Atlantic Passage

Merry Christmas! Last night we hung a “clean” sock outside our bunks and in the morning each one had some trinkets in it from a sack into which we each put some little goodies. I got a book “Baumgartner’s Bombay” by Anitabr Desai and a brass keyfob in the shape of a porthole.nbsp; I now have the only bunk in the salon with a porthole

Today was a fabulous sunny day with very light winds.nbsp; We drifted along off the coast of Africa taking our time and enjoying the day.

Around 3:00 this afternoon the Captain ordered the ship hove to and swim call was ordered. The crew took eager advantage and piled into the calm deep blue sea. I was ordered into the maintop as shark watch. This was cool as the water was so clear that from up there it looked like the crew were flying and swooping in the air.

There followed a great present opening that took nearly an hour. I got all kinds ofnbsp; great goodies, chocolates, a nice cuban cigar (thanks Kolin), some licorice ropes and a DVD with all his pics from the first leg of the trip from David and a number of other goodies including a replica “piece of eight” used in the Pirate Master show that was filmed on board the Picton Castle.

For dinner we had roast suckling pig which was barbecued during the day plus a prodigious amount of cookies, cakes and pie. Yummy!

As the sun set a group of people sat on the hatch with guitar, boran, fiddle, penny whistle and several drums acquired in Moroco, playing and improvising complex music. It was awesome!

A long slow smoke of my pipe in the twilight while the music played was a lovely end to a beautiful day.

I hope you all had a great Christmas with your loved ones.

Thanks for reading.

KJ

Last night the wind dropped to an almost flat calm.  We were ghosting along barely keeping steerage way. The sky was ablaze with stars. It’s odd to see Polaris so low in the sky.

There are starting to be new stars to the South that I have never seen before.

Lookout was really cool. The calm suface of the sea has alot of flashes and sparkles from small sea creatures. Occaisionally there are diffuse bursts of light that are coming from deeper down. There is an almost constant haze that masks the horizon so the sea just seems to turn into starry sky without a break.

Today is Christmas Eve and all morning there has been a beehive of activity with present wrapping and decorating. nbsp;The ship looks quite fancy in her Christmas sparkly bits There is Christmas music playing from someones Ipod on the welldeck and the there is a bright blue cloudless sunny sky above and a calm deep blue sea below!

When I get off watch this afternoon there will be a Fancy Dress Marlinspikenbsp;and tomorrow we have present opening and Christmas dinner.

If the Thanksgiving dinner was any indication it should be great.

More later

It’s later, I just came off the afternoon 12-4 watch. Spent most of it stringing popcorn on thread. We also calculated the speed of the ship by timing the passage of a piece of paper or popcorn a it drited along beside the ship, the formula to calculate the speed in knots is 36/time for the object to drift 60.8 ft.

For the record we were sailing along at 2 knots.

When it was my trick on the helm I was instructed to sail her ‘full and by” rather than a specific compass course. Sailing “full and by” means to sail as close to the wind as we can. The helmsman keeps his eyes on the windward leach of the main royal sail, the highest and smallest square sail. It is braced in a little sharper to the wind so it luffs first allowing the helmsman to correctnbsp;by falling off slightly.

We had a very nice marlinspike with champagne punch and a prodigious amount of cookies baked by the various watches late at night. After dinner which was a simple penne and sauce, we hung around talking till the sun started to set below the horizon. As I watched the sun set Isaw the fabled Green Flash! An awesome way to end the day of Christmas Eve.

Thanks for reading

KJ

Saw dolphins frolicking at the bows last night while I was on lookout.

There was no moon so it was really dark and they appeared as ghostly phosphorescent swoops and curls around the bows. Everywhere the sea breaks it glows in afaint greenish light.

I seem to have caught a cold, blah, plus with my sore back standing is a pain so lookout and helm were not real fun.

