Wednesday, November 26, 2003

The End of my South Pacific Sailing Adventure Thanks to everyone who has been reading my travelogue. The posting below is the last one in my South Pacific series, as I am now in Australia. I don't know if I'll be continuing this weblog, but I still have more travelling to do--Bali, New Zealand, Central, Northern, and maybe even Western Australia--and I may have the urge to publish more travel writing. You'll know by checking this space from time to time. Happy trails. 4:02:20 AM     3:54:25 AM     3:45:09 AM     3:38:35 AM     Last Stop, Tonga Paradise. I may have found it after 4 months at sea. Tonga was the image that I had in my mind when I signed up for my Picton Castle adventure, though I didn't know it at the time. Sparklingly clear water, warm sea breezes, deep blue skies. I imagined living in a pair of shorts day after day, and waking up to balmy morning air. Some of these I did experience at various times, but never in the same place together. The Caribbean was hot--too hot--and the air was hazy. The water around Pitcairn Island was blue and startlingly clear, but it was coolish in the evening. And my most recent stop, Rarotonga, had very changeable weather--and not tropical at all--with a cool wind that made sitting outside sometimes impossible. Plus, the water was almost too cold for swimming. Yet Tonga, just a few degrees of latitude closer to the equator than Rarotonga, had weather that was much closer to "tropical". That is not to say that it was always perfect. The two days before we arrived were very windy and stormy and we just made it into Neiafu harbour in time to avoid a strong gale that shredded the foresail of a 54-ft yacht owned by friends of Mark & Gabe. Our first few days in the Vava'u island group of Tonga were quite stormy, but shortly afterwards the clouds blew over and the sky and sea went from gray to deep blue. Tonga is geographically quite different from its neighbour countries. Many of the young islands of the South Pacific are "high", which means that they are steep rocks rising out of the sea. Older ones like Rarotonga have a coral ring around them as they sink. But the Vava'u group is a collection of many islands, some large with a long and narrow bay almost like a fjord, and many small and rocky, with a white sand beach on one side. The entire island group is enclosed by a huge coral reef that tames the ocean swell and creates a piece of heaven for people in yachts, allowing them to sail gently between the 40 or so possible anchorages. The natural setting makes it one of the best places in the world for yacht chartering, which explains why two international charter companies have bases there. It also makes it a welcome stop for yachts that are on the "Coconut Milk Run", the path followed by yachts from North America or the Panama Canal, across the South Pacific, on their way to New Zealand. The annual seasonal cycle herds a group of about 500 yachts across the South Pacific on a schedule that ends in November. That is the first month of the tropical cyclone season and the time when boats must make their way out of the cyclone path, a swath of the Pacific that encompasses all of the islands between northern Australia and French Polynesia. Yacht insurance is nullified if you are caught in those waters after December 1st. Brave souls who don't rely on insurance may look for "hurricane holes", very sheltered bays that withstand most (but not all) wind and sea conditions, or may take their boats out of the water and anchor them onto a cradle on land. Otherwise they head for New Zealand or Hawaii. Boaters on the annual migration across the Pacific see a lot of each other and friendships develop while at anchor. Communication within groups is maintained via daily short-wave radio "scheds", which let all know how everyone is doing, what the local conditions are, and where their next landfall will be. Through these daily communications I heard about Robbin and Warren, artists who funded their way across the Pacific by making and selling jewellery, Gordon and Helen, successful Scottish professionals who were taking a sabbatical from their jobs, and Jeff and Deirdre, beneficiaries of the high-tech boom in Seattle. Terry and Kathy were from South Africa, and Chris and Julie were from Belgium. We would meet up on each other's boats for dinners, games of Pictionary, or drinks after a day of snorkelling. We also participated in group shopping expeditions, picnics, and dinners at restaurants. This was another difference between sailing on a yacht and on the Picton Castle that I didn't mention in my last post. One's community is not just your fellow crew-mate, but a collection of cruisers that is doing a similar trip to yours. Therefore, there are always stories to exchange about the same destinations, and hints on the best anchorages, beaches, snorkelling, and shelling. Northern Tonga is just remote enough that its beaches are empty of people, but full of shells. This was a delightful discovery, as walking along the shoreline and stumbling across a perfect cowrie shell is a thrill I had not yet experienced. Robbin and Warren were the master shellers, with Gabe not far behind. I tried to build up a small shell collection over my short time in Tonga, and supplemented my own finds with a few shells that I bought at the local market. I predict that they may become my most evocative souvenirs. Robbin and Warren's boat deserves some description. It has the most beautiful interior of any yacht that I have ever seen. They purchased the boat and had the interior completely renovated to their design. They are craftspeople who work mostly in wood, and their boat is solid teak and bamboo inside. It is like living in a piece of beautiful furniture. A picture would be worth a thousand words here, but the most important feature of the boat is its name: Cuchara, the Spanish word for spoon. The reason it