The Agrinautica

Wednesday, March 4th
   Around 11am I caught a train to Melbourne, arriving there about an hour later, 40 minutes later I hopped on another train headed out east rumbling through the rural countryside east of Melbourne a broad open area known as Gippsland, past the furthest I'd taken the train before (Traralgon, which sounds like the name of a dragon) all the way to the end of the line, Bairnsdale (still don't know if I should pronounce it like barn or bairn like a scotsman's word for child), arriving around 17:00. There I had to wait another half an hour before catching a bus to the town of Paynseville. This is a bit of sleepy yachty seaside town though it's not directly on the ocean, rather deep inside an inland lagoon known as the Gippsland Lakes.

   This bus let me off just by the docks where I walked out to the Schooner Enterprize moored up at the dock. There were a few crew on deck, none of whom knew me so questions like "how long have you been volunteering on the Enterprize?" were asked repeatedly. My answer of "over 10 years now" elicited looks of surprise due either to the longevity of it or the fact that these people may have been very active the last year or two and never seen a hint of me, so I was quick to add "but I've only actually come out to the boat a handful of times in the last few years." But then, lest they think I am a know-nothing dilettante I'd work in that well I've actually been sailing tallships since five years earlier than that and once spent 7 continuous months living on a tallship, though I also made sure to stick in that I'm probably very rusty.
   "That's a strange accent, what's your ethnicity?" one of them asked me, which, being a slightly unusual formulation of the question (rather than the direct "where are you from?") I thought for a moment and said "well my dad was born in Brazil so I guess I'm half Brazilian ... but my passports say I'm American, German and as of last week Australian!" and then after a moment letting them ponder that, and I could see they were still trying to calculate how it explained what they really wanted to know, I added "and I went to school in Ireland" which elicited a chorus of "ahah"s. And then while I was on a role I stuck in "and I'm a Nigerian chieftain. literally, formally bestowed by the king of the city of Ibadan," "like one of those titles of scottish laird you can buy?" a crewmate asked. "No, no, this involved putting neem leaves under my hat and wafting smoke about, so it's very official. This was because I'd just finished a beekeeping development project there." "Oh, well sounds like you're the one who's going to have stories to tell!" exclaimed crewmate Dean. It's funny, you'd think so, but I find usually I'm not, because one wants to tell stories people can relate to and usually my audience can't relate at all to my Africa stories, and if all my stories are like "so this one time I was with these hadza hunter gatherers in the middle of Tanzania," or "so I was in Zanzibar this one time" or "so there I was hiding from chainsaw wielding criminals in the stygian darkness of the forest at night in Ghana" sounds like you're just showing off.

   Anyway, you might be wondering what's going on here -- I had just arrived to spend a week aboard the schooner Enterprize while it made its way back to Melbourne from Paynesville, where it had been for a week or two for a festival. About once a year the Enterprize goes on one of these long journeys, and usually either I don't have any time free, or I don't get selected for crew because other people have inevitably logged more volunteer hours than me and are thus legitimately more deserving, but this time I lucked out!

   While sailing I'm usually to busy to keep a good journal, and I quite regret now that some of the most enjoyable journeys of the past I don't have any livejournal entries about. I only jotted down the roughest of notes during the sail and hopefully writing now while it's fresh in my mind I can adequately record it for posterity!



   Because the most experienced volunteers are usually selected for these long transits the rest of the crew was mostly very experienced. Several of them had just been beginning their maritime careers when I was last involved two or more years ago so it was impressive to see how they had warped ahead in their seamanship since then.
   We'd have one transit passenger, Scott, who fully took part in all activities, standing watch and handling sail. Apparently he builds buoys for Antarctic research.


Crewmate Dom and I

   We stood watch by a system that was new to me -- usually it's four hours on eight hours off (while the other two watches each take 4 hours), either repeatin the same shifts every day (which I prefer, you get used to it whatever it is), or rotating by way of the 16:00-20:00 watch being divided into two 2-hour watches (dog watches) which offsets it every day (I hate this, you never get used to the watch cycle). This time I was introduced to three hours on, six hours off. I was a bit alarmed about this: For a whole week the absolute maximum time I'd get to sleep would be six hours, from which you have to subtract time to get to sleep or get up. Back in my hey-day maybe that'd have been fine, I used to count back 5 hours from muster-time and stay up till 2am if I had to get up at 7, on purpose, for example -- but now I'm Olde and really like my eight hours of sleep.
   In other news I hadn't planned on it but because I hate instant coffee I also did this whilst going cold-turkey caffeine free for a week. I found I didn't really feel any need for caffeine even on night watch with little sleep.


(look that's me stepping out onto the yard!)

Thursday, March 5th
   We left Paynesville under the low grey sky around 10am, first we had to motor eastwards for a fair bit to get out of this inland lagoon. It being mostly too shallow for the draft of our vessel, they had specially dredged a channel for us and we had to carefully follow right behind a guide boat. Finally at 13:40 we reached the opening to the sea and I've seldom seen such a dramatic display of wildlife, numerous dolphins AND sea lions were frolicking all around us while numerous different types of seabird flew by in formation.



   From thence we steered south for a few nautical miles and then turned west along the coast. I was on watch until 15:00, and again 21:00-24:00. The moon rose large and red (it had been an eclipse just like two days prior and I think it was still being lit through the Earth's atmosphere). Once it got higher it was less red, but was so full and bright (my watchmate Dom described it as "aggressively bright") one could see few stars and we joked about sunburn from the moon.
   Everyone else had taken anti seasickness medications, mostly kwells ("why are we all having these weird vivid dreams?"). Even knowing I usually get seasick the first few hours of a transit I don't take seasickness meds (generally I don't take any meds unless I doctor tells me I need to)(The active ingredient scopolamine (hyoscine hydrobromide) easily crosses the blood-brain barrier and blocks acetylcholine, an important neurotransmitter related to memory, REM sleep regulation, sensory processing and the motion balance system (the intended target in this case)^1,2 . Maybe I'm squeamish but I'd rather puke once or twice then mess with all that). As evening went on I began to get seasick. I feel like I recall feeling nauseous in the past but this time I didn't feel nauseous, I just felt like my dinner did not want to stay down. This reached a climax shortly after I had relieved Dom at the tiller. We had been steering a course of 2-1-5 but cap'n changed that to 2-2-0. A few minutes later Dom was still talking to the captain on the stern (after tiller, one is a bit at liberty before rotating half an hour later to bow watch), when I caught their attention, asked if one of them could hold the tiller really quick as I was about to lose my lunch, and as soon as Dom had her hand on the tiller I ran to the lee rail and puked. Mid-puke I realized she probably thought we were still steering 2-1-5 so between pukes I looked up and said "we're steering 2-2-0 by the way!" which she found endlessly amusing.
   Finished watch at 24:00 to try to get six hours of sleep before beginning in the dark of the same night the 06:00-09:00 watch. Wasn't sea sick any more but already thinking why am I here I could be sleeping 8 hours a night in a comfortable bed next to my gorgeous wife and instead I'm cold and uncomfortable on this thing with no hope of a solid night's sleep for the next week. Why am I doing this?" I asked myself, it's not for the novelty, for seven solid months this had been my life already.

2026-03-06
   I was somewhat relieved after breakfast to learn we would soon be dropping anchor overnight in a cove in Wilson's Prom National Park. We sailed amongst various small islands and finally around 12:30 into a small cove of turquoise water surrounded by forested slopes. Ah yes, THIS is why I do this, to see cool places like this! Wilson's Prom has been on my to-do list for the last decade but it's very very hard to get bookings for the camp sites as its a very popular camping and hiking destination.
   Just about the moment lunch was served our cook, a kiwi veteran of many tallships, veritably flew out of the galley and backflipped into the sea, which she was prone to do any time we weren't underway. Food was always very delicious, she's very talented. After we ate we assembled the smallboat (I propose the smallboat of the Enterprize should be named the Speculation? Venture? Or perhaps Galileo) and those of us who wanted to go ashore were ferried to the beach three at a time.


(Pictured, as we pull away in the small boat Sarah swings into the water from the splashline)




   I was accompanied by the captain (Warwick. Did you know the average age of people named Warwick in Australia is 66.6? So I think he's a few years young for his name) and Scott (the passenger, wearing a kilt on this occasion) and we immediately began ascending the hiking trail. We passed two or three groups of hikers and being as this is more than a day's hike from the trail heads, the usual question seems to always be "where [which camp] are you coming from?" and they were always surprised by our response "just got here! came from the sea!" ("oh you're the pirates we saw!"). Captain stopped a the first hilltop where he could get reception because he needed to check the weather report for the next few days. Scott and I continued to a nearby peak from whence we could see the other side of the peninsula, and then headed down. There were some nice views of the boat from up the slope:



   Found a very sharply prickly plant, "horny cone-bush," Isopogon ceratophyllus.