My new watch is a good crowd. I learned how to fill in the log while underway lastnight from the 2nd Mate Paul who is our watch officer.

The afternoon watch was really nice and war. The weather was great, steady winds and bright sunshine. There was a small hawk flying around and the debate was whether it was lost or migrating or what. That was the only thing other than us on the sea all day. The sea is a wonderful dark blue.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and Kolin, the Bosun, says there is no shipwork so it should be a good day too

Thanks for reading.

KJ

This morning dawned hazy and calm.

I discovered that I have caught a cold despite all my precautions so now I’m stuck at sea for 10 days with astuffed up head. I also threw my back out working in an odd position on Saaturdy and it hurt a bunch to straighten up this morning. Blah.

We heaved up the port anchor this morning and found it fouled by thestarboard anchor chain. The ship has been swinging as the wind grew light. A bight of chain was drapped over the stock of the anchor and had to be lifted in such a way that it would fall away on its own. Took manning all five capstan bars to get it don but once free we were able to hoist itaboard and get it “catted” ie lashed to the cathead which is a stout bar that sticks diagonally off the focsle deck for that purpose.

Once the crew that had gone ashore this morning returned, with Veronica our new AB and Mate, we hoisted up the starboard anchor and motored away from Gomera. We have started our 10 day sail down the coast of Africa to Senegal.

They have reorganized the wtches, I’m now on the 12-4 watch which means I’ll get to do more ship work during the day, oh goody more sanding and painting.  Bruce tells me the biggest problem with 12-4 is that breakfast and lunch break up the off watch making it difficult to get enough sleep. I’ll have to watch that.

Thanks for reading.

KJ

Had a great night last night (Thursday) no watch 

When I got up I discovered that we were surrounded by cruise ships!

This huge ship is docked right beside us.  It’ amazing that these things
actually sail.
They have  WiFi on board but you have to  give them a room number and
pin number of some sort… blah

I spent the day varnishing the mizzen topmast, the one they took down on

Tuesday. We also did a bunch of training on lines and procedures.

Late in the day we unloaded a huge pile of fresh food and stored it away in preparation for the trip.

Our watch is off for the next two days (Saturday and Sunday) so
hopefully  I’ll be be able to get a chamce to wander around and see some of the city and get a connection somewhere.

We are officially supposed to sail on the 18th which is Tuesday.  I’m
looking forward to that with a mixture of fear and excitement a you can
imagine.

Had a great night last night (Thursday) no watch 

When I got up I discovered that we were surrounded by cruise ships!

This huge ship is docked right beside us.  It’ amazing that these things actually sail. They have  WiFi on board but you have to  give them a room number and pin number of some sort… blah

I spent the day varnishing the mizzen topmast, the one they took down on Tuesday. We also did a bunch of training on lines and procedures.

Late in the day we unloaded a huge pile of fresh food and stored it away in preparation for the trip.

Our watch is off for the next two days (Saturday and Sunday) so
hopefully  I’ll be be able to get a chamce to wander around and see some of the city and get a connection somewhere.

We are officially supposed to sail on the 18th which is Tuesday.  I’m
looking forward to that with a mixture of fear and excitement a you can
imagine.

I joined the ship Tuesday after a very long walk across the seafront of Palma. It seems that the cabbies won´t go to this dock here just saying ¨Military Military¨over and over again. So I had them drop me at the cruise ship port and I walked. As i did I saw that they were right there is amilitary base between the city and the port that the road goes around. Eventually I hauled all my stuff around and onto the pier.

The on watch crew were busy downrigging the mizzen topmast which is quite the operation. (edited to change the name of the mast proper like!)

Once aboard it was as if I had never left, everybody welcomed me back with open arms and lots of ´noshit there I was stories¨.

Once that settled down I was assigned a bunk, number 32, upper bunk on the port forward side of the salon if you´re interested. I then stowed all my stuff and was amazed that the sapce was much larger than I thought. In fact several people mentioned that they were surprised at how little I brought, now I´m nevrvous again about what I forgot.