has that name is because the boat was bought and built on spoons. Robbin and Warren started making spoons from coconut shells and found wood and sold them at juried craft shows across the US. They are quite expensive (around $200), but they sell well, as each is both utilitarian and an objet d'art. Their goal was to sell one thousand of them to buy the boat, and they did. I bought one (at "mate's rates", but still a lot) in order to remind myself that you can live an idyllic existence floating around in paradise by making something as ordinary as a spoon, as long as you make it beautiful. Helen, from a boat called Mantra, was an interesting character. She gave up life in a very smart flat on the Thames in London for adventure with her husband. She personifies how people can become very resourceful even if they had been used to a life of comfort and convenience before. Every boater makes their own bread, because flour is easy to carry and bakeries are scarce in the middle of the ocean. But Helen perfected other yeast-based recipes. Going Greek tonight? Make pita breads. Indian requires naans or puri or chapatis. They are all variations on the same thing, even though they all have their own technique, and Helen had perfected them all. Boaters become very resourceful and self-sufficient with concerning food. Some even made their own yoghurt and cheese. Gabe and I tried the former and it was delicious. After 2 weeks of blissful cruising around the islands, Free Spirit returned to the main town and I disembarked for the second time in five months. Mark and Gabe were leaving for New Zealand in a day and I was going to fly directly to Sydney as soon as I could get a flight. My last 4 days allowed me to explore the main town, a very odd mixture of primitive and modern that I have come to expect in that part of the world. Tonga is a much poorer place than Rarotonga, and the village of Neiafu is a few falling-apart buildings and a covered market with a dirt floor. Pigs roam around the streets freely. Here and there are quite nice cafés, laundries, Internet places, and a few newer hotels, only because of one reason: tourists, and especially boaters. The first thing that everyone wants to do after a week or so at sea is laundry. And despite most boats having short-wave-radio-based Internet, long and detailed e-mails must wait for a land connection, which requires an Internet café. An American who came to Tonga and took up residence saw an opportunity and opened a combination Internet café and laundromat. You drop off your dirty clothes and read your e-mail while you wait. It is very successful. If anyone wants to visit Tonga, I would suggest sooner rather than later. It hasn't been "ruined" by tourists with too much money yet, and the prices are reasonable. I stayed in a hotel that was on the water in the main town. Their best rooms, with a view, were on the order of $100 per night, but the hotel was built to address all sectors of the market. Many travellers are young backpackers, and I found many places on my travels that cater to them, with dorm rooms, and communal kitchens and living areas. My hotel had a backpackers wing and I stayed there, for $15 per night. The facility was brand new and two occupants shared the top floor. We had our own bathrooms, and the hotel had a pool and a very nice restaurant overlooking the harbour. It was a great way to spend my last few days in the South Pacific. On the day before I left I rented a bicycle and pedalled around the island as much as I could; that is, until the 32-degree heat wiped me out. (The locals gave me strange looks as I panted up the hills; any sensible person would have been inside with a cool drink.) As I took in the vistas of ocean and islands scattered about, I was struck by how much it all looked like a very tropical version of the Gulf Islands near Vancouver. Mark & Gabe and I mentioned it frequently, and so did Jeff and Deirdre (as they had sailed among the Gulf Islands from Seattle many times). It is too bad that we all see things using references that we find familiar, but in this case the comparison was involuntary. Tonga is a very beautiful place. It is the perfect place to spend a month or so on a boat. I have always loved sailing among the Gulf Islands, and even more to islands north of Georgia Strait, all a day's sail (or two or three) from Vancouver. I had known that I lived near a boater's paradise, but I was struck at how I was reminded of this fact only after having sailed thousands and thousands of nautical miles, down one ocean, across a sea, and most of the way across the largest ocean in the world. Granted, northern Pacific waters are freezing in comparison, and anchorages can be crowded, considering that 5 million people live in the area, but I will never look at the Gulf Islands in the same way, nor take them for granted, again. The next day I packed up my considerable luggage and bags full of local crafts. I took a taxi to the airport, where I boarded a small plane to the main island of Tongatapu. My bonus during my last experience of Tonga, and indeed my entire South Pacific sailing adventure, was to travel 2 seats away from Her Majesty the Queen of Tonga, and to see the islands and coral below, complete with humpback whales and their calfs frolicking in the stunningly clear and blue water. A short time later, I took my seat on the Royal Tongan Airlines 757, bound for Sydney. Around me were people who were returning from a holiday. Their skin was all colours of white, pink, and reddish brown, signs of too much sun in too short a time. I looked at my arms and legs, a perfectly even shade of nut-brown. I was a sailor, at least, for a while. 3:31:58 AM

Monday, November 10, 2003