   Returning back down to the beach I waded around in a shallow stream that entered the cove there and one of the highlights of the whole trip for me was seeing a keen eel. Unfortunately my observations of this keen eel were interrupted by the arrival of the smallboat to retrieve us. (I think it was most likely Anguilla australis, though all the pictures of the latter I'm seeing are darker colored, this one looked very pale.)

   There was some hilarity around dinner, which was spaghetti, as crewmate Dean, who is apparently ethnically Italian, was humorously incensed that they had broken the spaghetti in half AND that people were calling ketchup "tomato sauce" -- the latter crime is the norm in Australia, though on this occasion, another crewmember Anna being also originally from California, she and I backed him that it's ketchup and "tomato sauce" is something entirely different, so there was an unusual proportion of people taking that stance. In related news someone asked the assembled crew if growing up in Australia they had had a particular TV program ("Blues Clues") and of six people present it turned out only one had grown up in Australia -- I always say it's amazing what a country of immigrants this really is.


2026-03-07
   A few hours of sleep, anchor watch 01:00-02:00, then five hours of sleep until wakeup. Around 10:00 we weighed anchor and set off, was on duty until 12:00. I was wary of becoming seasick again but this did not transpire. We sailed along the coast of "the Prom" and I was excited to finally see the Southernmost Point in (mainland) Australia!



   The southernmost point is not actually this lighthouse but the next headland over, but the latter is actually not very picturesque, just a jumble of rocks into the sea, so let's admire the lighthouse instead. One can apparently book accommodation at the lighthouse! (you still have to hike there over multiple days but that would be some amazing luxury after a few days of hiking)

   Around 15:30 we were dropping anchor in a broad bay (Oberon Bay). This one was less sheltered but that didn't stop the swimming enthusiasts from jumping in as soon as we were safely anchored, and us exploring enthusiasts from immediately assembling the smallboat and heading ashore. There was a sand beach at the end of the bay but it was far away and big waves were breaking on it so we opted instead to go for the rocky shore near at hand. There were no trails here, just a steep slope and rocks to clamber about on. After bushwacking a short way into the forest, in which I found one hyacinth orchid I rock-scrambled a bit before catching a ride back to the vessel.




   The next boat back with people from shore was enthusiastically towed the last bit of the way by swimmers which was amusing:



2026-03-08
   Six hours of sleep before watch at 04:00-05:00, two more and another day has begun. We weighed anchor in the morning and sailed out, headed across a broad bay (this in the sense of a bay so big you can't see the far side). Had watch 12:00-15:00. This was some of the wildest seas I've sailed in (well, it's possible they were stronger on some other trips but that was in bigger vessels, the Enterprize is relatively small compared to other tallships I've sailed on), and we wore lifejackets on deck and kept clipped in to the safety lines, precautions I've never had to deal with before. Fortunately it was clear and sunny but the wind and sea state were quite sometihng. Allison took this video (and the following picture:



   I forget if the sausage rolls were lunch or dinner but a good call for this sea state. On watch 12:00-15:00. Took a nap after my watch and when I came on at 21:00 we were still rocketing along, but now under a brilliant sky filled with stars. Watch till 12:00, sleep till watch again at 06:00.

2026-03-09
   This was a long leg, we were still sailing all afternoon, though the sea state was less wild. The winds were so strong this entire leg since leaving Oberon Bay that kept having to reduce sail so as not to arrive at "the Rip" too soon. The Rip is the narrow entrance across tha bar into Port Phillip Bay, the big bay Melbourne is in the back of. the tidal currents in the rip are so strong we could only cross at slack tide, which happens for like 20 minutes twice a day. After seeing nearly no vessel traffic earlier in the day (who's crazy enough to be out in these conditions!) there was of course quite the traffic headed through the rip at slack water as we blasted through at full speeds, between two massive container ships and passing of being passed by various smaller sailboats (passing) and motor boats roaring past us.
   Of note Dom started calling our "rye rye rye" and a very similar answering call came from the water and lo, there was a penguin swimming the rip, answering Dom's perfect penguin call. (The "little penguin" famously nests on beaches around here).
   We followed along the western coast of the bay to Portarlington where it didn't look very sheltered but we dropped anchor nonetheless. Then Dom and I went aloft to furl and it was shortly pointed out that we had dragged anchor quite a distance from where we dropped it so when we came down the anchor was reset and this time it held. Portarlington is actually quite close to home so I kind of wished we'd tied up to the dock, Cristina could have maybe come said hi, but that would have required an advance permit we didn't have.

   I got a few hours of sleep before anchorwatch 01:00-02:00. What a change from when I'd gone to bed because it was very calm! Of course the captain had planned for this, knowing the anchorage may not have provided shelter for the wind direction when we anchored but that it would for the expected later wind direction.

2026-03-10
   This day turned out to be a nice sunny day with very light airs so we set every stitch of canvas for the easy sail through the bay from here to Melbourne. On watch 09:00-12:00 as we departed Portarlington.
   A keen wasp landed on me, most likely of the Netelia genus (Ichneumonidae: Tryphoninae Netelia sp)(I'm well aware convention is to list Genus FOLLOWED by Family and Subfamily but I just can't get over how backwards that arrangement is)




   As we sailed through this fine weather towards Melbourne I overheard Dean talking to Scott, saying he thought all the crew were really pushing themselves to improve their seamanship, and I reflected that yes, most of them have been stepping up to learn new skills and get things signed off in their training books ... but not me. I have been feeling like the high water mark of my seamanship is ten years of ebb tide behind me now, the motivation that pushes people to learning achievements is somewhat diminished when you know you'd have to do some work just to catch up with your former self, and while many of the crew are seeing seamanship as something to devote themselves significantly to as a career, I've of course long since decided to devote myself to beekeeping not sailing. Still though, if I get invited on another transit I may well go again, it would be nice to sail to Tasmania or King Island, places the boat sails to sometimes, and if I could get my hands on a new sextant I might devote some efforts to brushing up on celestial navigation on a future trip, that's fun stuff ("my" old sextant was my grandfather's, but when he died my uncle, who mostly lives on his sailboat(s) these days had the better claim to it -- I'm not sure how to politely put in that when HE sails west to the elven lands beyond the ken of mortals I think I have a better claim to it than his children who do not sail)(because you need to see the actual horizon to use a sextant you can only practice using it at sea). So in sum, while for nearly everyone else this sail has been a forward-looking learning experience and novel adventure, for me with most of my sailing behind me it was more of a nostalgic back-looking voyage.



   That evening we anchored off Melbourne. It was very pretty seeing the city twinkling beside us. That evening we all gathered and sang some sea shanties, Kaje and Warwick told some man-overboard stories, Dean read a poem (by Benjamin Franklin?) about Blackbeard. Anchor watch 04:00-05:00. It was a pleasant dead calm night.

2026-03-11
   Final day! At some point in the night it was discovered something was wrong, something was leaking we'd lost nearly all our fresh water. We still had enough in containers to drink but flushing the heads would now require getting a bucket of seawater and bringing it into the heads to flush the toilets. Due to this bother I held off even relieving myself, we were almost home anyway!
   Slinking into the Yarra River just ahead of us was the French warship FS Auguste Benebig, assigned to the French territory of New Caledonia apparently she was making a port call in Melbourne. We pulled up to our new dock just beside the megayacht Mischief, apparently owned by an Australian garbage baron.
   As soon as we were safely tied up I asked and received permission to run to the shore-heads which were in the yacht club so temptingly within sight, returning much relieved to help clean up the boat, which took a few hours.
   Finishing around two, Cristina happened to also be in Melbourne just finishing an English class, so I went to the main (Southern Cross) station to meet the dear wife, who mentioned that she thought I had abandoned her, and we took the train together to return home, the end.

   This morning sitting at my desk it still felt so much like I was rocking on a swell I almost felt sea sick!

1945 - She was born from the ashes of war. Spreading her wings as the three masted schooner Joal to ply the icy waters of the Baltic under the Danish flag. In the mid 70s she sailed to Portugal for conversion into a replica of the two masted brig Pilgrim, famous for sailing in the 1830s to California in the book Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana. She then sailed from Portugal to Dana Point, California -- oh what a journey that must have been!



