Sunday July 12th: post internet in Bath update,
I walked from the ship to downtown and ran into Mike on the way. I told him I was heading for lunch and a thrift store in town and shared the bleak news of another day of sandwiches for lunch at the ship. He decided to join me and we decided to go find food. We looked downtown, but didn’t find anything that thrilled us. I found an internet cafe and updated my blog.
We had heard on the ship that there is a Holiday Inn hotel nearby that had a Bounty Tavern and was themed to our ship with a partial model, so off we went to find it. After many vague directions and a city map that was fancifully scaled we found the restaurant and the store. I bought a nice wool sweater for the upcoming cold.
The Bounty tavern was pretty cool. The ship’s stern in the lobby had very similar gingerbread work to our ship. The bartender got a kick out of us being crew on the ship and we were the only ones in there at four in the afternoon. Mike and I had a couple beers and dinner/lunch. I had incredible New England chowder, imagine that, as well as a nice chunk of beef and mashed potatoes.
We walked back to town and I walked and wandered my way slowly back to the ship. I really enjoyed all the old homes and greenery. I got back to the ship and just hung around planning to go to bed early.
Monday July 13th
Woke up at 7am and got the ship all ready to go after breakfast. The previous night some of our passengers had arrived and more came during breakfast. Another full load of 12 passengers. We got the ship under way nicely and motored out of the river and into the Atlantic. The Kennebec river was just as beautiful as when we arrived and this time we saw a pair of Bald Eagles.
We were still all hands until after work party, so I did little projects until our work party and spent the afternoon doing things aloft like moving footropes behind a mast and oiling wood. We loosed sails a little after 3pm and got on our watch late. Dan has officially been made Bosun and so he is no longer part of our watch, which means we are down to 3 sailors. So, we had to drop our navigation position.
Thankfully we have 5 passengers on our watch and a couple were willing to help out with our chores. The watch went by quickly as we were all very busy. Dinner was cooked by Cookie and was a great Thai chicken and rice with peanut sauce. We found out that tonight Cookie is officially leaving the ship in Halifax to work on Shennendoah for financial reasons. We are all sad to see him go, being a very loved member of the crew.
At the end of the watch I wrangled Amber, who had foolishly come on deck early, into helping me furl the main royal. I was thinking as I climbed the last stretch and laid out on the yard how amazing it is that I have become so comfortable in the rig, especially on the royal where the ratlines end several feet before the yard and climbing becomes a little creative. We got it done, I cleaned up the lines, and got relieved shortly thereafter. Once below the captain said “Grant you didn’t get away quick enough” as more dishes had appeared, so he helped Sarah and I finish them off and after being on deck for 12 hours I went straight to my bunk.
Tuesday July14th
Woke up for 4-8am watch and found the sky already starting to lighten up to the east. The sunrise was really quite beautiful. We washed the deck and jumped aloft and set the main and fore courses. I was very sleepy during the watch and grinned widely when my head hit the pillow.
Cookie made some great pizza for lunch and for work party I was sent aloft with a couple of guys to scrape down the fore topgallant mast. The point of scraping it down is to get to a new layer of wood and get rid of the old slush (beef tallow acting as a grease). Scraping down that 15 ft of wood took the whole work party since it was so awkward and unwieldy to scrap up there. I was unhappy as we hung there and later, when Mike and I were sitting on the fore topgallant yard, one leg on a stay one leg on the billowing sail, I turned and said to him “Mike we are swaying well over 100ft in the air sailing on the open Atlantic and doing brightwork.” I laughed and we both smiled while we returned to our scraping with a little more good nature.
We also found out today the office told us the wrong day we were expected in Halifax. We now have until Thursday to get there, so we reduced sail. On our evening watch we saw a pod of whales spouting and, though we never got to see one too close, we could easily see their backs gliding across the surface.
Dinner was wonderful. I sat on the stern grating and ate my dinner on a nice rolling sea with the deeply angled sun warming my shoulders. It was another high moment in my day.
The sunset was fairly good, the sun was a deep fiery red as it sank the horizon. Most interestingly, however, I saw my first green flash today. The movies exaggerate the phenomenon, it is not a really a big flash, but as the last bit of the sun sinks, for a brief moment it turns green. Not green in the way you could consider it green, but a unquestionably deep and bright green. Nothing extravagant, but still an incredible natural wonder.
I chatted on deck for a few minutes while watching the rest of the sun set, ate a cookie Christine was baking, and went off to my bunk.
Wednesday July 15th
Woke up for the 4-8am watch and came on deck to neon colors. Neon pink and orange giving way to a fading neon blue. I chose to begin our watch rotation on bow watch, selfishly because I wanted a front row seat to what was becoming a great sunrise.
While scanning the horizon, jus on the edge of the sunrise, I noticed something peaking above the horizon. At first I thought it to be an island, but it had no lights. Then as we got closer and its shape more defined looking through binoculars I wondered if it might be an aircraft carrier or submarine given a raised superstructure and flat deck. The possibility of a funny shaped island was still in the running. Still, all of these options should have had navigation lights on them. Finally, as we got closer still, I noticed the square breaks in the deck, outlines of shipping containers: its a container ship! More interestingly, it is a container ship that was hull down from us the entire time (hull down meaning that its hull is beyond the curvature of the earth, we could only see the uppermost part of the ship sticking above the earth). The rest of the watch the ship was going the same direction as our ship and so she remained peaking over the horizon. Well, I thought it was cool.
During this episode the sunset had faded to less extreme colors. Some clouds above had become ribbed with burgundy and I watched the expected area of the sunrise with binoculars. I can only convey the speed of that sunrise, as the sun burst across the barrier of the horizon, with sound. A sudden then fading boom or even just a deep roar would better help convey the violence with which the sun escaped the horizon.
Later during the morning watch I spotted a pair of matching topsail schooners to our stern. I instantly laughed because they could only be our French comrades from Bermuda. Our friends were sailing along nicely, but did not appear to be heading for Halifax. We’ll have to see what this is about. I spotted another topsail schooner and with the help of satellite boat tracking (AIS) and some other sailors we figured her out to be the Amistad. After I got off watch I ate breakfast, took a shower, and went to sleep.
Woke up for lunch and was sent out to oil the jibboom. I enjoyed oiling on the tip of the ship as we came closer and closer to Halifax. We are about 20 hours early so we went off to Cow Bay just North of Halifax. We came in and anchored under sail. All the crew was working well and ready, we were looking pretty good bracing around, flashing in and out sails.
We Anchored and had a nice barbeque for dinner while I was on anchor watch for the last two hours of our watch, I was busy running around doing boat checks, plotting our position, and doing dishes from dinner. Most importantly, however, the other members of my watch would then stand the 4-8am anchor watch and I would get to sleep the whole night through! After I got off watch we played Around Cape Horn for the passengers who got a a great kick out of it. I listened to some music and leisurely went to sleep.
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