2:16:11 AM     2:10:25 AM     Farewell Picton Castle, Hello Free Spirit Rarotonga is where I said good-bye to the Picton Castle. I came down to the dock with two other crew-mates who were leaving the ship, did a lot of hugging and waving, and watched the ship slide out of port and over the horizon. Two weeks later I returned to the harbour to look for Free Spirit, a 44-ft Spencer sloop (originally a ketch) owned by Mark and Gabe, people I know from Vancouver. They were doing the "Coconut Milk Run", a route across the South Pacific that starts in French Polynesia or the Galapagos and usually ends in New Zealand. We had been in frequent e-mail contact over the week before and according to their latest message would be making landfall in Rarotonga on that day. They had, and a few days later I moved aboard to be a crew-mate for their next passage, to Tonga. I was very grateful to Mark and Gabe for giving me the opportunity to do some yacht sailing as a postscript to my adventure on a barque, especially to see how a yacht and a sailing ship are very different. The Picton Castle is a time machine with the clock set somewhere around the beginning of the 1900s (with the exception of GPS and a water-maker (for desalination of sea water)). Free Spirit is a modern yacht where the main piece of navigation equipment is a laptop computer. However, even with these differences I was surprised at how the sailing experience of the two vessels was similar. Of course, there were also differences: On Free Spirit I had my own cabin and bathroom, instead of sharing with 18 people. When you clean something, it actually gets clean. When you are on night watch, you are actually sailing the boat, rather than sitting around waiting for a command. The food was better, and I helped provision food items that I liked. There was hot water, and you don't wash dishes in sea water. The music was better (because of Mark's amazing MP3 collection). Sail-handling commands weren't shouted all the time, as if there were an impending catastrophe. The f-word wasn't used in every other sentence (which doesn't bother me, but it does get tiring, and there are more imaginative adjectives around). And, there was an auto-pilot, which means one person can sail, plus check the radar and other instruments at the same time. Don't think that I am saying that sailing on Free Spirit is better than sailing on the Picton Castle, since there were times that I would have rather been on a ship than on a yacht, specifically when we were at sea. Ocean passages on a yacht are something to be endured, while sea conditions felt by the Picton Castle rarely got so bad that you were counting the hours until landfall (motoring into 18-ft swells once was pretty bad, but sailing was always fine). While at sea on the Picton Castle, we did maintenance projects, such as scraping, sanding, painting, varnishing--unless the weather was inclement, which it rarely was. However, initial conversations between yacht cruisers when meeting at anchorages are very telling: the first questions are all about how much sleep one got on the passage to the current location, whether one had enough prepared meals for the whole time, and if there were any weather-caused disasters such as torn sails or broken rigging. A large and heavy ship doesn't get knocked around a lot by waves. It does roll, but when it encounters a large swell it usually goes through it, or the swell comes up and over the side. The effect of big seas is the occasional (or not-so-occasional, depending on conditions) wave that crashes over the rails, soaks the deck and all those who were in the way, and means that you spend a lot of time with wet feet. A yacht is light and will be picked up by a wave and tossed around. The motion on a ship still allows you to walk around, perhaps with one hand always ready to grab a railing, but never got in the way of the galley crew's ability to make three meals a day (see my description of cooking in 10- to 15-ft swells, some months ago). Trying to cook on a yacht in big seas is an exercise in frustration; everything you put on the counter inevitably flies off a minute later. Some people even carry enough dishes so they don't have to wash them for a week or longer. And despite the fact that yachts usually have hot showers, at sea they are rarely used. All of the above explains the first thing that yacht cruisers often do when they make landfall after a challenging passage: have a shower, have a stiff drink, and crash in their bunks for a few hours. Then they go ashore and find a restaurant for dinner. The crew of the Picton Castle, however, arrived at a destination with a bag packed, ready to jump off and enjoy their shore leave. The experience of being at anchor is where a yacht and the Picton Castle were as different as can be. The best time to be on a yacht is while at anchor. You can open all the hatches and windows, put away the lee-cloths (that prevent you rolling out of bed), and generally relax. You can go ashore when you want, or just stay on board and enjoy your boat full of books and music and snorkelling equipment and fresh food that you bought at a local market. In contrast, the minute the Picton Castle crew was cleared in by immigration when we arrived at any destination, we all took off. Something about the ship really made everyone want to get off and have a shore-only experience. This was too bad, since the Picton Castle really wasn't a bad place to spend some down time. You could sling a hammock on the fo'c'sle head and read in peace, unless someone was chipping or grinding rust a few feet away, which often was the case, which is why we wanted to get off the ship... Well, this entry in my weblog marks the end of my Picton Castle story. It was a fascinating journey, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, with memories that I will always treasure. My top experiences, in no particular order, were: making new friends among the crew, eating dinner on the pin-rail with a view of the setting sun, walking up the stairs from the main salon for night watch and seeing the star-filled sky framed