A long day! Sunday Mar 15,09
It was an all hands wakeup at 5:30 this morning!
We were aloft loosing the topsails and courses and then onto the windlass by 6:00am.
We heaved up the anchor, sailed off the hook and are sailing towards Grenada under all squar sails but the main sail. Our watch had the deck for the first watch. I had helm for an hour and it was really tricky steering as we are going directly downwind.
They expect us to be arriving in Grenada around 2:00pm. Then, IF all goes according to plan, we will load the lumber and head out to Bequia on an overnight sail arriving sometime tomorrow morning.
This is going to be a very long day.
More later…
It’s later and it has indeed been a very long day.
The bad side of the day was losing my glasses overboard when I was up on the yard working to furl and gasket up the sails as we came into St Georges. The footrope from the upper topsail yard swept them off my head as I was trying to duck under another line. I even had a safety strap on them. Oddly enough I didn’t notice they were gone until I got back on deck. It’s a good thing I have a spare set even if they aren’t trifocals 
Once we were anchored at St Georges I went ashore with a gang to get the the lumber ready to be towed out to the ship. This was two very large slabs of wood each one 20′ long 18″ wide and 1′ thick weighing nearly two tons each!
It was probably a lot like loading an 18 pounder onto frigate, except we only had to move two not 24
Once we had them at the ship it took nearly two hours and a lot of work with tackles, blocks and the capstan. Once safely laying on the deck we had to drag one back into the breezeway where it will be lashed down. The other on is currently lying just forward of it and I think we will get to move it in the morning.
We are staying here at St Georges over night and will sail for Bequia tomorrow after we get everything shipshape again.
Thanks for reading.
KJ
Here are some pictures of Tyrrel Bay and the masive chunks of wood alongside.
March 19th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Hi KJ, thanks for your very interesting and well done blog and pictures. I think that the 15 March entry regarding the lumber has a glitch. The lumber floated and hence weighed bit less than 64 lbs/cubic foot (density seawater). If these guys were 20′ x 18″ x 12″ they have 30 cubic foot of wood. This means they can’t weigh more than 1800 pounds, bit less than one ton. Other than that one nit, nothing else to pick! Keep up the good work, say “Hi!” to Susie for me, best, John R
March 20th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Thanks for the comment John!
I should have paced them out better these balks are closer to 35′ long and more like 18″ thick which would make them more than 2 tons if neutrally buoyant.
FWIW According to this cool site:
“http://www.allhandsondeck.org/building/lesson4_home.php” a naval cannon in the 19th century weighed around 230 lbs/lb of shot so an 18 pounder weighed two tons.
KJ
P.S. Susie says ‘Hi’ and made me promise to mention her occasionally for you