1995 - My first memory of the Pilgrim is going aboard for the overnight program as a sixth grader. I remember two things distinctly from this experience. (1) I thought we couldn't take a bathroom break while on night watch and thus nearly pissed myself -- I was clearly taking it too seriously; and (2) there's a steep stairway leading from the main hold up to deck. All stairways aboardship are called ladders, and you go down them backwards for safety. This had become muddled in my mind, so I proceeded UP the stairway backwards. For the school groups the crew are totally acting out their role and the role of the first mate is to be scary. He'd stamp around holding a harpoon like a staff and generally scare the bajeezes out of the students. The first mate, upon seeing me going up backwards excalimed in a sincere and friendly way "that's not how you do it, we can't be losing YOU of all people to some accident!" This compliment from the otherwise scary first mate became deeply lodged in my subconcious up until the present day, that I had been singled out from a young age as an exemplary sailor, who might make mistakes but nevertheless had a propitious future.

2009 - Another important memory I'd like to recount is my first time going aloft but I already recently wrote an entry about that so I'll direct you there.

2011-2012 - Pilgrim didn't get off the dock much in her old age. Once a year the volunteers would take her for a three week walkabout visiting the channel islands and then circling back to San Diego for the tallship festival there, and then returning to Dana Point; and as well during the Dana Point Tallship Festival she would go out. I went out for most of the long sailabout in 2011 and 2012. Rather unlike myself I didn't actually blog about either one, I think it was too overwhelming to turn into entries. So I don't necessarily know which of my memories are from which year.
   Kori and I finagled to be dropped off by another boat on a remote pier on the northern channel island of Santa Cruz and to be picked up by Pilgrim to join the ship one of the years. Pilgrim hove into sight and dropped anchor in the cove but apparently no one noticed us for a few hours as we sat dangling our legs off the pier. The island having, to my knowledge, no residents at all and no one else due there for an unknown amount of time, we felt marooned like pirates. Finally someone remembered us and sent a boat for us.
   The next day at a small cove on the south side of the island, a few of us decided to row the small boat ashore. Waves were breaking on the steep beach and we all got thoroughly soaked in the landing, but it was okay it was warm and sunny. There were no footprints, no trash. Just us, a rowboat, and our 1830s era mothership. Other than our modern clothing it could have been 200 years prior.
   Having come from other boats where you were expected to work-work-work it was a bit of a culture shock for me that this was literally a pleasure cruise, when we weren't busy hauling lines, people lounged about in the warm summer sun, chatted, read a book with only the flapping of the sails and splashing of the waves. The Pilgrim has fantastic netting leading out to the end of the jibboom (the pointy part on the front sticking out from the bowsprit), its meant to give one a place to stand while furling headsails or otherwise working out on the headrig, but it happens to make a perfect hammock, where several crewmembers can comfortably lounge just above the bounding dolphins and admire the spray from the bow cutting through the waves just behind them. I also greatly enjoying climbing way up to the furthest heights of the mast to admire the view from up there. Occasionally we would stop for a swim call and people would dive off into the endless blue ocean with no land in sight.

   In San Diego we would be at dock for a few days for the tallship festival. I remember on one of these occasions I walked to one of the pubs ashore with one of the staff crewmembers (there were us volunteers and then the ones who actually worked for the Ocean Institute (OI) putting on the programs), this fellow named Dane. What's funny, that I only realized just now as I was reminiscing, is my first memory about the Pilgrim, I have no mental picture of what the first mate looked like, but I've seen Dane in that role, harpoon and all. So my memory has placed Dane in the role in my sixth grade memory. So in my memory, I was at 29 going out for drinks with the very man who had been a fearsome older figure when I was 13, but we were now the same age and more-or-less peers. A surreal memory trick.
   We got drunk like sailors. I had watch at 2am. I wasn't breaking any rules, we hadn't been instructed to be sober for watch, just that we had to be on watch. Because it was tradition, and also because when you have a whole bunch of tallships all together they tend to play pranks on eachother at night. So I remember more-or-less crawling on my hands on knees up the ladder (stairs). Arriving on deck I found our helmsman there in a hammock. He had disagreed emphatically earlier with the directions that we were to stand watch, and as I drunkely pulled myslf out of the hatch he stirred and said "I'm taking all the watches, you can go below." I thanks him and withdrew, backwards, back down the ladder on my hands and knees.

   The command structure of the ship at sea was this: there was our fearless captain Skip Wehan (an amazing knowledgeable, wise, kind man who in his 70s couldn't be defeated at arm wrestling by anyone), he didn't stand a watch but came and went at all hours as captains do. There were three watch officers who were older senior folk of varying attributes. Under them were the "junior watch officers" who had all the drudgery of planning watch schedules and micromanaging the watches without the benefit of actually being in command. I had the dubious honor of being one of these in 2012.
   Leaving San Diego homeward bound in 2011, we found we didn't have any of the former watch officers. This was an unglamorous leg, just an overnight run back up the coast and a lot of crew hadn't signed up for it, choosing to make their own way home from San Diego. Around midnight, as we bagan to round the headland leaving San Diego to head north, and Skip dismissed the offwatches, we found that my watch had no leader. In my watch there was myself and this 18-19ish year-old fellow Alex Ahmann. I think maybe he was a junior watch officer and I wasn't in 2011, or maybe it was just that he had been more deeply involved in the organization. He was and is very knowledgeable about ship-stuff, but I think he literally has asbergers and it manifested itself in sometimes irresponsible behavior such as joking calling out incorrect sail commands. Anyway, Skip looked from Alex to me and back again, and asked me if I'd ever lead a watch before (yes actually on the Hawaiian Chieftain), and if I could navigate (yes I've taken the coastal and celestial navigation classes at the local community college) and finally Skip looked at me and asid "okay, you're the watch officer." Alex narrowed his eyes at me in disappointment but took it gracefully. Then Skip went below, I sent my watch to their watch positions, and there I was, standing by my helmsman on a warm summer evening, in command of the quarter deck. In command of the Pilgrim!

   We had watch 00:00 to 04L00 and then we were coming into Dana Point Harbor so my watch never got to bed that night. Another fond memory is being on the cranelines -- horizontal lines that run between the shrouds (I'm not sure I can describe them adequately. The lines these two are on here) at around 05:30-06:00 probably furling one of the staysails just after we'd come to the dock, and a bee landed on my ear while we were working. I don't know what a bee was doing out so early, but if felt like a sweet welcome.

   In 2013 I was meant to be one of the two mast-captains, in charge of directing all the crew on the foremast during sailing manouvers, but I ended up going to Turkey at the time of the sail to spend time with the Turkish merchant mariner lass I was then dating. I really kind of regret missing the sail. But speaking of the two mast-crews, in 2011 or 2012 I was on the foremast and Alex Ahmann was on the main mast and primarily at his instigation they kept trying to steal the foremast boathook during manouvers while we were busy/distracted. And we tried a little bit to get theirs in retaliation (both boat hooks are kept loosely secured against their respective masts for ease of access). It was fun but also kind of emblematic of his tendency to goof off during maneuvers. (in his defense recall he was just a teenager at the time)

   In 2014 I went on the yearly sail just after coming back from Guinea, where the ebola epidemic was in full swing. I had been sick, gotten better, but during the first few days of the sail I was rapidly getting sick again. We sailed north up the coast past Los Angeles and Point Magu and put into Ventura's "Channel Islands Harbor" to pick up some more crew before heading out to the islands. Among the people to come aboard was this OI bigwig named Howard with a walrus mustache.
   That night just as I was comnig below after having been doing some work along, I ran into Captain Skip.
   "Hey. How ya feeling" he asked in a friendly manner. We were bathed in the surreal red below-decks night-time lighting.
   "Oh, I'm alright" I said smiling. I felt like shit. I wasn't trying to mislead him, just didn't want to worry him about my health. I'd power through.
   "Well... there's some concern ... about ebola." he said apologetically. He didn't try to pass the buck or blame anyone else but I knew immediately it was Howard's doing. Later several people reported hearing Howard talking about it, it's a small boat after all. The bottom line was I had leave the ship immediately. And that, I suppose, is my last real Pilgrim memory, getting booted off for ebola.

   There never was another of the yearly sails. Alex Ahmann eventually rose up to the position of bosun in charge of the ship's maintenance. But for lack of support the volunteer maintenance crew eventually ceased meeting.