by the hatch, swimming in the open sea in 10,000-ft-deep water, standing on the fo'c'sle head on lookout duty and watching dolphins playing in the bow wake, watching the ocean from the quarterdeck on a fine and breezy day, learning shippy skills such as splicing rope and using a sextant, scanning the horizon from the mast top, arriving at each destination with no jet lag, no airport transfer hassles, and no having to get used to the weather. It wasn't all smooth sailing, of course. Living on a ship has its inconveniences, like smelly heads (toilets) and eating off plastic dishes that smelled and tasted like bleach, but I'll forget most of these. However, there is one problem I will cite with the hope it will be rectified. The actual seamanship training, the major reason many of us were aboard, was terrible. I was at sea for 3 months and disembarked with few skills that were transferable to Mark and Gabe's yacht. Learning to read weather, to interpret a radar screen, to trim sails, to use a radio, to understand the fundamentals of anchoring--all of these were the domain of the captain and a few of the professional crew. I picked up some in that list because I already had a foundation by being a pleasure sailor and a boat-owner for more than a decade, but I wonder about my fellow crew-mates. In addition, some of the pro crew thought that their task was to turn us into order-following automatons. That might have made for a well-run ship if the ones doing the ordering were always super-competent, but they weren't. And that is not an environment I can live in. Farewell Picton Castle. You are a fine ship, sturdy, stable, strong, with a stunningly competent master. I would sail any ocean with you. My life has been enriched by my experience at sea, and you were the portal through which I visited the community of sailors. Fair winds and calm seas forever. 2:03:30 AM

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

2:52:34 PM     2:50:39 PM     2:48:48 PM     2:46:59 PM     Rarotonga Sometimes your memories of a particular place are dominated by a beautiful landscape. Sometimes you remember the intense culture revealed through a built environment. And sometimes you remember a place because of the people you met there. The latter would be the case with Rarotonga. Rarotonga was the end of the first "leg" of the voyage of the Picton Castle, the end of the first 3-month quarter. At this port there was to be a minor crew change, as three of us were getting off and six were joining. It was also the first stop in a while that was a tourist destination--with all of the trappings of such a place: resorts, car and bike rentals, SCUBA diving, bars, restaurants, and souvenir shops. In fact, after Mangareva and Pitcairn the sight of traffic and strip malls--tiny as they were--was a shock. Rarotonga is a small island, only 24 km in circumference, with a permanent population of only about 9000 residents. It is the capital of the Cook Islands, a country made up of several small islands scattered over a large distance. The nearest neighbour island, and second most visited, is Aitutaki, a 50-minute flight away. Rarotonga is the only island in the Cooks with jet service and is the stop on a regular flight from Auckland to Los Angeles. The Cook Islands were annexed by New Zealand near the beginning of the 20th century, but are presently an independent country. However, the currency is the NZ dollar and Cook Islanders have automatic New Zealand citizenship. Because of the ties with its former ruler, many islanders go to New Zealand for higher education, and many Kiwis come for a holiday. The first order of business for many of the crew upon arrival at Avatiu harbour was to find accommodation ashore. (Is it a good sign that the first thing everyone wants to do when they can is to get off the ship?) My tenure as a crew member was ending here and therefore I was not bound by the port watch bill; I could leave the ship immediately if I wanted. But, we arrived too late on Friday afternoon to arrange anything and most of the crew stayed on the ship for the first night. The next morning I arose early to scout out accommodation for myself plus a handful of other crew members with whom I arranged to share a house, if we could find one to rent. Lesley, a fellow crew member, and I rented a scooter and went to look for properties. This turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, as most of the accommodation was full, and this wasn't even the high season. The only things available were way out of our price range. Fortunately, we were saved by a friend of the Captain's whom I will call J. She had some apartments and villas for rent, which were mostly full, but her daughter and family were abroad and their house was empty. J put some of our group in her apartments and set up Lesley, Kevin, Therese, Brendan, and I in the house. J is a very interesting woman. She had a shop in town that sold island crafts and black pearls. She started in business many years ago with a small boutique that sold dresses that she made while she was raising her children. The boutique was successful, and having been a former Miss Rarotonga probably helped. After she sent her second husband packing she decided to expand her businesses and invested in vacation property development, which was why she had apartments and villas. That wasn't enough for her, because she had just started a commercial fishing venture on one of the smaller islands. She leased two fishing trawlers from New Zealand; they arrived on the day the Picton Castle left. There was an inauguration ceremony on the dock that was advertised on the local TV station, with everyone welcome. J had an outdoor kitchen on the roof of her apartments, 2 houses down from her daughter's place, and my crew friends and I used it for several dinner parties, catered by me. I was really going native with my cooking and used these opportunities, plus