Donald Church: The Legend Returns

4/9
The crew is gathering, the weather is warming, and the ship is out of the water. As the scheduled date of departure approaches, our work days are carried out with increased buzz. The galley is being prepared for the arrival of star-cook, Donald, flying in from Grenada. Finn, the winter engineer, has been busy getting the engine room and all its systems into premier form and ready for the voyage engineer to take over.
We are hauled out in the local shipyard, and as soon as the yard crew has finished painting our hull we will be back in the water, preparing for the arrival of the trainees and up-rig, the great salty jig-saw puzzle.

Colin, Myself, Shackle on the ride to the shipyard

Shackle, Colin, Mike, Myself and Nadja under the bow, the last night in yard.

All of us again, plus Amanda (front and center).

4/15
Donald is here and we are happy. For lunch: chicken wings, fries, and cheeseburgers. For dinner: ribs. It is good to have the chef back. Donald, chief morale officer.
All winter we’ve been taking turns each day preparing meals, and it hasn’t been bad, but there’s a reason we’re hired on as deckhands and not cooks. Shackle makes good burgers, and I will occasionally make fried chicken, but more often than not we serve up frozen pizza, or Hamburger Helper, or a box of carbohydrates and sodium courtesy of the culinary oracles at Kraft. It is good to have Donald back.

Donald

My whole body is sore. Our work week has had a growth spurt, and we now are working from 8 am to 6 pm at least, and on Saturdays too. It is good, though, because there is so much yet to be done, and time is becoming a keen adversary. We all want to get this ship ready in time for our May 17th departure for Ireland. Everyone is working hard. If there are any grumblers, they thankfully have the good sense to keep it to themselves.
Excitement builds on another front as well, as we all are planning a prom in honor of Finn, who had been studying hard for his GED, and wrote the test last month.
He knows the party is happening, but is in the dark as to just how big of a party it will be. Most of Lunenburg is involved. Epic would be an accurate word for the scale of the planned evening. Biblical might be a stretch, but I am withholding judgment until afterwards. We have all been raiding Frenchy’s consignment stores for formal wear. Should be fun.

Last month I went back Stateside to see about getting my AB Sail certification. I passed the exams and did everything they asked of me, and returned home to the Picton Castle with great satisfaction. Then yesterday I talked to an evaluator at the Coast Guard regional exam center in Boston and he told me I needed to get my Lifeboatman’s rating to complete the AB Sail, something I was twice told was unnecessary. I was furious. I still am, a bit, because I have neither time nor dime for the $900, five-day course and practicum required, and I spent nearly $1500 in travel and expenses to get the AB Sail, something I would not have pursued had I been told about the lifeboatman requirement in the first place. Furthermore, all the work and money spent will be for nothing, as the exam and all expires in a year. I obviously will not be back in the country within that time. I got screwed; I’m pissed.
It says something about the mess of the process when a sailor can come in, prove to be competent, pass all the exams, yet cannot seem to navigate the misinformed maze of paperwork and requisites. I have no problem jumping through hoops, but please don’t change the course after I’ve already crossed the finish line. How am I supposed to know what I need when the evaluators don’t even know?
(rant over)

On a positive note, the weather is unbelievable. The nights have been clear and crisp, forwards to warm sunny days with blue skies, with a fresh sea-breeze kicking in around 1400 or 1500 every day.

4/17
Shipyard work is done. We’ve overhauled the sea-cocks and through-hulls, the bottom has been coated with fresh anti-fouling paint, and we even dropped the anchors and flaked out all 800 feet of chain for some love and affection. Today they lowered us back into the wet stuff.
I would have loved to have been in the gear-house as the cradle was lowered by massive machinery. Giant links of chain, easing away our end, was payed out by unseen gear and motor. We couldn’t see the big wheels turning in the gear-house, but as each link inched out, it was accompanied with a round of timpani hammering, “ka-chunk a chunk a chunk.”
Then, with everything confirmed sound, the lines were cast off and the Picton Castle found herself once again in the familiar waters of Lunenburg Harbor.
Though we have had much work done, and the engineers have been busy, the main engine is still in the process of having the rings changed on each of its seven pistons, so we made way to and from the dock by tow. Coming into the cradle was a cinch. Conditions were perfect. Coming out was a bit trickier. A breeze had picked up out of the southeast, and was setting is onto shore at nearly two knots. We had bee planning on returning to the dock port side to, but the wind was uncooperative. Our Captain, salt of salts and smooth as Bing, told Mike, the 2nd Mate, to drop the port anchor. He did, the anchor bit, and the Picton Castle pirouetted gently against the dock, starboard side to. It wasn’t the original plan, but it was a perfect docking, and an excellent example of the level of seamanship all of us hope to attain.
We finished out the day with some overdue dockside work. As I was chipping rust off an anchor, Captain came by, took my chipping hammer, and, gripping it in both hands, attacked the rusty patch in rapid-fire assault. With the rust disintegrated, he handed the hammer back with the statement, “Go to it with violence, Ben.” Later, when I was sanding fair a freshly cut t’gallant yard, he took my sand paper, vigorously scoured the spar sending up a mushroom cloud of sawdust, and handed it back and said, “use compassionate aggression.”
At supper we were joined by Nobby, Picton Castle’s senior engineer emeritus and his wife and two children. Boy, age: three. Girl, age: baby.
Sitting around the salon table, eating the turkey dinner Donald had prepared for us, making faces at the baby and laughing at the boy’s stories and funny way of speaking, and genuinely enjoying each other’s company, I realized what a happy family we have here. We all are excited for this year. It is a good crew, and a pleasure to be a part of it. And it makes the long work days a hell of a lot more fun, too.