   At midnight on the night of March 28/29th someone did a standard check that everytihng was alright with the ship, she wasn't taking on water, the pump which now had to be constantly running against a slow leak was running, and everything was in order. Sometimes after 4am reportedly she suddenly began sinking until she came to rest on the bottom, listing heavily to starboard.
   She was soon declared to be damaged beyond any hope of repair. Three days later the crew was fired.

   I know the OI has been strapped for cash and especially now, in this year, in these times, and now without a ship for the crew to work on, they need to make tough financial decisions, but I can't help but think all of this could have been done without fostering the bitterness and alienation of the many dedicated volunteers who were only too happy to volunteer their time and yet were still ultimately made to feel unappreciated by an organization that treated their most iconic asset like a red-headed-stepchild.

   75 years was a remarkable run, and I'm sure she's made countless priceless memories during her long life for hundreds of crewmembers, to say nothing of the estimated 400,000 sixth graders to have crossed her decks.

   Normally, hundreds of us whose lives were touched by the Pilgrim would come out to pay our respects as she lays there mortally wounded, but of course, the yellow plague flag flies over the entire land, and instead she dies alone, picked over only by cold hearted salvage crews, just doing their job, dissassembling this wreckage.

   Once upon a time there was a solution for everything. Sail blowing out of it bolt-rope in mid gale? No problem. Just enthusiastically signal to your captain that you've got it in hand, pretend not to notice the look of relief on your watch-mates somewhat green faces, and head down the bounding deck. Resist the urge to jump or run, as the deck is unpredictable and may suddenly fall out from under you or bound up to hit you in the face. You will probably have to keep one hand on a rail. You may have to time crossing the main deck to avoid roiling waves pounding across it. Cross to the lattice of thick black lines that rise from the ship's side like a ladder leading to the top of the mast. Make sure you're on the "weather" side of the ship, that is, the side the howling wind is coming in from. Since you'll be climbing up the outboard side of these shrouds, the wind will be pinning you to them from this side, whereas it would be trying to pluck you off from the other. You can easily get on the shrouds with a small hop at the moment the ship is at the top of a roll, then the deck will fall away beneath you and a quick pull brings your now levitating body to the shrouds, assuming you were holding on to them. You were holding on to them right? If not, you could be anywhere by now. The horizontal "rat-lines" are secured to the vertical stays by wrapping of a tarred twine called "seine twine." In fact the verticals themselves are also wrapped in a protective layer of seine twine all the way up. Hopefully this is all very secure, but just in case you'll be holding on to the verticals since they're more dependable than the horizontals. And up you go!
   Now the ship is of course bucking and wildly and swaying in a manner that gets increasingly magnified the further you are up the mast. Sometimes you'll be pinned to the rigging, sometimes gravity will be pushing you up itself. You'll have to actually climb upside-down up the futtocks-shrouds to get out on the yard, but that's the fun part. Here in Australia they make you clip a caribiner into a fancy nylon safety line the whole time you're doing this, which takes nearly all the fun out of it. Now you walk out the yard (mistakenly called the yard-arm by many non sailors, but the yard-arm is just the end of it), balancing on just one foot-rope. At those point you are flying wildly in just about every direction, left right, up and down. You just learn not to take the downward pressure of gravity for granted and hang on. It's really quite exhilarating.
   But now here is where the sailor's magical fix-all comes in. As a sailor, you will at all times have several lengths of this tarred twine hanging from your belt. Some will be about a fathom long, which is to say as long as your spread arms, and you wear them in small coils. The half-fathom pieces one just hooks to one's belt with a simple cow-hitch, like attaching a luggage tag, and the strands dangle towards your knees. Do not forget about these when you go in the engine room or it might end very badly. But you're not in that black hot stuffy nauseating abyss, you are flying around in extremely fresh air! So in this scenario the sail is threatening to come loose in the blasting gale which will cause it to rip itself to shreds and maybe take things it's attached to with it. The piece of sail which has come loose is flapping so wildly and strongly it's making a sound like distant rumbling thunder and you might lose a finger if you just try to grab it. But it must be gotten under control with alacrity! So you grab one of those "nips" of seine twince and pass it around the blown out sail, tying a contrictor hitch on the back side of the yard so you can tighten it to bring the wild thing under control. But constrictor hitches can slowly slip again so best to follow that up with another nip with a round turn and a half hitch. Later when the weather moderates the sail will have to be taken down, repaired, and reattached... with seine twine "robands."
   Meanwhile while you're up there maybe you notice a block (pulley) that's banging around, that's okay, you've got another nip of seine twine on your belt! Once you've secured everything you can plausibly do up there it's sadly time to go back down to deck before the captain accuses of you skylarking.
   Back on deck everything from the deck boxes and small cannons to small personal gear in the bunks is lashed down with, you guessed it, seine twine! When we aren't securing things with seine twine, marlinspike sailors are often putting fancy decorative patterns on things with seine twine. In fact one of the primary ways sailors of ye old timey traditionally rigged ships recognize eachother anywhere is they often have a permanent irremovable braid of seine twine around their wrist. I've been randomly recognized for a sailor in airports, on trains, and once very unexpectedly on a bus in the middle of Africa between Kenya and Tanzania by a red cross volunteer who also it turns out has a habit of sailing on tallships.

   Last April my current vessel, the honda civic USS Trilobite, was collided with right on the broadside. As a consequence the passenger side door would not close and threatened to randomly swing right out while driving, which would be quite undesirable. I may not sail much these days, but to me, there's still one solution for all such problems: seine twine.


a constrictor hitch pulled as tight as possible and then tightly "served" with covering coils of seine twine
(this was just super temporary for one trip straight to the mechanic I swear)



The seine twine fancywork on the handle of my favorite mug, as well as the turks-head on my arm and the roll of seine twine
(see also, this "french hitch" pattern makes a zigzag pattern on the handle. Golly these pictures make my thumb look huge)

   I wish I had known the above painting existed at the time I wrote my Crossing the T entry! It portrays exactly what I was describing, but being done historically. The pictured vessel is becalmed and in order to make way it both has its sweeps out AND has a smallboat in the water trying to give it a tow!

(from this fine little collection of paintings of sailing ships)

   In related news I'm going sailing on the good ole Lady Washington again tomorrow!

   And while I'm on the subject of pictures that should have been entries, I had meant to include this in the last entry about Gallipoli, but in the end it didn't fit, I think the entry would have been too picture heavy with a third picture, esp as he was a main character, but recall Vognsen, as in "The man immediately to his right, Vognsen, was hit as soon as they came over the lip, falling backwards with a muffled yelp." This is for him:

July 19th, Saturday - I'm continuing, to this day, to learn exciting new things about exotic tropical diseases, but one thing is that some of them are quite cyclical in effect. In unrelated news I was feeling pretty decent when I woke up the morning of the 19th, in my bunk deep in the Swedish sailing ship Götheborg.

   [And a quick technical aside for those of you who only tune in for LJI entries, there was another entry between my last and this, wherein I narrowly escaped from Guinea, traversed Europe, and people tried to kill me repeatedly with poisson]

   The morning of the 19th I slept in till around 8:00, and explored the neighborhood in search of a quaint cafe. The Ericsberg neighborhood on the north side of the Göta river was once a major shipbuilding site, but has since been gentrified and is now "where the yuppies live," according to a local. It's quiet and clean and characterized by nice looking apartment buildings, and joggers along the waterfront in mornings. An enormous red crane with "ERICSBERG" emblazoned on it still looms over the entire neighborhood as a memento to its shipbuilding past. The solid piers still jut out into the river but now have swanky restaurants on the ends.
   I found a cafe along the riverbank with a view of my ship and ordered coffee and a delicious pastry from the very attractive blonde Swedish girl working there, her hair in casual pigtails, and sat and relished this first cup of decent coffee I'd had in a month -- in Africa all they have is nescafe (unless you're in Ethiopia), and I hadn't had a chance to enjoy a real cup of coffee since then.

   Around 10:00 I caught up with Jonathon,the somewhat timid German fellow with whom I'd made plans to go visit the islands. He was halfway through two weeks volunteering on the Götheborg. We'd been told we could get all-day public transit passes at an easy-to-find nearby convenience store that we utterly failed to find. We finally wandered into a little grocery shop, which I don't think I'd even have recognized as a shop from the outside if someone hadn't told us to go in there, and stood in a verrrry slow line tended by a couple well in their 80s who must surely have been the owners. It was cute that they were still running their shop.. but probably not the most efficient. "Older people here don't necessarily speak English" I whispered to Jonathon with concern. "That's okay, I've heard they're more likely to speak German ;)" he whispered back.
   Turns out they spoke English. We asked for two all-day transit passes and the man slowly shuffled around and eventually brought back one. We reiterated we wanted two and he slowly repeated his whole process.