dinners at our house, to practice local specialties such as "ika mata" (raw tuna marinated in lime juice and then finished with coconut cream and sliced vegetables; basically a South Pacific version of ceviche), and rukau (taro leaves--like rich spinach--braised with onions, tomatoes, and coconut cream). I also introduced J and several Rarotongans to the Pitcairn speciality of pilhi. No breadfruit was available, but grated cooked arrowroot mashed with a banana and some coconut cream made a very acceptable substitute. You may notice that coconuts are a theme in this cuisine. That probably explains why I gained at least 5 pounds during my weeks in Rarotonga. I should probably tell you a bit more about the island. It is nice, if a bit touristy, but the residents are very proud of their culture, which they practice through a lot of singing and dancing. The Cook Island teams usually win dance contests held every year across all of Polynesia. The island is very green and hilly; only the outer edge is at all inhabited. Because the island is so small, there is no real "island weather" that makes a wet and a dry side; therefore it is all quite green and lush. There is one trail that crosses the island and passes by "The Needle", a sharp rocky point in the centre that Michael (another crew member) and I hiked. You climb up one side of the island and on the way down the other side you can stop and have a dip in small ponds fed by the stream along which you descend. After the ship left I fed and sheltered Alex, a destitute crew member (well, not really, since he had his father's credit card), for a few days before he returned to Bermuda and then went off to London to start university. J's daughter returned and I moved into a spare apartment in the building where J lived. I offered to make another dinner for J and some friends as a "thank you" for the favourable rate she charged me. Menus were always tricky because ingredients are quite limited in the supermarkets. Meat comes from New Zealand; prime cuts are expensive and therefore a lot of the cuisine is with things like chicken thighs (huge) and lamb necks and shanks. Local ingredients are not terribly varied, mostly papaya (lots and lots and lots of papayas), taro, sweet potato, and in this season, tomatoes. Several vegetables that we take for granted are expensive: small carrots and single stalks of celery are $1 each. I suppose that is mostly airfare. Fortunately, I particularly like lamb shanks and made them in a style reminiscent of "rendang", a Malaysian dish of braised meat and coconut milk (again). Of the key ingredients, lemon grass was not available, but ginger was imported regularly. The lamb was simmered in coconut milk and ginger, with the addition of lemon peel. Oddly enough, the result was somewhat like a cross between rendang and an Italian method of braising meats in milk. But I felt that the result was truly Polynesian. It was served with all of my new specialities, like pilhi and rukau, plus steamed semi-ripe papaya tossed in butter and fresh basil (which grows in people's gardens like crazy). At this dinner party, I met an acquaintance of J's whom I will call M. M is an American woman who had been living in Rarotonga for 6 years. Through her I was able to learn a few things about people from wealthy temperate-climate countries who come to live on small islands in the tropics. Everyone has their own story, of course, and M's was particularly interesting. Many years ago, M became quite ill with a mysterious illness. She was debilitated and had to stop working. Among all the testing to find out what was wrong was a positive result for HIV; at that time a death sentence. So, for the next few years she lived with the stigma of someone with AIDS. However, it turned out that the tests returned a false positive and the diagnosis was switched to an obscure disorder of the nervous system. However, it didn't change the fact that M was still very ill. Being part of the US medical system, contracting a long-term illness meant financial ruin after all of the insurance ran out, not to mention near impossibility of finding an employer if a recovery sufficient to ever work again was effected. Some friends of M's suggested Rarotonga as a place where one could live a simple and inexpensive life where the weather wasn't particularly challenging; a prototypical tropical island paradise. Here, M could spend the time required to recover. I found this story an interesting contrast to one I heard from a fellow I met in Hawaii once. He was diagnosed with AIDS and decided to cash out everything and move to Hawaii believing it to be a nicer place to die if various drugs didn't work. M's story, of course, was different in that her purpose in moving to a tropical island was to live. An ironic thing about M and her decision to move to Rarotonga was that it didn't turn out to be the tropical paradise she thought. First of all, the weather is not unchallenging. Rarotonga is on the South Pacific cyclone path, and one came close enough to cause a lot of damage two years ago. M was living in a small house on the beach on the south side of the island. One would think that living on the beach with white sand and palm trees right out your front door would be a dream, but it turned into a nightmare when the cyclone stalled 20 miles off shore for five days and blew in all of the front windows. Even during storm-free years the southern winds, which carry air up from Antarctica, can make sitting on the beach or even outside anywhere something to avoid. This is not what you would expect from the tropics, but the truth is that the islands in the South Pacific have their share of bad weather. From November to January everyone is on cyclone alert, January and February is the rainy season when it can pour for days, not to mention the intense humidity, and the winter, despite being drier, can be downright chilly. Certainly, the