Dynamic Inertia

3/8
Newton's first law of motion says that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Well, we most definitely are in motion here in Lunenburg. Our dynamic inertia brings us full ahead into the unbalancing force of the imminent black-diamond slope of work as we speed to the final weeks before our departure.

We’ve been sending down braces and their gear from aloft for overhauling. The braces are what we use to adjust the angle of out squares’ls. When we want to brace hard to starboard, we cast off or ease away the port side braces, and haul away on the starboard braces, for example. It’s much more difficult to do all this underway, so it is one of our major rigging priorities. It’s also exciting to getting back into the rig, spending several hours a day out on the Picton Castle's yardarms.

Plus, being aloft on the yards is a great workout. After the first couple days, every muscle in my body was sore. My legs get sore from supporting my body, my lower back and abs are sore from keeping balance, and acting as the fulcrum point whenever I have to haul anything up, which in turn works my shoulders and arms. I can feel myself getting back into square-rigger shape.

The biggest beneficiary is my lower back. I have had back problems since the end of the summer, and my friend Rebecca, a licensed physiotherapist has worked on it and given me two acupuncture sessions to alleviate the pain in exchange for homemade fried chicken dinners. But being aloft is basically one continuous back extension exercise, and as my lower back muscles have strengthened, the back pain has diminished. After two weeks with many hours aloft, I feel good as new.

The weekends have been pretty epic here too. Last weekend we all headed to shipmate Amanda’s house on Briar Island, situated at the doorstep of the Bay of Fundy, famous for its 50-foot tides.

(photo from www.pbase.com/athiker95/image/438977)

Briar Island may be one of my new favorite places. Salty beauty as I have ever encountered, right on par with beloved Gloucester. Amanda’s big brother is a lobsterman, as is her father, and he took us out for a spin around the island in his boat, letting everyone take a turn at the wheel as we circumnavigated the island's ragged basalt shoreline. Pictured here are my friends and former shipmates, Rebecca and Logan.

After that, Finn, Maggie and I headed back to Lunenburg to stand watches at the ship with Lynsey, as a nasty storm was blowing in. Unfortunately, our weekend gained a new adventurous flavor while passing through the backways in Nova Scotian blizzard, Maggie’s car spun off the road and settled in a snow banked ditch. The car and her crew were fine. It was cold, and the snow was coming in horizontally. While we waited for the tow truck, we found shelter in an abandoned hunting cabin a 50 or so yards off the road. The truck pulled us out and we turned back for Digby, the nearest town. It turned out to be no big deal, but at the time it was pretty intense feeling stranded in a snow covered back woods highway, 60 km from anywhere.

Life looks to continue its upward swing in momentum here, as Chad, my buddy of buddies, is headed here for a proper Picton Castle/Nova Scotia weekend, a road trip to Boston, and then I am flying back to Kansas City for the next weekend and my brother Brian’s 16th birthday. Then, back to it, getting ready for the trip, an Atlantic crossing, tour of Europe, duck into the Mediterranean, down Africa, across to Brazil, up through the Caribbean, and back here. Then, maybe, things will slow down…

Loving People, Living Poetry

2/23
Work has been going really well. The leather work has been a great project. I have been sewing pieces of leather to protect certain parts of the rigging. All the leather has to be cut to fit, which at times is challenging because some of the pieces are fairly intricate. Maggie, the ship’s incumbent purser and goddess of all things office, has written a nice technical but easy to understand description of exactly what it is I am working on here. That’s also where I lifted the pictures from.

