Atlantic Passage

After many delays the final report on the tragic loss of Laura Gainey, who was washed overboard from the Picton Castle December 6, 2006 has been released.

You can read the full report here:

http://www.tsb.gc.ca/en/reports/marine/2006/m06f0024/m06f0024.asp

An interesting read and I recommend it if you want to get details of this tragedy.  It also helps to put “life at sea” into some perspective.

Do the results of this report give me pause?

No, not really.   There are no guarantees in life and CHOOSING to go to sea in a traditional sailing vessel (or even a modern engine powered one for that matter) has a higher risk than sitting behind a desk all day.  Nobody goes on these vessels without CHOOSING to do so.  Press gangs are long gone. 

Like climbing Mt Everest, hang gliding or skydiving or any other edgy activity there is risk.  The risk of events that cannot be foreseen giving us a smack upside the head to remind us of mortality and our fragility.  Tragic events such as this, and the various reports and evaluations that always result serve as a reminder to be prepared as best we can and to always “keep one hand for yourself and one for the ship”. 

Thanks for reading.
KJ

So another week has blazed by.

Just 12 days till I get on a plane and leave my current life behind.

I get an odd reaction when I sit down long enough to think about that, part fear and part excitement. It’s a bit like when I was a kid, I’d always get this same odd feeling the last two weeks of August before heading back to school.

Luckily I haven’t had much time for doing that kind of thinking.

Mark from Tremar Computer Solutions, who along with his team will be looking after my day job for the next couple of months, started job shadowing me this week. I figured that would be better than hoping my documentation was good enough that he didn’t get blindsided by anything I forgot. Turns out that was a good call.

There is an amazing number of subtle and odd details in my day to day work. Things that I do automatically and don’t even think to write down, even when I’m trying to document a process in detail. Working with Mark this week showed me lots of places where such details were mysteriously absent from my documentation. Blah.

Yesterday (Saturday) was spent setting up a new mainfloor “utility room” to house our new portable washer. I also moved a lot of junk around and tried to rationalize the layout of our living room to make things a bit easier for Jayne while I’m away.

I also started (again) reviewing my lists of stuff. Packing will start in earnest this week. Jayne suggested I should post a picture of everything laid out before it gets mashed into my duffel bag, just for the record.

Everybody tells me not to take too much stuff and that I can get anything I’m missing through the magic of plastic money but my mind fixes on “6 months!” and wants me to cover every eventuality. I would end up looking like an overloaded packhorse if I did that.

One of my clients mentioned he had a friend who went to Australia for a year and took a huge pile of stuff but came back with a single backpack’s worth. Whenever I have traveled in the past I always took way more stuff than I ever used or even touched so I’ll just have to be aware of that tendency. I suspect the contrast between the pile of things to pack and the volume of space in which to pack it will help.

There is one aspect of this trip I hadn’t thought much about before now and that is preparing food for 40 people when my turn on “Galley Duty” coincides with the cook’s day off which is Sunday. So I’m interested in any recipes for easy things to cook for 40ish people, preferably with simple ingredients or easily substitutable ones. If you have any suggestions/recipes/ideas feel free to include them in a comment.

Thanks for reading.
KJ

An interesting week

This past week I spent mostly doing stuff at my day job while trying not to imagine that the “light at the end of the tunnel” is actually an oncoming train.

My bright idea was to try to improve the infrastructure at work so that it will be very robust while I’m away.  I say bright idea because it means making some big changes.  Last weekend we shut the system down to install a much larger UPS with several hours of potential uptime at current usage.  On Tuesday we installed a 3 TeraByte NetApp disk array, preparatory to moving all our direct attached data on to it.

Unfortunately the power distribution in the rack couldn’t handle the increased load and blew a breaker. Anybody who has worked in data centres knows that awful feeling that goes with sudden silence!

Luckily everything came back up without a problem once we added another circuit to the rack.

Then we spent three very long days configuring the storage device and copying all the data and testing applications and data access.  We completed the job last night relatively early so I have an unexpectedly “free weekend”.

Much thanks for the great work by Paul and Jens from NetApp whose vast experience working on systems many times our size kept everything moving along.  They also made sure to keep me in on the process so that I understand what was being done and why.  Not that I will remember much of it 6 months from now.

Needless to say with all that going on the preparations for my passage and maintenance of the DTI were on hold.

With three weeks to go before actually getting on a plane  it’s make a list and check it twice time.

If that light I see is actually a train I hope it’s the one from Hogwarts at least

Thanks for reading
KJ

P.S. The photo of the Picton Castle in the Header was taken by my friend John Gareri a couple of weeks ago. He has been onboard since May.

Check out his blog at http://atlanticrounds.blogspot.com/

This is my first entry to the log of my journey aboard the barque Picton Castle.

My trip starts officially on November 12, 2008 in Mallorca Spain and will go until May 23, 2009 when we arrive in Lunenberg N.S.

So why start posting nearly a month in advance?

Three reasons really:

1) So there is something for good people like you to read before I go.

2) To chronicle some of the stuff I have to do and worries I have to deal with.

3) So I can try to explain, to you and to myself, just why I want to leave my loving wife and daughter, my job, my day to day life with all its security and solidity, for 6 months on the wet moving deck of a sailing ship.

The following quote from Samuel Johnson sums up how many people see such a trip:

“No man will go to sea who can contrive to have himself put in jail, for going to sea is being in jail with the added chance of being drowned.”

Lovely.

So why go?

I have always had a fascination with ships. Any ships, from Roman galleys to Napoleonic-era frigates to early ironclads, WWI battleships, Cape Horn grain racers and B.C. stern wheelers.

Over the last few years I’ve been fascinated with the complexities and beauty of classic sailing ships.  All those miles of rigging and acres of canvas moving tons of cargo across the seas of the world, by the power of the winds alone, under the control of surprisingly small groups of skilled men.

For me to be able to “learn the ropes” and actually make such a beautiful thing as a ship work, to cross a great ocean and experience the life of a seaman in the Age of Sail, is a dream come true.

But other than dreams why…

Perhaps it is only to be able to put flesh on the bones of all the stories and accounts I have read.

Perhaps it is to test my will, and what passes for brawn, against nature in all her awesome power.

Perhaps it is simply to escape my “normal” life, to get outside my head and “off the net.” To be in a place where I don’t “know the ropes”, where I have to challenge myself. To meet new people, see new places, and learn new skills.

Perhaps all of the above or none of the above at all.

I’m not sure I really know just yet.

I intend to find out, however, and by the time I get back, perhaps I will be able to say here why I went.

Or not

I do know that John Masefield said it pretty well:

Sea-Fever
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sails shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again,for the call of the running tide,
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea gulls crying,

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover,
And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Thanks for reading.
KJ

It’s a work in progress so please check again soon.