water was almost too cold to snorkel for the entire time I was there (mid-September to mid-October). I went SCUBA diving one day (which was great; sharks and coral caves), and after 30 minutes my teeth were chattering so hard I could hardly hold my regulator in my mouth. Another problem for M in Rarotonga is that is was not inexpensive. At first it was--six years ago--but in recent years the prices have skyrocketed. M was lucky to find a house that was owned by someone who had left the island and allowed her to live there in return for keeping it maintained, plus a modest rent. But a tourist who last came six years ago would be shocked. There are beach bungalows that rent out at thousands of dollars per week (all prices in CAD). They are nice, but I could never afford them. They all have kitchens so you can cook yourself, but you probably don't want to when you are on a short holiday. In that case you would go out to restaurants where the average main course would be in the area of $20 to $25. A cup of tea and a piece of cake in a café is about $10. And trying to save money by doing your own shopping is difficult when a 250ml jar of peanut butter is $4. A normal-sized jar of mayonnaise is about $7. A loaf of plain sandwich bread is $4 and a slice of deli ham is $1. Most people drink UHT milk (in tetra-paks) because fresh milk is $5 per litre (the airfare thing again). The only things that are not expensive are papayas ($0.65/kg), cabbage, and fish (mahi mahi, tuna, and swordfish, all delicious, at $10/kg). For some reason that I never understood, bananas were $10 per bunch, despite the fact that they grew all over the place. It has been my profound disappointment on this trip to see how places around the world are transformed by tourists with too much money. A particular location will draw visitors perhaps first based on natural beauty. This brings the adventure travellers, looking for places off the beaten path. Eventually they get written up in guide books, which attracts more people. If there is jet service, visitors will come from all around the world, and many of them demand high comfort and are willing to pay. When this happens, the locals go crazy building high-end properties to make a buck off the people with the most money. There seems to be a never-ending source of these well-heeled vacationers, and this starts an inflationary spiral. I could never understand how it was that Rarotongans could afford to live in their country, but so many of the residents are connected with tourism or black pearls, which command artificially inflated prices, that there is a lot of money around. As well, everyone seems to have an uncle or cousin who fishes or has a farm and they get a lot of their basic food supplies outside of the normal cash system. But, I rant. I had almost daily tea-and-Internet dates with M while I was waiting for my next ship to come in and M was preparing to return to the US. After six years, M had finally achieved her goal of gaining back enough health to try a re-introduction to the work world. A lot of rest and a modest but determined exercise regime allowed her to try a normal life again. The hold-up for the past two years was due to a feeling of responsibility for repairing her cyclone-damaged house, which was difficult on her meagre monthly budget and the fact that trying to hire someone to help on the island seemed to be impossible. You try to track down someone who can do repairs by talking to friends, and then try to pin down a date. They promise to come in two months, but they never do, or start but never finish. M also had a very interesting take on her fellow expatriates. At first she joined the community of outsiders, until she found them to be a discontented lot. They seemed happy to have moved to a small tropical island, but the reason for the move was usually some profound dissatisfaction with their previous life, and it carried through to their present one. After a year or so, M preferred to avoid that group. By getting to know J and M I really felt that I was also getting to know Rarotonga. It can be summed up by the fact that it is a small town. Everyone knows everyone else, and like all small towns there is a lot of petty politics and fighting. J was constantly locking horns with government people over the expansion of her business empire, and she personally led a movement to force a former prime minister to resign after she suspected that he had tried to murder her! (A long story that I won't get into... she didn't succeed, but made his life hell.). I have no doubt that J herself would make a fine prime minister, and I would be disappointed if I didn't read that she had tossed her hat into the ring in a few years. J is someone who grew up in a small community, went to New Zealand for education, and returned to improve the lot of her countrymen, hence the fishing start-up. M is someone who came from outside, looking for a paradise to help her regain her health. What she found was new challenges, but she met them and is going back to try a modified version of her previous life. I was in Rarotonga mulling over my Picton Castle experience and wondering what would be coming up next. On my limited budget I shouldn't have kept my deluxe 125cc Suzuki scooter for the whole four weeks, but riding on quiet roads through taro and papaya fields was irresistible, warm wind whistling through your hair and all (no helmets on Rarotonga, but low speed limits). Having wheels gave me an intense feeling of freedom, which I needed at the time. That, plus J and M, is how I will remember Rarotonga. 2:44:36 PM

Saturday, October 11, 2003

