like I said, I'm not crazy), but where the stays meet the mast I have to of course unclip it and re-run it around the mast over the clips. This was perhaps the most precarious part because here I found myself gripping the mast with one arm, my two feet on the tractionless stays, NOT clipped in, as with my other arm I run the lanyard around the mast above the stays.
   Thereafter it was smooth sailing getting up until I was standing on where the stays meet the mast and was about eye level with the truck. Kiss the truck, savor the moment for a moment, watch the sun set, unfoul George, take the picture you'll find below, looking down the entire mast with the top of the truck in the lower right corner (sorry it's blurry, hey you try taking a picture up there! Plus my camera was whining about a low battery and I was in a hurry to get the shot before the battery died). Getting down was the same as getting up but in reverse order




   My birthday: "Hey Kris come here!" says first mate Jimmy with a devilish look in his eye.
   "Uhh, is something horrible going to happen to me?" I ask with some concern, as he leads me to the side of the boat while the whole crew gathers.
   "Yes." he says "empty your pockets"
   No sooner are my pockets empty than he picks me up by my arms and Pony picks up my legs, so I'm slung like a hammock between them, and they start to swing me back and forth next to the side.
   "Where's the dock ladder?" I ask as if we're discussing the best route into town. Alarming things happen, why fight them?
   The crew sings happy birthday to me as Pony and Jimmy swing me to and fro. I contemplate what I'm going to do when I hit the water matter of factly. The song ends and Jimmy informs me "we're not REALLY going to throw you in the water, have you SEEN that water??" and they set me down. I was honestly a bit disappointed, I was ready to go in. But he's right that water often looked pretty gross.

aggienaut: (tallships)

Last night / this morning:

   "Kris!" I'm jolted awake from a deep sleep by an urgent voice. In the red glow outside the curtain of my bunk a figure whispers "half an hour till your watch!"
   "A'ight, cool" I respond before even really fully awake. I lie there for just a few moments as the gears in my head get back up to speed. I'd been in the middle of a dream about Australian wildlife (wherein the wind kept lifting me off the ground in a manner very similar to the gravitational effects of waves on a boat). "Your watch" means something slightly different this time though. It's not just the watch I'll be standing on, I've been appointed the third Watch Officer, so this watch IS "my" watch.
   Scramble for my clothes (all my possessions that are to be easily accessible must fit on my bunk, which is smaller than a twin bed and has maybe three feet of headroom between itself and the bunk above), wiggle out over the lee-cloth (a canvas cloth tied across the entrance to my bunk so I don't get flung out by waves). I find myself in the main hold, a square room with bunks on three walls, table in the middle, ladder (or steep stair if you will, but on a boat everything's a "ladder") up to the deck in the middle, watertight door on one wall. The room is illuminated entirely by red light, since that doesn't effect your night vision. I put on my boots, then strap on my harness (you never know when you'll need to clip in. Rangi claims his harness saved his life when he was able to clip in when a wave roared completely over the boat during "the great potatoe rebellion of twenty one ought"), and put on my peacoat.

   "Chi-chunk! .. chi-chunk!" the watertight door makes a heavy noise as a pull the lever to open it and move it again to close it behind me. Here I'm in a hallway leading to the aft cabin, captain's cabin, the two heads (bathrooms), a ladder up to deck, or the watertight door I just came from. Up the ladder and I find myself on deck. It's around 23:45 (or as I like to say, "fifteen jingles until eight bells." Bell time being a traditional thing aboardships, and jingles being my own invention for a subunit of bells, corresponding exactly to the number of minutes), and above me the sky is filled with stars as far as I can see. The sea stretches off into the darkness in all directions, relatively small waves sparkling in the starlight. There's only a light breeze. It is truly a beautiful night.
   The three members of B Watch are standing at the helm and con, and the two other members of C Watch are also already up there. Pony, the B Watch watch officer, is a rather large fellow with a boyish good natured disposition. I ask him about the current conditions and he summarizes the calmness of the weather and notes our companion vessel, the Lady Washington visible as only a light way back behind us and to port.

   I descend down another companionway (hatch & ladder) into the aft cabin. There I find normal white light and charts on the chart table. In the rough log I note down the time, latitude and longitude from the GPS (yeah no celestial navigation or taking bearings on things for us. We also are running on diesel engines at the time, since we're headed right into the wind), barometer pressure, wind direction and force (force 2), cloud cover, and that the most recent boat check has been done. Then I plot that position on the chart and calculate our "course made good" (the compass angle we're actually traveling), and how it compares to where we should be, and calculate our "speed made good." I enter the most relevant data into the official log, including that "C Watch (Fricke) takes the deck."
   After this I pop back on deck and inform Pony we're ready to take the deck.
   "Course three three zero" state's Pony's helmsman (Rangi) as he hands off the ship's wheel to Noah on my watch, "course three three zero, aye" repeats Noah.
   "B Watch Stand Down!" declares Pony enthusiastically. The time is 00:02.
   "If you could, change from three three zero to three five zero, please" I instruct Noah on the helm. Our compass of course doesn't steer on true north and apparently isn't even aligned correctly on the boat anymore after a wave seriously damaged the binnacle during the aforementioned "great potatoe rebellion." However, I can see from our chart that we need to be twenty degrees starboard of the course we've been steering, so the numbers our compass currently displays may be essentially arbitrary but by adding twenty degrees to the course being steered on them should get us in the right direction. And thus we blunder on through the darkness, up the coast of the Olympic Peninsula, past the "Flattery Rocks."