   That finally sorted out, we went to the ferry stop, just a hundred yards away or so, and excitedly boarded the ferry that came moments later. It was only as the ferry started going the wrong direction, up the river, that I realized "uh, we should have looked at the destination of this ferry." A friend had given us directions involving taking the ferry directly across the river, but instead we ended up riding it on its zig-zag route all the way back to the town center, and there we boarded a crowded trolley and headed back toward the mouth of the river, which seemed to take an hour. Once there, we realized we had no idea which island we actually wanted to go to, but we boarded a ferry that looked like it would go to all of them in turn, so we'd have options.
   Ten minutes later we still hadn't decided where the best place to stand on the ferry was, when it came to the first island, Asperö, Jonathon asked me if we should get off here. I had to go merely on a gut feeling, and a lot of it was simply not getting off at the very first stop, but I said no. He looked at me quizically and asked why not and I was hard pressed to give an explanation, but all I saw was half a dozen people getting off with bicycles, and a paved asphalt path leading off behind a hillock on the island. It looked a little like maybe you had to ride your bike to get anywhere fun on this island.
   The stop was only for a moment and we were on our way again. Jonathon and I stayed in the bow of the ferry for this portion. It was a fine sunny day and there were numerous boats of all types out on the water. The Göta river on which Göteborg sits opens out into the Kattegat, the narrow island-filled sea between the Baltic and the North Sea, Denmark and Sweden. Soon we were coming up on the second island, Köpstadsö, where we saw a cute little dock with rows and rows of wheelbarrows, a little shed, and a big box marked "GODS". A narrow path wound up over the nearest hillock. Numerous pedestrians were getting off here. This all looked promising, so we disembarked as well.
   The mystery of the numerous wheelbarrows soon resolved itself: there's no cars on the island -- wheelbarrows is how people get their groceries or other loads around -- the fleet of wheelbarrows at the dock was the equivalent of a parking lot!



   Köpstadsö turned out to have a charming little townlet of cute little houses with wheelbarrows in the driveway, with sidewalk sized paths winding between them. There was also a delightful little marina that doubled as a swimming hole (and unlike many marinas I've seen, the water looked crystal clear and inviting). Jonathon and I left the townlet and followed a footpath through the beautiful forest across the middle of the island to a beach on the far side (maybe a half mile distant?), where there were already a few families enjoying the good weather (and in typical Swedish fashion, several naked young children). A rowboat was making its leisurely way past, looking like a giant waterbug. Beyond that there were plenty of motorboats and sailboats, I took note that there seemed to be an unusually large number of ketches, a sailing rig I have a lingering fondness for, having lived and worked for seven months on the 103 foot topsail ketch Hawaiian Chieftain. (Much later, yesterday (August 3rd) I was at the urgent care and they had an eye chart with symbols and simple pictures instead of letters, and the top one was a sailboat, which I squinted at and declared "oh no, I can't tell what the first line is, is it a cutter or a sloop??")



   Anyway, here I found Jonathon and I had divergent interests. I wanted to keep exploring the islands, he (presently a musical therapy major in university) wanted to sit for a few hours in thought, maybe write some poetry or something. So we agreed to reconvene in two hours and I went off to explore the quaint forest paths.
   By now I was getting a bit peckish but alas this island was too quaint and unspoilt to have a cafe on it. I looked for miner's lettuce in the forest but that might not be a thing here (looking at wikipedia right now I guess its in fact a California thing. It's an edible plant that's common in our forests). There were many blackberry brambles that I'm sure provide quite a bounty when in season.

   Finally Jonathon and I met up and proceeded to the ferry stop to go to the next and last island. As it seemed the most populous (there were direct ferries between it and the mainland), we were optimistic we could find food there.

Styrsö turned out to have a larger town on it, with larger buildings and a school and some bed-and-breakfasts. There was a cafe/bar right next to the ferry stop, which I think may have been the only one on the island. Service was terrible, no one greeted us or told us what to do, or how to pay, and when we finally inquired and were told to pay at the bar, the bartender ignored us for 15 minutes while he cleaned some glasses before acknowledging us. I guess when you're the only place on the island you can get away with such behavior. I ordered a burger with "amerikanska dressing," something I'd missed in the 16 years since I'd last been in Sweden, since we don't have it in America.
   Looking at a map, the island appeared to be half town and half undeveloped, and down at the far end of the undeveloped half there was a "kyrka ruin" (church ruin, kyrka is naturally pronounced "sheerka") that sounded like a worthy destination. We headed down there by the coast road -- this island also didn't have cars but there were "flatbed motorbikes" with three wheels called flakmopeds or lastmoppes about. Unlike most conveyances, on which it's taken for granted that the load follows behind, the flatbed portion of the vehicle is in front. Giving the impression of some sort of giant motorized spatula.
   Presently our route left the road and became a nice footpath through the forest. By the time we arrived at the site of the kyrka ruin we had left the town and development far behind and were immersed in a quiet contemplative setting of lapping water, rolling green hillocks, forest, islands, and the occasional bleeting of sheep. There wasn't much to see of the ruin itself but a vague rectangular outline in the ground. Jonathon of course wanted to sit here for a bit and write some more. The sun was near setting (it was around 8:30), and we still had to get back home, so I gave him about twenty minutes and did some exploring on my own. Climbed the local hillock and took this picture:



   Then we hurried along a path through the middle of the island back towards the ferry dock. The evening sun streamed sideways through the trees and it was quite beautiful. I knew we were running late for the nine something ferry but was also keen not to let neurosis over that ruin my enjoyment of this beautiful place, and I knew there was ferry service until fairly late. We definitely missed that ferry but there was another one around 10:00 so I sat at the bar with bad service and ordered a beer, while Jonathon went off to watch the sunset from somewhere quiet and contemplative.


(timestamp: 9:27pm. I love long Swedish evenings!)

   Gave myself half an hour to pay the tab and was glad I did as it took most of that time. Boarded the ten something ferry and rode in the open air top deck as it was a perfect evening. The sun had finally set and the sky glowed a sherbet orange. There were still a few sailboats blithely enjoying the conditions, and on the horizon, silhuetted against the orange glow, giant windmills slowly turned, a reminded that This Is Sweden, a country that loves sustainable energy (and recycles 102% of its trash!) -- this is the more-than-first world.




July 20th, Sunday - Met up with an old friend, Kenth, from back when I was in Sweden when I was 16. It's unfortunate I wasn't able to see more old friends, but to get to the place where I was before from Götaborg one would have to row one's longship up the Göta river and across to the far side of Lake Vanern (the largest lake in Europe if you don't count the two by St Petersberg in Russia), to Kristinehamn (Port Christine).
   We met up downtown and went to an indian buffet, which was delicious. I baffled them by trying to pay in cash ("no one uses cash here any more" my friend advised me as I took the Swedish notes out of my wallet). The cashier had to dig around for a key to the cash box of the register and dust veritably came out as he looked for change. Welcome to the future.
   Downtown Göteborg has that elegant look of many old European towns. Big clean beautiful buildings. One canal, since all the world went through a stage of being in love with canals for awhile there. I'm told Göteborg has the smallest population for a city of its size, or something like that, which sounds like a contradictory statement but the fact is it has a lot of parks, so that the city covers a large area without actually having an enormous population (just over 500,000). As mentioned in the last entry, it's often anglicized as Gothenburg, but I regard this as an overanglicization, and the etymology is wrong anyway. English words with gothen or gotham derive from got-ham, goat village (yeah gotham city should have a goat man not a bat man), where Göta comes from the "Geats," the people of Beowulf.


Question: When I write alt-text does anyone read it?

   Also checked out the beautiful Trädgårdsföreningen Gardens (say that three times fast. Okay try saying it once), a sort of botanical garden just downtown by the canal. Tried to take pictures of the bumblebees on the flowers there but got nothing worth posting. Also there was a greenhouse with giant lilypads.

   Returning to the boat I'd found a number of people had arrived over the weekend for the following work week on the boat.