Food You may have noticed that there has been a lot of discussion about food in this travelogue. Some might even think that I have a food obsession. But I am not the only one; at any time of day or night, someone on the Picton Castle will be having a discussion about food. Erik Newby writes of his experience as a trainee seaman on the Barque Moshulu in the book "The Last Grain Race". He also spends a lot of time talking about food: how people jealously guarded their private stashes of items brought or sent, and how ravenously they would devour them when a splurge was necessary. I have yet to discuss this topic with commercial mariners, or with yachtsmen, but perhaps it is just something about travelling as a working crew member on a sailing ship that creates an obsession with food. Certainly, the sheer amount of physical work creates an appetite. When the crew assembled in Lunenburg for this voyage, the professional crew were way behind in the pre-departure maintenance schedule because of a problem with the dry-dock. We were all put to work on very physical jobs for at least 8 hours a day. Within a few days, the amount of food that we were devouring to make up for spent calories was already obvious. At sea we work eight hours a day, but half of these is spent on night watch, where we mostly just try to stay awake. The other four hours is spent scraping, sanding, painting, chipping rust, scrubbing decks, mopping floors, cleaning heads (toilets), plus the people on galley duty make bread (quite a work-out to knead dough for eight loaves of bread), peel and chop vegetables, and wash dishes (or, in my case, cook everything). This is all quite physical work. The other issue regarding life aboard a sailing ship is that one expends a fair amount of calories just staying upright. The constant motion of the ship requires your body's "core stabilization muscles" to be in constant use, Standing, sitting, or walking a straight line is way more work on a ship than on land. What all this means is that working on a sailing ship makes you hungry all the time, and people eat a lot. We eat on a strict schedule in the day, and snack during the night. The food is quite plentiful--that is, with certain things--and no one goes hungry. My opinion is that the food quality was perhaps more variable than it could have been, and the provisioning was a bit unadventurous, but it is difficult to please the palate of 48 people all the time. Breakfast always offered a selection of dry cereal, which we ate with reconstituted milk (not bad if the galley person mixed it correctly). If we had eggs, there were also often scrambled eggs, and there were sometimes muffins and pancakes. The last two were made from rather institutional-type mixes and so I lost my taste for both of them rather quickly. Lunch was often soup and fresh bread, sometimes accompanied by leftovers from dinner the night before. The bread could be quite good, but because it was usually made by the galley assistants, the quality varied. Sometimes it was puffy and fell apart (too much yeast and not enough kneading), and sometimes it was heavy (started too late and not enough rising). The shapes were always interesting. The soups also varied a lot, and the cook had some novel recipes. The first time we had tomato, peanut, and canned peach curry soup it was an interesting challenge to the senses. The second and subsequent times it was avoided. Dinner was hearty student-dorm food: spaghetti, chili, roast meat, pork chops, stir fry in wraps, and fried fish if we caught some or had been given some by someone from one of the places we visited. For some reason, a lot of things had canned corn in them (tuna salad, meat sauce for spaghetti and pizza?) and canned pineapple (I don't ever want to see a can of pineapple again). There were always plenty of potatoes (fresh, and surprisingly good instant mash), rice, and other starchy things that would make me put on a lot of weight on land, but had no effect while at sea. During the night, there was an abundance of crackers and peanut butter, honey, and jam for snacking. There was also an endless supply of "Mr. Noodles" packages. Mealtimes were announced by the ringing of the galley bell. The crew would start milling around the area where the meal was to be served (the stern, for breakfast and lunch, or midships and the main salon for dinner). At the sound of the bell, line-ups would form immediately and the food was heaped on plates, followed by a display of devouring as if it was the first meal eaten in a long time. No wonder that the crew was easy to please; food was treated as fuel rather than as a pleasure. Oddly enough, conversations about food cravings (i.e. not about what was being eaten) would carry on right through meals, as though people weren't even aware that they were eating. Food conversations often concerned items that were not on board. If there was anything lacking, it would be fresh dairy products, since the Picton Castle did not have refrigerators (only freezers). Therefore, no fresh milk, yogurt, and limited cheese (though many cheeses do freeze well). Fresh vegetables were also a problem about a week out of port when we would run out of anything that could be kept in the vegetable lockers on deck (suitable only for root vegetables; even then, we had to constantly go through them to remove rotting potatoes, cabbages, carrots, onions, rutabagas). For this reason, one of the constant cravings of the crew was for ice cream and salads (not together). The lack of refrigeration also meant that there were no cold drinks, which explained why cold beer and soft drinks were also desired (crew members had stashes of canned beverages that they would occasionally sneak into the freezers, but this was officially forbidden). The other category of cravings--which I did not share--was junk food. At "mail ports", some of the crew received requested care packages of potato chips, various chocolate bars, and jujubes. If there was anything that I craved, it was to enjoy the act of eating, and to eat food that revealed its flavour. I have spent a lot of time studying the cuisines of various countries and have tried to replicate the beautiful simplicity of the Italian kitchen. I also have invested a lot of time in understanding various ways of cooking meats and vegetables, and recognizing when you want to roast, braise, sauté, steam, or poach to achieve a desired effect. We were not lacking many ingredients on the Picton Castle, and there was no attempt to cut costs by skimping on food. Every meal could have been an opportunity to delight the palate, but instead it was just a time to chow down. I suppose that what I really craved was to choose what I wanted for any meal, to select the ingredients, and to prepare it the way I thought best. Such are the privileges of being an adult. 12:56:42 AM