   It really dawns on my that I am the Person In Charge when Noah asks my permission to leave the deck to go get a cup o noodles from the galley (Bean, the third member of our watch, has the helm). I certainly never expected to be made a watch officer this soon, yet here I am, entrusted with the responsibility of navigating a 64 ton, 103 foot vessel with ten other people aboard through the night. It's a beautiful beautiful night, life doesn't get much better than this.


   A dim glow over the horizon indicates where the light on Flattery Rocks is. It slowly passes by safely over the horizon. During my earlier 1200-1600 watch we were approaching "Destruction Island," just another reminder of how dangerous navigating these waters can be.

the Lady Washingon seen from the deck of the Hawaiian Chieftain
This picture is from later, obviously. Around 1030 the next (ie this) morning. The Lady Washington as seen from our deck, Olympic Peninsula behind her.

aggienaut: (tallships)
Newport

   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. ):

aggienaut: (Default)

   So, let's play house. But instead of the husband and wife who conform neatly into their respective gender roles and the 2.5 kids, dog, and a white picket fence, let's make some changes. Let's take this house and shrink it a bit, yet at the same time cram MORE people in. Many more. Let's bring the total number up to around 15. Now lets lock them all in this house for days at a time and toss it around ... also for days at a time.

   Sometimes the house isn't rocking and sometimes they are let out of the house (only for the evening though), but these fifteen people are cooped up together here for months on end.

   So what happens? Is this a particularly bizarre turn on the game of house? "WHO WOULD DO SUCH A THING?" you might be asking. But then again, you probably know what I'm getting at here.

   Say these 15 people are mostly around 27, with some outliers down to 20 or up to their 50s. They're roughly 50-50 male female.

   Also they have to work closely together on a daily basis to accomplish coordinated actions. Their work is sometimes fast and intense, where if someone is not doing the right thing at the right time it'll cause everyone delays.

   As you can imagine, there is sometimes tension. Tension over who is more important than who where not clearly defined, tension between people who decide they just plain don't like eachother, etc.


   On the first boat I served on , the Lady Washington (a 68 foot brig), I found the crew to be a tight knit group it was very hard to feel a part of as a newcomer. I languished alone in the main hold and only managed to join the rest of them in the forecastle on my very last day (of three weeks) there.

   When I first hung out with the crew of the Hawaiian Chieftain (a 65 foot topsail ketch) when it passed through Newport Beach I was amazed by how welcome I felt in the group almost immediately. From almost the moment I stepped on the boat crewmembers were inviting me to places with them (the New Years party the first night, to the bar the second night, "dance party in the galley" the next..) and treating me like I was already their shipmate. A sharp contrast to my experience on the Lady.
   However, from the beginning there were also signs that something was amiss. I remember seeing "OFFICER COUNTRY" emblazoned on the door to the forecastle of the HC, and thinking it was an odd and alarming sign. The forecastle on the LW had been CREW quarters, not officer quarters, and while the HC's forecastle is a lot smaller, the whole attitude of it it being "officer country" seemed a bit concerning.
   Additionally there where murmurings about how there'd until recently been divisive cliques on the boat.

   More recently, now that I'm back on the HC, officially part of the crew for six months (and a low level officer to boot!), signs of fractiousness have been numerous. First and foremost there was the shipmate who informed me directly "we are not a tight crew." Then there's been the second guessing I've heard about almost every officer's directions behind their back at one point or another, and the constant speculation about who "belongs" in the forecastle (with only four bunks in there not even all the officers fit, as opposed to the LW which had 8). Also a lot of stories of people who are bitter because they thought THEY deserved that plum promotion or that doing X was not in their position's contract.


   I didn't really put it all together at the time, but in retrospect, I posit that it was specifically because the LW crew was a cohesive functional group that it was harder to feel welcome in. Conversely, the reason I felt immediately welcomed on the HC was because there was utterly no "group" to join.

   The ironic thing about the fighting over the HC's forecastle is that everyone acknowledges they are among the smallest bunks on the boat and ALSO the least pleasant in heavy seas. Really I think the only reason anyone ever wants to be there is because it's perceived to be prestigious.
   In the LW I was grateful to get a place in the forecastle on my last day. In the HC I was offered a spot in the forecastle on my FIRST day... and turned it down.


   The crew now on the HC is largely a different crew from the one I met in June, yet it seems to have the same problem with fractiveness. I propose that the problem is not with the specific people but with the setting. I think the problem lies in the fact that the crew is split roughly 50-50 between the main hold and forecastle, and especially that the latter has some sense of eliteness attached to it. The problem ... is the "officer country" sign and everything it stands for1.