"Do you speak Swedish?" one girl asked me.
"Nej, jag prata inte svenska" (no I don't speak Swedish) says I, with suspiciously good pronunciation.
"Wait do you really speak Swedish?"
"Nej, jag förstår ingenting!" (No I don't understand a thing) I say with a grin.
"No really do you speak Swedish??"
"No, not really"
...
And then the next day I say something in Swedish (to someone else)
"What? Did you learn that already?"
"Jag har varit här tre dagar, jag har lärt mig svenska nu!" (I've been here three days, I've learned Swedish now!) ... my Swedish vocubulary isn't extremely extensive but by downplaying how much I did know there were several opportunities to catch people by surprise with amusing results.


Also in town I saw this really cool relief.


July 21st, Monday - Was engaged in tarring the rigging, which was nice because I still wasn't feeling 100% and it was work I was familiar with. The rigging, being hand-made rope from hemp, needs to be coated in tar to keep from decomposing, and this tar needs to be reapplied every few months. The ships I've worked on in the States cheat a little and mix lacquer thinner with the tar to make it easy to apply, but since the Götheborg is super authentic they don't do that so the tar has to be applied while boiling hot. As such a bucket of it was kept boiling on the dock and we'd go up the rigging with a small tin of it (I was working at the main-top, the large platform by the mainmast (see picture at top of entry or to the right)), and apply away with a paintbrush until we either ran out of tar or it became cold, and then scurry back down for more. There's a phrase which I think has some currency even in non-nautical circles -- "the devil to pay but not pitch hot" -- this refers to hanging over the side of the boat trying to apply tar to the "devil seam" at the water line. It also gives rise to the phrase "between the devil and the deep blue sea."

   That night the whole crew (note, we're just a maintenance crew of about 12. The ship sails with a crew of 80) went out for drinks at a nearby bar. The weather being perfect, as usual, we sat outside.


July 22nd, Tuesday - Tuesday found us over the side, caulking planks. To do this one hammers flax into the seam and then pushes in a mixture of linseed oil and chalk over it. This substance would probably be called puddy in English, in Swedish it is "skit" -- "shit." I quickly decided I hate caulking, because for some reason more so than anyone else the shit just completely stuck to my hands.
   After the regular workday was over we lowered one of the longboats from the deck into the water. To do this we used the crane aboard, which was operated via a line to the capstan -- this giant knob into which spokes ("man-spikes") are inserted and sailors push it around to wind in a rope around it. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of this interesting process, as I was busy on the capstan. That evening we all watched the movie that had been made about this Götheborg's first trip to China and back. I think its been there twice more since then.

July 23rd, Wednesday - It was "too hot" to work outside (!!) so we found things to do indoors. I was engaged with several other people scraping paint off a wooden sculpture of a fish that goes on the side of the ship somewhere. And yes, they make their own paint too, out of linseed oil (what can't you make out of that?) and something else. But more importantly, this evening we had planned a big expedition to the island fortress at the mouth of the Göta river, about 2.5 miles away, where we would have a picnic bbq and then return. To this end we had lowered the longboat the day before, and secured permission to borrow a small modern sailboat, the draken, owned by a non-present crewmember. There had been some steak in the freezer making people salivate all summer and it was finally decided that no one knew who put it there but we could probably eat it, and more food provisions were bought.
   As soon as the workday was ended we rigged up the masts in the longboat and got it all squared away. We sailed away down the river without incident, and were soon passed by the Draken, which had left after us.
   Unfortunately we were refused permission to land on the fortress island. They said they'd had five breakins in the last three days -- who the heck takes the time to go to an isolated island with only a historical site on it and break in... more than once a night?? Bizarre!
   There was another island just behind the fortress island though, so we proceeded there. From the longboat we were able to unload onto the island at a rock, but the Draken with its larger keel could not get so close. There were initial attempts to use the longboat as a dock. While we were doing this one of the city-sized ferries to Denmark came through and caused such a displacement of water that a low wall under water between the two islands became a veritable cataract:



   Docking proved unfeasible so Draken was obliged to sail around the island. Ultimately the crew of the Draken was obliged to swim to shore, and rejoined us dripping, in their skivvies. While this was going on I explored the island, which was mostly overgrown and appeared to be seldom visited. It would have been very beautiful except that there was a large commercial container port not 500 yards away to one side. On the north side I found the foundations of some buildings and two weathered gravestones, one of which had the year 1754 (MDCCLXXIV) carved in it.
   Attempts to start a fire with a fire-bow also proved unsuccessful, but fortunately we had modern tools too and soon were grilling up some delicious steak, corn on the cob, and zuccini slices. :d



   On our departure I joined the Draken so I could get pictures of the longboat. At some point someone had contrived to get it close enough to a rock so that we could go aboard without swimming. Unfortunately though, especially once the four of us that would be riding it were aboard, the keel appeared to be embedded into the mud on the bottom. Our fearless leader Ellie stripped down (Swedes have little compunction about this compared to Americans) and jumped in to push us off and we were on our way.
   We had just rounded the fortress island and sighted the longboat when the wind completely died. After awhile with not a puff we finally had to get on the radio and ask "uh, longboat, can you tow us?" since the draken only had two small woefully deficient paddles aboard while the longboat had ten manned oars. The sound of laughter could clearly be heard across the river in response to this request, but the longboat complied and began making its way toward us. Long story short the wind never did blow another puff and though we tried to help out with our paddles, we were mostly towed for the following four hours (a distance which had taken maybe thirty minutes by sailing). With the rhythmic splash in the gathering night it was easy to imagine the countless viking longships that no doubt have rowed up and down this very river in the past.



   It was after 1am when we finally made it back to the dock. We were granted late wakeup at 10am the next morning, which still felt like it came on quick.


July 24th, Thursday - So far this week we'd actually dispensed with "the fish list" and ordered Italian for lunch every day, but I started rustling to rather than have a whole week of one thing and a whole week of another we should at least alternate daily between the two, so we returned to the fish list. Those of you who know my longstanding loathred of fish may be shocked by this but I actually don't mind things like fish and chips, and I had recently walked passed the fish place and noted that their fish and chips smelled delicious.
   The first half of the workday I was still scraping the fish sculpture, but the latter half I got recruited to a special project. It had been so sunny and hot lately ... the figurehead (a lion) clearly needed sunglasses!!
   Ellie went and measured the figurehead's face, and we cut pieces of wood to the right lengths, painted them with linseed oil (I think just out of habit?), and affixed lenses of aluminum foil.

   This work spilled over after the workday but with a project like this its hard to tell if you're really working or not, and being volunteers anyway, its all very grey.







Voila! ...a terrible beauty has been born!!!

   That night a few of us went out for drinks one last time. The next morning at 04:50 I was to catch a bus to the airport to embark on a voyage that through two plane rides and three trainrides would bring me to the small town of Enval in the middle of France. What could possibly go wrong? (spoiler: things go wrong)

   This past Sunday -- I hurled myself down the companionway ladder, and bracing myself against the lurching of the ship I leaned over the chart table looking for the radio receiver. I found it, waited until the bucking hull wasn't trying to throw me in the opposite direction and picked it up. Took a breath, and pressed transmit:
   "May day, may day, this is the sailing vessel Dawn Treader..."


   To properly tell this story I'll have to begin the week before, however. My friend, coworker and fellow tallship sailor Russell had invited me out to a bar in Dana Point, and I had taken my friend Anna along. There we met Russell's friend Monique, a red-headed woman of about fifty who I think was already drunk as a skunk when we met her. She immediately annoyed me with "oh how long have you been volunteering on the Pilgrim? Oh you'd have remembered me if you'd been there when I was there, I'd have been the one telling you what to do," and generally engaging in one-up-tionship about sailing and then when she noticed I have a slight Irish accent trying to similar play some sort of "more Irish than thou" thing because she'd apparently once been in Waterford, where, from her account, it sounds like she made a nuisance of herself at a tallship festival. As the night went on she eventually became belligerent and Russell had to escort her away.
   The next day Russell reported that she felt terrible about the night before and wanted to invite us all to go sailing on her 35' boat. I was kind of skeptical about spending any more time with her, but was optimisitc than when sober she'd be a lot better. Just to cover my bases I asked if I could invite one more person and extended the invite to my friend very-experienced-sailor Ryon whose substantial experience and strong personality I felt would provide a buffer against her.

