Out to sea again
Trip Start
Feb 21, 2007
1
26
31
Trip End
Jun 07, 2007
St George, Bermuda
Friday, May 11, 2007
We cast off bright and early the next morning. This was actually extremely unusual because the new voyage crew had only arrived the previous evening and had not yet done any of their seamanship or safety training, but two cruise liners were booked to come in that morning so we had to get out of their way. The permanent crew and experienced volunteers took the Prince William across to an anchorage on the other side of the bay, where we finished the training.
Usually training days are booked off for training alone, but while getting the ship off the mooring we noticed that the paintwork that was closer to the waterline had been neglected because she'd been blocked by the pier and it looked horrible. That meant that the bos'un and us deck hands went out in the RIB to do some 'extreme painting'. Ben drove the RIB against the ship while one D/H clung to a rope hanging down from the rail and two more D/Hs painted a spot on the ship as fast as they could before the choppy water lifted us up and away again. We actually got it looking a lot better, even if we did have to spend the afternoon cleaning paint off the RIB.
May 9th -
The voyage crew were allowed to go ashore for the day, just after breakfast, while the volunteers stayed aboard for more maintenance. I honestly don't know what most people did that day because after we'd finished painting the previous day, we'd noticed that the bowsprit stay chains looked rusty and horrible in comparison. As soon as the shore runs were finished, we rigged up a bosun's chair off the starboard side of the bow and I was lowered down along with a bucket of tools. There were three stages - Paint chipping, de-rusting, and painting.
7 hours of hanging off my harness in a bosun's chair later (minus a quick lunch break) I had finished the first two stages and made a start on the painting. I got to knock off after that since we'd be sailing the following afternoon.
May 10th -
Most of the trainees and volunteers went ashore again for the morning while a few of us workaholics stuck around to see what more we could do. I spent my morning sitting out on the fore t'gallant yardarm, replacing a leather cover on the lift, while Sarah finished blacking the backstays.
Just before noon someone finally spotted a skip that we could unload all our accumulated garbage into so I ended up missing lunch to heave old garbage - some of which was from the other side of the Atlantic - ashore. It did mean that I got to be the last crewmember to set foot on Bermuda though. We were ready to depart - The anchor was raised and the pilot took us back out through the narrow channel to the sea. Bermuda shrank to a series of small hills, then a white line on the horizon and just before sunset it was gone. The water colour changed from turquoise to dark blue and we were back at sea.
May 11th -
The portion of the bowsprit stays that I had finished looked fantastic, but I hadn't done all the painting yet, and the other side wasn't done at all, so the one section of brilliant white looked a bit strange next to all the rust. Working off side while underway isn't strictly legal so we hooked up a bunch of extra safety lines, back-up lines and special bouyancy aids, posted spotters, made sure the captain knew not to come anywhere where he might accidentally find out, and got to work. It wasn't hard for the captain not to see since Roy had been stuck in his cabin nearly continuously since he came aboard, trying to sort out the ulcer-giving stack of paper work that had been given to us by the U.S. coast guard. I was happy that all I had to do was swing off the side of the ship and get paint in my hair.
Sitting on a swing, hanging off the front of a ship, while gliding through the Bermuda Triangle was definitely a surreal experience. The sea was so glassy calm that I could see my reflection perfectly picked out in the water below me. Laura, working on the other side of the bow, was also perfectly visible and the sound carried from one side to the other without a problem. We were down in our own little world where we could chat and sing obnoxiously without even the spotters just above us being able to hear. We saw nothing all day except the occasional Portuguese man-of-war and a single swallow.
In the evening was another grill on deck and Clive the cook, who is a shameless enabler of my ice cream addiction, brought up a whole tub of vanilla and strawberry ice cream to be shared between a few permanents and volunteers, and ended up giving me half of it. I never eat half has much ice cream as when I'm on the ship, but Clive is like my drinking buddy for ice cream.