Last Tuesday, February 19th, marked exactly one year since I stepped of the plane in the Dominica jungle and boarded the Picton Castle. It’s hard to believe it’s already been a full year since I left to become a sailor. And after this year I can look back and see all the skills, friends and relationships I have developed, all in the process of becoming a proper sailor – a process in which I am still very much at the beginning.

I really feel unfairly fortunate in life. I don’t know how else to describe it. I am in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, working at a craft that I am deeply passionate about in sailing, with little hiccups of writing work, about which my passion is of equal depth. On top of this, I have this month received packages, letters, and phone calls from some of the best friends a person could have; friends who are amazing, who reaffirm my belief in God’s existence. There is no justice.

Last night we had a little party in the Dory Shop, sitting around the wood stove, drinking wine, laughing, listening to music, and just being generally happy. My friend, Finn, put it best:
“We’re a bunch of sailors in this old wooden dory shop that hangs out over the ocean, crowded around a fire barrel, listening to gypsy punk, dancing around—man, we’re gypsies!”
It was one of those moments I get every now and again where I realize I am living out poetry:

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 sail's 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 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 quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

By John Masefield (1878-1967).
(English Poet Laureate, 1930-1967.)

That’s probably my favorite sea-faring poem, by the way. Also, the gypsy punk I mentioned is a reference to my new favorite band, Gogol Bordello, and gypsy punk is the only way to describe it. It's life changing. Check them out, and thank you Chad for turning me on to them. Gogol Bordello. Look them up on YouTube.
Anyhow, enough gushing. Life is good in Lunenburg. Loving people and living poetry.

Work, Curling, Futility

2/3
Holy cow, I can’t believe it’s already February. Unbelievable.
Actually, what’s more unbelievable is the fact that I am continually surprised by the passing of time, and the progression of the calendar. I’m like the baby that giggles every time you pull your hands away from your face and sing, “peek-a-boo!”
I won’t be surprised if, when I peel up the next page on the calendar and March is revealed, I roll on the floor in a sublime seizure of giddy surprise.
Then my shipmates will put a wooden spoon in my mouth, and I will have to change pants. This cycle will repeat itself 31 days later. Time is truly our greatest enemy.

Fun has been in no short supply around here. We go curling nearly every Friday, and some of us are getting halfway decent at it. (Maggie and Shackle in particular)
I am getting halfway embarrassing at it. For every good shot I make, I seem to counteract it by bailing out on the ice and sending my stone off into a forsaken wilderness of furrowed brows and snickering.
One thing is for sure: curling is far easier without an excess of beer. But try suggesting that to one of the seasoned veterans and you’re met with a cold look and an ended conversation. Apparently, curling without beer is like trying to have a football game in which neither team fields a defense (something the Chiefs have been doing for years now, and even if this did happen their offense would still probably be forced to punt. Poo.)
We’ve also been participating in the weekly Pub Stumper’s trivia night at the Grand Banker, Lunenburg’s official pub of the Picton Castle (not really but it seems so). The Picton Castle trivia team, Three Sheets to the Wind, is in a commanding lead thus far in league play, buttressed by a dominating performance last night.

I’ve also been on a reading and writing tear as of late. I’ve checked about 1000 books out of the local library since I’ve been here. I’ve also just finished a play I’ve been writing for a friend who is an actor in a Los Angeles based theatre company. Now that I’m out of school, I’ve found that I have to be much more deliberate about nurturing the mind, but also that I take greater pleasure in it as well.

Work has been going along nicely. We’ve been overhauling all the blocks and bits of wire, varnishing spars and deckboxes, rewiring the ship’s electrical system, overhauling the ship’s plumbing, and basically giving her a good, thorough once-over. Leather-working, wire-brushing, corro-sealing, slushing, worming, parceling, serving, tarring, greasing, painting, scraping, sanding, grinding, rust-busting, and then, at five, clean-up for supper.

My ship’s work is interrupted at times by my efforts to get my AB-Sail certification, which is an important step in the licensing process. Collecting sea time, having it evaluated, background checks, and an exam are all a part of the process. There are a few more hoops mariners of today must jump through, but it’s not so bad, and easily worth the small hassle.

Next week promises more of the same for us here in the LBG: working, curling, dominating at trivia, and staying warm.

Slow times in Lunenburg

All's well here in Lunenburg. Work is putting along nicely. The Picton Castle crew went out curling last night (a lot of fun), and the weather has been fantastic. The week before it was bitter cold, the coldest it's been all winter. It got down to -16c, and with the wind blowing... please! I could feel my breath freezing in my beard whenever I walked anywhere.
But today I am wearing a t-shirt, and went for a walk this morning in flip-flops.
We are expecting a lot of visits from friends in the coming weeks, but beyond that, the workweeks keep unrolling, and life keeps on its quiet pace.