The Hawaiian Chieftain, as I found her in Newport Beach, CA, in January


1 notwithstanding I completely understand the need for officers to to maintain their distance above the enlisted in military contexts. But this is not a military context and I find the elitism promoted by some people in this context to be utterly counter productive and stupid.

aggienaut: (tallships)
Hello the Pilgrim

   "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!


   Sailors like to refer to large sail like things as sails. Hence our giant 13 star ensign was referred to as the "flags'l," and the rain tarp we had over the deck was the "tarps'l." Later on the HC someone mentioned a "shades'l" in a story. I tried for a moment to figure out what the hell sail a "shadesail" was and then I realized, it was probably a tarp put up for shade.

aggienaut: (tallships)

   "Kris, Slim & Patty, I need you up the foremast ... no wait Kris you're not cleared for aloft, why don't you help Bill clean the bilge" were the first words by first mate Sam(antha), aka "Doomfairy," to really alarm me. While cleaning the bilge isn't the most exciting thing to do, it was the "not cleared to go aloft" part that really alarmed me. I had been "cleared to go aloft" on the Lady Washington, a boat operated by the same organization ... well I'd never been "cleared" for anything, no one ever mentioned any such clearing. One just.. went aloft.

   It was around two bells 9am yesterday, I'd woken up on the boat and had been planning on going home until the sail at noon which the captain had scheduled me to guest crew on as thanks for helping them out. However so many people asked me "you're hanging out here till the sail right?" that I felt guilted into staying, and hence spent my morning mucking about in the bilge.
   If I wasn't going to get to go aloft though that would be a real bummer. Going aloft is the best part!!

   "Battery Bill," "Texas" and I managed to make the most out of cleaning the bilge anyway. A sailor can solve practically any problem with seine twine -- in this case we used seine twine to tie sponges to broom handles and thus scrub the bilge without actually climbing into it. Meanwhile we had some music playing and talked about whatever it was we were talking about, so it wasn't so bad as far as cleaning the bilge is concerned.
   Around 11:15 Doomfairy told us to belay the cleaning and downrig the equipment we'd assembled, which is sailor speak for stop and put everything away. Just after we'd dismasted the sponges from the broom handles however she gave us the order to resume for another 20 minutes. Then we were told to stop and clean up again, then we were told to wait until the public on tours on the deck were off before dumping the buckets we'd filled with bilge over the side...
   

   As we prepared for the scheduled sail I asked her if I'd be able to go aloft and should therefore find a harness.
   "well, you need to be cleared to go aloft first and that involves me going over a checklist and paperwork with you and I don't really have time for that right now" was her response. It so happened, however, that Captain Rob was nearby at the time
   "He was cleared for aloft on the Lady, I'm sure he's fine" interjects the Captain
   "But--"
   "He can go aloft, don't worry about it" assures the captain.
   "Alright well, have someone go up with you and review things" Doomfairy says to me.

...

   As we're coming back in much later, a number of people have gone aloft to furl the sails. In the hectic frenzy of sailing I hadn't cornered anyone to going aloft with me and thus satisfying the mate's condition. I watched the climbers going up and looked at the mate, standing below scowling up at them, unsure what to do.
   "Hey Kris, can you go up to the lower foretops'l, port side?" says the captain to me. I don't need to be asked twice, I hop to it!
   "Hey, windward!" comes the stern complaint of the first mate as I begin to climb on the port side. I look up at the limp flag to try to discern if I should have known the other side was windward. As far as I can tell there's not a breath of air to be had. One climbs on windward so if one falls the wind will blow you back into the rigging rather than out to sea, it makes sense to do this even on a light wind so one is in the habit, but when there's so little wind it's debatable which direction is windward??
    Fortunately the captain pipes in assuring her "no, it's okay, I told him to climb on that side," with, maybe I'm imagining it, but what sounded like a tint of eyerolling.


   Additionally, back when we were working on the bilge, several times when one of us came on deck to get supplies out of the storage in the forepeak, Doomfairy thought to remind us to get to work.
   Compare this to the Lady Washington, where you usually had to seek out the bosun or first mate and ask for a project. If you loafed around looking useless someone would give you something to do sure, and we worked hard, but no one was riding your back as if you'd been enslaved.
   Now, Kyle had been the first mate up until he left the other day. I don't know if Doomfairy had been a first mate prior to this or if this is her first time, but it's not unusual for people who are new at a position and/or insecure with it to behave like tyrannical ogres like this. Nevertheless, I really don't think I'd want to take a chance that it's not something she's going to grow out of. If she's still scheduled to be first mate on the Hawaiian Chieftain in April it might really help me make the decision as to which boat to choose.


Related Picture of the Yesterday


People going aloft on the Pilgrim
Seeing that limp flag I bet they're going up with flagrant disregard for windward!
And look how little the captain cares!
A picture from several months ago

aggienaut: (tallships)

   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 [livejournal.com profile] 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. (:

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