   So on the day of sailing we had myself, Russell, Monique, Ryon, Anna, Anna's three year old son Vincent, and another friend of Monique's came, this guy Dave who was a pretty alright fella.
   At the time of departure I believe there were already two red flags in the harbour. One red flag denotes a "small craft advisory," and two means the wind is blowing at gale force. Apparently it was expected to increase in force as well. Monique was skeptical about these conditions but we had a very experienced crew and we were all excited to go out, so out we did.
   We had a grand time out there, we were barely even heeling over, and though there were whitecaps all about the swells weren't that big. Monique didn't want to set the jib (the sail between the mast and the jibboom in front), so we were sailing with the main only -- which I thought was a bit amateurish -- these boats are designed to be properly balanced with both sails set. With only the aft sail set there's significantly more force pushing laterally against the back of the boat and its going to constantly want to turn windward. Finally I convinced Monique to set the jib and she admits in her own account of the adventure that the boat then handled much better.

   After bounding about for maybe two hours out there, Monique declared she wanted to return to the harbor for fear her old sails would blow out. We put on the motor and headed upwind to the harbor entrance with the main up and centered to balance us, acting as a sort of sky keel if you will. Ryon was at the wheel, belting out some ribald shanty. At this point we noticed what appeared to be a paddleboarder standing on his board about a half mile downwind of the harbor entrance. This immediately seemed out of place among the flying spray of the whitecaps, and we soon ascertained he was waving his hands for help, so we made for him.
   At this point Anna was busy puking over the stern and would be uninvolved in subsequent events. Her son managed to sleep through it all.

   I had gone to the front of the vessel to better see and communicate with the paddleboarder we approached. As we got close we could see he looked to be a young guy, maybe 18, on not a paddleboard but a tiny ten foot sailboat with its sail down and in the water. Then we heard him yelling something at us that just curdled the blood -- "my mom is in the water somewhere over there! my mom is in the water!!" you could hear absolute terror in his voice.
   One interested aspect of this is that I was so focused on what I was doing I was barely aware of things that happened that I wasn't involved in. I believe Ryon relinquished the helm to Monique and with Dave doused the mainsail so we could manouver under motor better.

   As we came abreast of him, presumably to come upwind and down to him, the lad leapt from his boat. That was my impression anyway but everyone else agrees he "Forrest Gumped it" and walked right off the boat. On any account, as I saw him go in with no lifejacket, I was sure he'd just made his last bad decision. I remember glancing back at the cockpit and seeing everyone looking panicked, but no one had gotten the throwable lifering in hand yet so I yelled at someone to do that and went to the rail nearest the incoming swimmer. Astoundingly, he quickly swam the 20-30' between our vessels, against the whitecaps to our moving vessel! Thats the power of sheer terror I guess. He tried to grab our side and I swear it was like a scene from a movie, it was probably his only chance and he couldn't quite make it. I hit the deck and with one arm around a stanchion with one hand reached out and.. just got his fingers! But that was enough to get my other hand on his arm and from there we got him up. He of course immediately started frantically babbling at us that his mother was in the water and we needed to get her. We immediately started steaming that way and I went below to call the it in on the radio.

   "...may day may day this is Dawn Treader just outside of Dana Point Marina there is a woman in the water out here" I announced as clearly as I could into the receiver... and realized I wasn't hearing anything on the radio and didn't appear to be transmitting. I desperately looked for any buttons or knobs I'd need to push but didn't see any. I'd find out later when things calmed down that I'd needed to take a panel off the radio to see all the knobs, but in the heat of the moment I just had a receiver that wasn't transmitting and no buttons in sight. So I pulled out my cellphone and called 911. They were right on it, as soon as I informed them I was a vessel outside Dana Point marina they transferred me to harbor patrol, who seemed to have a slightly harder time wrapping their mind around the fact I wasn't in the marina.

   We set off looking for the next MOB (Man OverBoard). I think all of us were really worried there was a good chance we'd never find her out there. I'm told Ryon had managed to shimmy halfway up the mast for a better vantage point. Finally the kid himself spotted her. As we'd find out later, their vessel had capsized, they had had only one lifevest with them (shakes head), and his mom had started to drift away from the boat so he'd swam to her and given her the lifevest ... which I'm sure saved her life, notwithstanding he'd endangered it himself in the first place. but swimming back to his boat and standing on it was probably for the best because we'd have never seen them both in the water.

   We approached and threw the throwable (unless we were dragging it all along, lord if I know). I also remember I kept bringing lifejackets on deck, as I was trained to "throw everything that floats at them" and someone else kept throwing them back below I guess to make room. I also told someone who looked idle to get lots of towels ready.

   We ended up circling her what felt like twenty times. I was kind of annoyed, because there's a manouver called a Williamson Turn that Monique should have known with all her experience which would have gotten her to the location of the MOB, instead of a constant turn hard-over which would never ever arrive at the center of the circle. The MOB was very lucid and responsive. The red Vessel Assist boats had emerged from the harbor moments after being called, but had then hesitated in the harbor entrance with sirens blaring for what felt like an eternity. God forbid the one vessel going in tight circles might be the on who called them out. Finally they put two and two together and came out. Finally just as two red vessel assist boats and the sheriff boat pulled up around us Dave made a throw with the throwable that the MOB got a hand on. As she was being pulled, realizing I had a free moment, and thinking the woman clinging to the throwable with the red rescue boats in the shot right behind her would be an excellent photo I tried to get my phone out and on camera mode but I was too slow. This may seem kind of silly but in retrospect I think I was just still in "what can I do next > what can I do next > what can I do next >" mode and when I found she was being pulled in and people were standing by with towels my mind moved right on down the checklist to "take a picture!"

   The mother showed classic signs of hypothermia, ie didn't feel cold, wasn't shivering. I'm told her toes were blue. We gave her some towels and a change of clothes and told her to go below and get out of her wet clothes. Talking about it afterwords we were all a bit irked that she apparently declined to do this. Her son had been given similar directions and we were quite alarmed to find that what he had in fact done was put the clothes we provided him on OVER his wet clothes!! So our "note to self for future rescues" was to be really stern about the importance of getting out of your cold wet clothes. [though my dear friend the infinitely-experienced-sailor Asli has since reported to me that its not actually important to get them out of the wet clothes as logn as you put sometihng warm over them, the wet clothes will act as a heat-retaining wetsuit at that point I guess, which makes sense.]

   We then served them hot tea, which I vaguely recall I think you're not actually supposed to do, but being as it was only a vague recollection and I wasn't in charge here I didn't suggest otherwise. It didn't kill them on any account. I just googled this and the internet doesn't seem to think its a bad idea but I could swear someone told me it does something like makes your blood rush to your stomach area and therefore exacerbates the condition of your extremities or something.

   The only photo I got out of it was of vessel assist coming in some half hour later with their boat in tow.

   So yeah, that was a fairly exciting mother's day. (:

   To the west the sun is setting in a glorious display of oranges and reds, but no one pays it any mind. All 14 souls aboard the fishing schooner Kestrel are instead ranged along the higher end of the tilted deck, transfixed on the towering thunderheads to the east. Below the monsterous clouds jagged cracks of lightning flicker and flash in a grey wall of rain. The Kestrel bounds over ominously large rollers, propelled swiftly by the stiff breeze. Coming down hard into the trough between two waves a blast of salt spray douses everyone on deck, but no one flinches.

   "I reckon we ain't outrunning that thing" says Zeke, ignoring the water dripping from his face. Jacob turns and squints at the narrow black band on the horizon.
   "Aye, I reckon we're four miles out from the nearest shelter," says Jacob, wiping some of the water away from his eyes. "Four miles of that rocky lee shore to stay off of to get there."
   At a strange buzzing noise aloft, all eyes turn upward, and soon many a mouth is agape. Accompanied by a distinct humming noise, blue light flickers from the ends of the gaffs and masts.
   "What... in ... the ... blazes ... ??!" Thomas Johnson trails off.
   "Saint Elmo's Fire," explains the grey-bearded Henry Watson. "I seen it once before, when I was in the South Seas on a whaler. Some say it's electrics. Some say ... it's a portent"
   "Portent of what?" asks Jeb. Henry just gazes out at the approaching storm. Jacob anxiously clasps the pendant his wife had given him, a little ship's wheel set in a green stone.


