Bath, Maine: Lobsters, Mosquitos, and an Irish Pub.

Friday July 10th

Woke with a little more difficulty than normal for a work day. The weather was beautiful yet again. The captain discussed our Lobster options and it was decided crew funds would pay for half of our lobsters, so I would be paying 4$ for a lobster dinner. We got to work and I began painting the yards.

The coast guard showed up and had us do another orange overboard drill. The orange was saved and the inspector really grilled us with fire drill questions; I think we did pretty well. Painted more yards after lunch and we opened up for tours at 2pm.

I was supposed to keep working as it was port watch’s turn for tours, but somebody was busy so I stood in on tour rotation for the rest of the afternoon. I had a blast talking with everyone and when I got off work I went to see if anyone was interested in hitting a store in town. We asked the captain and he gave us the keys to the jeep and I got to drive us into town. The jeep was stick and I had a blast driving around Maine and guessing at the traffic laws.

I bought a new pair of pants and a new, bigger, bottle of port. We came back to the ship and the galley had a snack ready for the crew as our lobster was being brought to us by a group of sea  scouts that were coming to see the ship at 7pm. The neighbor of the leader of the sea scouts is a lobster fisherman and gave us a deal on our dinner. We were all excited with anticipation for dinner and we were not disappointed. Easily the best the lobster I have ever had. Cookie  seemed to have enjoyed it more than me, however (Photo Courtesy of Mitch the carpenter) .

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That night I hung around the ship and went to sleep early as I had to rise at 7am, Saturday being my day on watch. I watched Master and Commander again for the first time since coming on board Bounty and enjoyed it much more. I understood the lingo and enjoyed a new layer to the film.

Saturday July 11th

Woke for my day on watch and did boat checks until we started tours. Met some nice people and the day went by fairly uneventfully. In the evening, the whaler’s sailing rig Gabe and others had been working on was finished. We all gathered on deck as it was lowered into the water, waiting to see how long it lasted before the thing went to hell. The consensus was about 45 seconds.

Mitch and Gabe got the sail up and went for it. To the joy and immense surprise of us all she sailed admirably! The boat could not go to weather (up wind) for its life, but down wind or on a reach she was moving at a great clip. Our inflatable recue boat went out to make sure everything ended well and eventually brought them in when the light got too dim.

Greg the mate covered my watch and with a few other of the crew we went over to the maritime museum to listen to some sea shanties being performed. The performers were pretty good, but they played mostly immensely obscure, modern, or un sailing related shanties, so most of us snuck out of the back after an hour or so. I spent the rest of the night doing boat checks and hanging out with my shipmates.

Sunday July 12th

My day off in Maine. Woke up at 7am and couldn’t get back to sleep so I went and checked out the Maine Maritime Museum. The museum and this whole area is known for housing several shipyards since the 1800’s. The museums uses several buildings from an old shipyard and focuses on Maine shipbuilding and maritime activities. They had some incredible exhibits and I had to keep an eye on myself so as not to spend too much of my day off there.

After that I went back to the ship to organize my laundry and do a few little personal chores. Then I went downtown to roam around and again seek out the ever elusive internet connection.

Tomorrow we leave for Halifax at 5am full of passengers.