month-delayed entry from luderitz-->st. Helena transit


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Africa » Namibia » Luderitz
March 6th 2011
Published: April 20th 2011
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March 8, 2011 Tuesday night, half way between luderitz and st. Helena (1300 miles between, about 670 there)
So for recap:
Feb 10th – arrived cape town
Feb 11th – moved on board
Feb 23rd – left cape town for luderitz, 8-12 watch
Foggy, cold, damp passage
Feb 27th – arrived to luderitz in fog
2 days off in luderitz,
Worked a day
March 3rd – left for st. Helena
March 5th – traded time
March 6th – dogged watches to change from 8-12 watch to 12-4 watch
I am writing this entry en route to St. Helena, the island where Napoleon was exiled. I have learned that there is no airport there making the only way to/from is via ship. I am steadily getting acclimated to life on board. We work 4 hours on and have 8 hours off. Surprisingly, switching to the 12-4 has not gone as difficult as expected. I was originally on the 8-12 watch (working 8am-12pm and 8pm-12am) which has the most “normal” sleep hours. Now my schedule is going kinda as follows:
I get off watch a little after 4am (this watch will include any combination of following: an hour on helm (steering the ship), an hour on lookout (on the focsle head looking out for other ships, changing weather patterns, cloud formations for oncoming squalls, and sea life including flying fish, tuna, dolphins and various sea birds). Lookout is also known as “self-reflection time”. This hour is followed up by a ship check to make sure there are no fires a brewing, faucets left on or leaking in the bilges. The watches also include any sail handling that needs to be done, and make coffee and hot water for the next oncoming watch (the galley fitted with a 19th century oven also gets fresh water via a hand-pump). I then sleep from a little after 4 until about 9:30 or so (breakfast is served at 7:30 and 8am), will get a tea and some kind of snack and hang out on the aloha deck (at the stern of the ship) to wake up a little. Then, I’ll work on any of the projects I have going at the moment (just finished my sheath for my rig today, also working on a ditty bag which is a hand-sewn canvas bag of tools. All of the skills that are needed to learn how to make/sew a sail are required to complete the bag. Right now, I’m just starting with sewing seams into the canvas using a “palm” to help push the large needle thru the thick material and reading for the workshop-courses we are taking. I’m taking a rigging course this week and reading all about line, rope, knots, splices, seizings, etc – I’m really liking it. Then lunch is served at 11:30: today we had some kind of a curry dish, yummy, I don’t know how our cook pulls it off like he does at sea. Then, we report to muster before our watch at 11:50am. We begin our watch which again will include any combination of the following: an hour on the helm, an hour on lookout followed by a ship check, sail handling: today, I got to go aloft to loose the main royal staysail before setting her; we also have our stunc’ls set which is very exciting. Otherwise, we report to the bos’un for ship’s work: sanding, priming, painting, rust busting, core sealing, chipping, whipping fraying rope ends which was all interrupted by sail handling: we set the fore and aft sails during our watch including the outer jib, mizzen topmast stays’l, main topmast, tagallant and royal stays’ls. I also did the final ship check at the end of our watch. Muster again at 3:50pm. Then report to the rigging class (there are 4 classes going on that are being rotated over the course of the next 4 weeks). Today we learned how to repair a ratline and got to practice doing a ratline seizing. The class lasts an hour and a half which gives us some down time before the 6pm dinner bell: tonight we had ribs,cole slaw and homemade bacon cheddar buns. After dinner, I worked a little bit on my projects. Finally, took some pics at sunset and here I am. I’ll head to bed a little later tonight at around 8:30pm to get a few hours sleep before my 11:30pm wake up before needing to report to muster at 11:50pm.