   "ALL HANDS TO TAKE IN SAIL!!" The command suddenly jerks them all into action, the fascinating electrical phenomena almost entirely forgotten in a moment. Mad hurry or no, the masts can only take so much strain, and with the wind increasing, Captain Tadger can feel the strain as if it were his own back. "IN OUTTER, INNER, FORE, TWO REEFS IN THE MAIN!" And the mate is among them in a moment sending people scrambling to do the necessary work. The men run without complaint to execute the commands, knowing their lives depend on it.
   As a blast of cold rain hits them, the Mate clasps Jacob by the shoulder and says "You and Zeke, I need you to storm-furl the gaff topsail," and then he vanishes into the rain to help hold down the lines known as "widowmakers" on the jibs as they're hauled down.

   Jacob and Zeke immediately scramble to the shrouds, which, by way of decaying horizontal "ratlines" forms a relatively taut rope ladder up to the top of the mast. Halfway up, a strong gust of wind pins Jacob for a moment to the shrouds, and then just as quickly the boat crests one of the increasingly large waves and the mast, like a reverse-pendulum up in the sky, swings them outward. The wind howls through the dripping rigging.
   The shrouds, while broad at the base, all come together at the small top platform most of the way up the mast, which means they're very narrow near the top. Another gust of wind nearly twists Jacob around the flimsy ladder. He reaches up to pull himself onto the platform (really nothing more than two short horizontal beams to stand on) but nearly loses his grip on the wet wood. The precarious perch tilts and whirls wildly through the wet sky. Very carefully, he gets his arm around the mast above the platform, and hauls himself up. He steps around to the other side to let Zeke up, and together they set about folding in and wrapping up the gaff topsail as tightly as humanly possible. The ever increasing wind blasts and screams around them and fights to pull the canvas out of their hands. The mast groans with every roll and gust. As Jacob finishes the last knot, hanging on to the knot itself for dear life as he ties it, he realizes it is now very dark, the storm having swallowed them into its midst. Suddenly everything is illuminated by lightning that seems to be all around them at once, and the crash of thunder is immediate. In the momentary flash Jacob sees Zeke just below the platform, swinging wildly on his way back down the shrouds. The mast lets out another unearthly groan. As Jacob carefully lets himself down onto the narrow shrouds (keeping both arms firms around the mast as long as possible), the boat swings so far over he is sure he's about to be dipped backwards into the sea. As it comes back up he starts making his way down the shrouds, fighting the centrifugal force that seems to be pushing him in every direction but down. In a flash of lightning he sees the deck below disappear under roiling water as a wave crashes over it.
   As Jacob approaches the deck, he begins calculating how he was going to get from the base of the shrouds (which, naturally, run to the rail and actually connect to chain-plates down the side) to somewhere of relative safety without getting swept overboard. Suddenly there is a loud cracking noise somewhere above him and the whole mast quivers and jumps.

   The tallship HMS Bounty has been lost at sea off North Carolina in the midst of Hurricane Sandy.

   This as of within the hour I believe. So details are still filtering in and sketchy.

   As far as I can gather 14 crewmembers have been rescued from liferafts, and the Coast Guard is still searching for two more who are in the water.

   I have 2 or 3 personal friends on the crew of the Bounty, and even the crewmembers I don't know personally, you know we're a close community, and I'm concerned about their safety as if they were all my friends. And also, of course, I've lived the life they live aboardship, so it's all so very very very close to home.

   I'm just about literally worried sick about the two still in the water. Keep reloading newsfeeds. I ought to go to bed but how can I go to bed while two of the crewmembers are still IN THE SEA? ): ): ): ):

   I just wrote this entire thing and was on the second-to-last paragraph (had just written "and now for the most shocking coincidence") when LJ borked out and lost the whole thing (and apparently didn't autosave!), so this is take two. Anyway, this is the last leg of my recent journey. Previously I had left Ethiopia and, via Istanbul (where I found out my luggage was lost) headed for NYC.



Saturday, May 12th - At 8am on Sunday I found myself working aloft, 70 feet up the mast pictured above. While I was up there I reflected that at about the same time the previous morning I had been sipping Turkish coffee in Istanbul.
   I got in to NYC at JFK Saturday afternoon. My phone was dead and the recharger had been in my lost luggage, so I had to depend on skype on my computer and free wifi to do any communicating. This made life interesting and necessitated ordering more starbucks coffee than I'd have liked, esp since it really tasted inferior to the coffee I'd grown accustomed to in Ethiopia.
   Nevertheless several hours later I arrived in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In bridgeport Koriander has been working on the schooner Unicorn. The Sail Training Vessel Unicorn (STVU?) is a two masted schooner that has been laid up all winter and at this time was about a week from it's first sail of the year. As such they'd been working their buts off putting all the spars (yards, topmasts, gaffs and booms) and sails on.
   The STFU has an all-girl crew and takes only girls aboard in its "Sisters Under Sail" program. They wouldn't even let me spend the night on the boat! Though they'd let me help out with the uprig.



Sunday, May 13th - There were also a number of Xylocopa virginica --carpenter bees-- buzzing around the dock. I made friends with one:



Monday, May 14th - I'd been dreading my 30th birthday for years. I had also often wondered, especially during 2011 (the year of every plan falling through) what I'd be doing on my 30th birthday.
   As it turns out I had just returned from a second trip to Africa and was working on a tallship. The recent trips to Africa did a lot to help me feel better about it -- realizing that I have skills that can be of great benefit to humanity.

   Kori was able to get off work early at around 21:00 (yes that was early!), and we were able to find a restaurant that was still open and had some delicious cake. Kori gave me a pack of socks and a toothbrush for my birthday, and I've never been so happy to receive such mundane things (recall, my luggage was lost, I'd been wearing the same socks for three days)



Tuesday, May 15th - was another day on the boat. I had probably written something witty and interesting about this day the first time I wrote this entry.

Wednesday, May 16th - I had to flight to catch at 14:50 to head back home. Unfortunately, this was the day the Unicorn was finally getting off the dock for the first time and doing some maneuvers -- and it was doing this at the time I needed to leave the boat to go catch my train to NYC (around 09:20).
   I was able to leave a little later, the boat was still out maneuvering but I went ashore in the smallboat Pegasus. Incidentally that's exactly how my first journey to Africa began -- leaving the tallship Hawaiian Chieftain in the smallboat Pele to get ashore and catch a train.
   Fortunately I had planned an extra hour in my trip in case I missed any connections or encountered any delays. So this ate up that hour - I could still make it but without any delays.
   ...there were delays. I arrived at the airport around 14:30. Just in time to pay $150 to reschedule for the same flight the next day.

   Phone was still dead. Once again turned to skype to try to contact the world, and this time skype helped me not only in making the phone calls but I was able to log into the non-free airport wifi and have it billed through skype by the minute rather than pay the $7.99 one day fee the airport normally wants. Skype has really helped me a lot on this trip.
   My friend Pavel told me to come to his work downtown so I made my way there. He happens to be a programmer at a company that writes programs for cell phones -- so they had every imaginable recharger on hand! So I was finally able to recharge my phone.
   Pavel said I could crash at his place but Kori talked me into coming back up to Connecticut for the evening -- the first mate had even said I could sleep aboardship that night.


(The view as I departed the Unicorn)

Thursday, May 17th - Kori actually had the day off so she accompanied me into NYC as far as Jamaica Station, where I boarded the airport tram.
   As they scanned my ticket at the gate the machine beeped and printed out a new ticket stub -- this one listed my seat as 1D. Having accrued over 25,000 miles on Delta by now, I'd been upgraded to "silver medallion" frequent flyer status, with automatic upgrades to first class if available.
   In first class they were bringing us complimentary beer and wine before everyone was even seated. There was plenty of legroom, and the food actually tasted decent! I don't know where they found this relic of an airplane though -- it had no screens for watching movies!

   And now the most shocking coincidence: My flight home had a layover in Atlanta, and so had my flight out to Africa five weeks ago. I take my seat on the flight back to OC and who do I find in the seat next to me? The exact same guy who sat right beside me on the flight from OC to Atlanta five weeks ago!!!! Not in front of me or across the aisle but once again in the seat directly to my left. The same dude. Five weeks later! He'd been there and back twice in that time though.

   My parents met me at the airport in OC and we immediately proceeded across the street to an El Torito restaurant where I had a delicious burrito and a margarita.

   The End.


Epilogue A week later my luggage finally arrived. It appears to have been run over -- things that aren't even fragile, such as my stick of deoderant, were smashed. Of the four jars of honey given to me at the honey processing plant three of them were utterly obliterated. So the inside of my luggage had been soaking in hoeny filled with glass shards for a week. Surviving objects that were not shattered look like they have shrapnel pockmarks from the glass shards.