Year in Review (because if you keep a blog you pretty much have to)

12/30
December is once again set to yield power back to January, its unwavering usurper, and we find ourselves at the end of another year. Looking back over 2007, I can’t escape the feeling that this has been one of the more important years in my life. With all that’s happened and that I’ve experienced, the innocence and ignorance of childhood seem as far off as ever, and adulthood has managed to tighten its lasso around my ankle.

It’s been an emotionally charged year for me: elation as I helped usher good friends into marriages, the mournful celebration of another friend’s life, heartbreak, as much pain and joy as I have ever experienced, all accompanied by the steady thrill of life as a mariner – life seasoned with salt.

It’s interesting how this year of so much change and uncertainty will be followed by a year that promises very little of either, as my fate is more or less outlined in the itinerary of the Picton Castle’s trip across the north Atlantic. Not that I am complaining.

It’s been a year of coming full circle as a sailor. I spent the summer sailing as crew onboard the Harvey Gamage, the same ship where I first fell in love with seafaring as a kid. On top of that, while getting some formal marine safety training last month and found that the man with the beard sitting next to me was the captain of the Harvey Gamage that same week when I was there ten years ago.

I have found this year that life at sea augments all of the traits in me that I knew existed, yet hadn’t really been tested: commitment, courage, leadership, and selflessness. If life on a tall ship can’t bring these out in you, then you don’t have them. For my part, I was pleased to meet them.

With all that came in 2007, I am excited to see how 2008 will follow the act, just so long as it is without all the bummer stuff.
Right, I resolve to never have sad things happen in 2008...?
But seriously, you just can’t ring in the New Year with realism. Have you ever tried to party with a committed realist? It’s awful. Nothing but talk of gas prices, or the fact that Walt Disney was anti-Semitic, or that Iowa State will never field a national championship football team. No no, I will ring in the new year with the most unrealistic expectations possible. My friend the realist would call that “hope.”

Tricky Weather

11/21
Today was a great day, warm skies, no rain, ideal for working aloft. It’s a welcome patch in what has been maddeningly topsy-turvy weather here. The amount of work that has to get done aloft in the ship’s rig before winter was becoming overwhelming.

The weather teases us.

Sometimes it teases me by shining the warm sun, nudging my way a pleasant little morsel of autumn wind now and then, and I think, “what a perfect day for going aloft to do this three hour job I’ve been needing to do!” Then, five minutes into my work, a gang of thick, mud-and-steel clouds surround the friendly sun and pounce. I presume they do so with a snicker. The wind picks up, the temperature drops, and with their cruel, uncanny precision, the same thugs that jumped my workmate spit sleet or stinging snow flurries at me. My exposed hands, gripped around the shrouds, go numb. I finish the job. Why? Because I am a sailor, not a sally. Though I do generally go into the furnace-warmed galley for a thaw by hot cocoa afterwards.

Three times now this conniving atmosphere has greeted us with warm sun and gentle breeze serving as flimsy façade for the incoming gale or a hurricane, and we are forced to waste the nice weather, instead buttoning down docking gear and making sure we are secure for the storms. Then, the next day, bright and sunny again, to tease us as we work cleaning and repairing the damage done by the devious douche-bag weather systems.
The rest of the time: drizzly.

But not today.

Today was clear. There is the promise of storms tomorrow, but nothing so Biblical we needed to drop our work and get to preparations. Today we chalked off nearly half the list of the work that needs to be done aloft before the freeze of winter and all the snow and ice come and take tenement here for the next months.

The days have been ticking away louder and louder as the calendar pulls us closer and closer to that time, and work has been slow, and the list has been looming.
Most days, of the three deck crew, I am the only one working aloft. The others are doing things on deck and in the warehouse that also must get done.

But not today.

Today we had visitors, old friends from past voyages here to say hey, and eat our food, and buy us rum and beer, and help out with the dishes, and reminisce, and tell new jokes, and – ghasp! – help with the ship’s work! There were three of us aloft today! We packed sheaves with grease! We sealed up the wire stays! We downrigged weatherworn and unused bits of rigging! It was a very exciting time. At the end of the day, the entire foremast was ready for winter’s worst, leaving only the main and mizzen masts, which don’t have quite so much that need to be done. Ryan made pork chops for dinner, I made important steps towards getting my necessary certifications, the work aloft has a significant and happy dent, I am covered in the glorious, barbecue-smoke-and-wood-chip-scent of pine tar, Shackle and I shared some beautiful black rum, I took a hot shower, and I will sleep well tonight. A great day.