Atlantic Passage

Happy May Day, Beltaine to you all!

May your hoop be merry and your pole be stout!

Had a very busy day today.

I worked bending on a new inner jib out on the jib boom. The sails are held on by “robands” which are the unraveled strands of a manilla rope. All the sails on the ship are held to their respective yards and the metal hanks that hold the staysails to the stays by what is essentially twisted grass! It doesn’t look very strong but in aggregate they can pull the entire ship in rain and sun, gale or calm.

I also helped the Engineer, Chris, test a firehose from the engine room, hung it up in the rigging to dry then connected it back up in the engine room and flaked it back into it’s box.

We had a workshop on wire splicing and a swim call.

To top it off we had BBQ’ed ribs and chicken for dinner. Ahhhh lovely after a hard days work in the Sun.

Going to go ashore tomorrow to check out this famous bar called Foxy’s, owned by one of the premier citizens of Jost Van Dyke. John tells me there is WiFi ashore as well so it’s all good

Thanks for reading and Bright Mayday Blessings to everyone!
KJ

We arrived in Jost van Dyke this afternoon around 5:00pm.

This morning we started hoisting the anchor within minutes of getting back on board at 11:00am. We were under full sail heading for Jost Van Dyke within 10 minutes of getting the anchor up. We were all hands for the day doing some ship work with several people working on Mr Bones caulking and sealing the planks. The plan is to launch this boat sometime while we are here.

Sailing through the Virgin islands looks very much like the Gulf Islands with lots of narrow channels and lots of charter boats going every which way. The radio traffic from them is pretty entertaining. We heard one the other night that is a good example. Lynsey heard this call to the Coast Guard requesting assistance because, apparently, the boats engine failed and they couldn’t figure out how to turn around. They were “sailing” south with their jib set and couldn’t figure out how to go North! To add insult to injury they threw their EPIRB overboard to attract attention. Sigh.

Paul was telling me about another call he heard where a charter boat called in requesting “more anchors” since they were out for two days and needed some more…!?! Apparently they just dropped the line over board in the morning when they left the anchorage and since the boat only had two they need some more to keep going.

It should be interesting here as the ship is well known and gets a lot of attention from people.

I’m on watch Friday and off Saturday Sunday so will get a chance to check it out.

Thanks for reading.
KJ