They put me to work rustbusting the shrouds they had unrigged. Just like old times

I stood my first dock watch last night between 3:00am and 5:00am `äll by me onsies, savy´. It was wonderful and incredibly quiet, so quiet that the squeaks from my shoes on the dew damp deck was loud.

Today we spent the day sanding the inside of the galley preperatory to getting it repainted as well as studying all the lines and eating really well. Kolin tells me I will be on the 4-8 watch at sea which means I will be able to see both the sunrise and sunset. I look forward to that.

Tonight I will do another dock watch, 5:00 till 6:00 but this time I will have another crewmember with me.

More later

Thanks for Reading

KJ

Today we went up into the high alpine. We walked up to the toe of a glacier at a place called Morteratsch which is between St Moritz and the Bernina Pass that leads to Italy. It was a beautiful sunny day with very little wind. The scenery was stunning you can check it out here

We then drove up the road to the top of the Bernina Pass where the snow is already a meter deep. Then we went back down and through St Moritz past the lovely lakes and looked down the steep pass that leads into Italy 1600m below.

It’s been great staying with Francois and Ursula, they are marvelous hosts. Thank you guys it has been fabulous!

I think Jayne and I will definitely have to come back sometime.

Tomorrow I fly to Palma Mallorca and try to find my ship so I can finally get to sea.

Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading.
KJ

I did manage to get to Zurich eventually.

After flying to Frankfurt first, and then finding that Lufthansa had cancelled my flight to Zurich too, I had to take another one on which my bags never got loaded… I was picked up by my friend Francois and his lovely wife Ursula and taken down to the town of Scuol in South Eastern Switzerland. This town is in the beautiful Engiadina valley and the house we are staying in is 400 years old!

When I got up this morning my bags were waiting outside my room having been delivered from Zurich Post Express by the efficient Zurich Airport Lost and Found

Today Francois and Ursula took me around the town and out to a couple of beautiful little villages up on the sides of the valley. We also went to two castles one in ruins the other, Tarasp, which has been restored and had a look around. You can see a few of the pictures on a Google Web Album here.

Tomorrow we are going to go up to the high alpine, weather permitting, should be nice. The valleys here look very much like valleys in BC but there are houses on the mountain sides in many places and some villages are perched way up high. The tall Larch trees are all turning colour much like the ones in our mountains although the colour is more orange than yellow (they look rather like pine beetle killed pines to me).

It’s hard to imagine that just 3 days from now I will finally be aboard ship getting ready to begin my sailing trip.

Thanks for reading.
KJ

So tonight is the last night I will spend on this side of the Atlantic until late May 2009.

I’m mostly packed, the pile was surprisingly small when I started putting it into my duffel bag.  I wonder what I’m missing?

It’s an odd feeling knowing that after nearly 18 months of planning and worrying I’m almost ready to head out.  Not exactly anti-climactic or anything but odd nonetheless.

Winter has finally arrived in Calgary with some wet snow on the ground and temps around 0C.  With any luck after I get to Spain on Monday, where the forecast says it will be partly cloudy and 19C, I won’t see snow again till next year some time

More soon.

K

My Last Night on West Side of the Atlantic (part two)

Quick crosscheck of the packing discovered a couple of “nice to haves” that were missing so Jayne and I headed out to pick them up.  We took the long way home via Bragg Creek. A lovely drive through snowy country in the moonlight.

Once back I repacked the missing items and called my Dad to say bye.

Maggie from the Ship’s Office sent me a map for Palma showing whereabouts the ship is supposed to be berthed on Monday.  It looks like it’s a mile or so from my hotel but not too bad.  There are a bunch of Webcams you can check out here.  Perhaps the ship will show up on Monday.

Tomorrow morning bright and early I have to head to the airport and get this show on the road.

Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading.

KJ