So, how is it? Well, it is definitely getting better. I think Sunday was a turning point for me: we are heading towards warmer sunnier waters so seeing the sun again had a big effect, and the watch change surprisingly made a very positive effect as it just gives a little shake up to the groups and therefore the dynamics. I’m finally over my sea-queeziness. I wasn’t really “sick” persay, but queezy, headachy and tired and generally unmotivated. Looking back, there has been a whole lot of new things to get used to in the last several weeks: a new home, new clothes (borrowing work clothes from other shipmates), new language (kinda feels like I’m in PT school again, learning all the new terminology and language to even express things like “avast!” “that’s well” “let it render” “hands to the braces!” “ease port haul starboard!”, new food, new people and living mates, and steep learning curve to the new schedule and expectations, skills, rules to which I have over 40 people to help orient me which can be a bit overwhelming at times. Things I enjoy: going aloft for any reason or no reason at all, helming – I especially enjoyed doing it last night with a clear sky where I actually used the stars to help guide/steer me, seeing the sea life: dolphins, flying fish, glowing jelly fish, whales, bioluminescence; any sail handelling (especially when it requires going aloft), learning rigging skills. It’s amazing how effective and simple wrapping and tying lines and ropes can be at getting jobs done. The rigging of this entire vessel has been more or less done by hand and can be repaired and is repaired by hand all along the way. Living on board at sea, I am learning that it is a constant effort against rust, chaffe and mildew. So the repainting, sail handling and taking care of things in organizing them, cleaning and arranging is a constant source of work. But, there is comfort in these simple repetitive tasks that you know you will be doing over again in a very short amount of time (I think a week had only passed between me varnishing the bridge rail and observing 2 shipmates re-sanding and varnishing it).
The dynamics between the shipmates is an interesting sociological study. Everyone has their quarks, humors, edges and soft spots and life aboard is more or less a constant bouncing off of each other sometimes softly, only slipping past each other, sometimes colliding and on rare occasions leaving minor bruises (figuratively or literally).
Which brings my next observation: life aboard is also dangerous! The floor is never still: constantly moving and sometimes in unpredictable ways, it’s often wet as the sea is constantly washing over the deck, the lighting isn’t always ideal as lights are not used at night (standard rule), so when absolutely needed like when doing a ship check you can use a red head lamp covered by a hand to soften it. Groping thru darkness to get to various places on deck and down below is commonplace and I’m hoping might become easier as I get to know the ship better in the dark. Checking the engine room bilges at night freaks me out after hearing about the engine room “ghost story” – of course. And then there’s the water boiling in the galley (barefoot of course) which is precarious with a rolling ship, chemicals that are worked with in the pain locker – again more dangerous to control with a rolling ship, and then there’s the standard dangerous dealing with lines and pins under strain, hauling on one of the headsail downhauls on the focs’le head is also particularly challenging because of the difficulty in balance without holding on as the ship is rolling and heaving aft on a line. Luckily I haven’t seriously hurt myself and I hope to keep it that way: constant vigilance needs to be heeded. There are plenty of moments that I have experienced a pause and awe of what our ancestors have endured during the age of sail in the mid 1800’s for the conditions they were in were much more difficult than us. Like, I may only shower a couple times a week but have hot water when I do. And, the marine head might need to be hand pumped, but it’s better than no head at all. The bunks are on the small side but still spacious to theirs. The food is waaayyyy better hands down (thank God for Donald), our hours are better: they often worked 4 on 4 off – I don’t know how they sustained that schedule bcz this is no walk in the park, we have refridgeration on board and a genie that runs from 6am-12pm to charge the batteries even though we are still very consciencious of our energy usage (shouldn’t we all be, tho?) water gets turned off during hand washing, teeth brushing, face washing and even mid shower to salvage resources and not let it all go running down the drain when not directly being used, but again, we could and maybe should do this anyway.
I’m also learning more about the weather, wind, and wave patterns – that there are patterns for one and I notice my body noticing and sensing when things are changing and shifting (which is super important while helming).
Well, that’s all for now. Gotta turn in to get a few hours of shut eye before my midnight watch.


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