Sunday, September 28, 2003

6:30:19 PM     6:26:20 PM     The Best Coconut in the World The next destination on our itinerary was Mangareva, part of the Iles Gambiers in southern French Polynesia. These islands are the closest to Pitcairn, and Mangareva has an airport, with a prop plane from Tahiti once a week (a four-hour flight). (It would be only 2 days by boat to Pitcairn, but the catch is that there is no regular boat; going to Mangareva isn't a way to get to Pictcairn.) The reason for the air connection over such a long distance, to service an island with less than a thousand residents, is the black pearl industry. Mangareva is one of the few lagoons in the South Pacific that grows black pearl oysters. The black-lipped pearl oyster looks different from what we think of as an oyster. First of all, the shape of the shell looks more like a scallop than an oyster--flat and round--and second, they are very large. The oysters take years to grow, hanging off a line suspended by buoys in the shallow lagoon, and are periodically opened up to be seeded with a nucleus made of Mississippi river clam shell. This is covered with nacre by the oyster over the course of 18 to 24 months, and then removed. At that time, another nucleus is introduced until the oyster isn[base ']t making very good pearls any more. By then the oyster can be up to 20 cm across! The shells are very beautiful, and can be polished and carved on. However, most of them end up in piles by the shore and burned. Our stop in Mangareva was weather-dependent because of the dangerous lagoon entrance. In contrast to Pitcairn, which is a younger island, this one is surrounded by a very large lagoon. The island group was formed from two volcanoes side by side. The southern one is all but gone, save for a few small bits sticking out, and the northern one has only the northwest edge of a caldera left; that is the main island. The northern group is ringed by motus, which are thin barrier islands made from the outer coral ring. It is typical of this type of island group that approaching by boat is tricky. The ocean will change from thousands of metres to a few metres very suddenly, far far from the island. One has to follow the chart very carefully and enter through a passage into the lagoon. There is usually one caused by fresh-water run-off from rain, which kills the coral in one area and leaves a navigable channel. Attempts to do this during heavy weather or with bad charts has resulted in many a shipwreck. Fortunately, the weather was relatively calm and the passage was well-marked. We motored through the lagoon and were able to anchor in the inner harbour, right off the main settlement. I say settlement rather than town because there is hardly anything that can be called a town. Normally, crew members go off to find a cheap hotel, but there was nothing of the sort to be found. There was something called a guest house, but it looked just like someone's house, and it was $100 (all prices in USD) per night. Prices in French Polynesia are shocking. There was hardly anything to buy, but a small bag of potato chips was $5, as an example. However, like in all of French Polynesia, even in this remote location you could buy baguettes and brioches, plus French cheese. So, the normal day activity for crew on shore leave was to buy a picnic lunch and go for a hike or to the beach. One item that no one bought was black pearls. There wasn't any pearl retail outlet because they were all shipped to Tahiti. However, some of the cultivators offered to sell us some direct. The Captain said that they would be cheaper in Rarotonga, but that was a rare case of really bad advice. Some people traded t-shirts and hats for a pearl or two. And several of the pearl workers were quite taken by some of the female crew and gave them loose pearls and even a necklace. Others were offered a price of $20 each, but they declined. We found out later that black pearls in Rarotonga were 10 times that price, and that the necklace given to one of the crew was worth thousands of dollars! That explains why I am not bringing back any black pearls as souvenirs. My souvenirs are the photographs I did during the hikes. One was to the top of the peak, called Mt. Duff. That was a steep climb with a spectacular view of the island group and the lagoon; you could sit on the edge of a precipice and eat your lunch. Other hikes were along the perimeter road around the island, or across the backbone ridge in a few places. I did all of these. The strange thing about them was the flora. The island is ringed by coconut palms, bananas, and grapefruit trees (more like a pomelo, and the best I have ever had), but the centre of the island is ferns and some kind of pine tree. During the hikes, one could be excused for thinking that one was on Gambier Island, near Vancouver, rather than the Iles Gambiers. I snapped some pictures and they could have been taken on one of the Gulf Islands. You could also walk around and explore the buildings. One strange legacy of a rather fanatical Catholic monk who came in the 1800s was a huge cathedral and a monastery. The former could seat 1200, more than the population of the island, and was still in use. The monastery was in ruin, however. Long, white sand beaches are a feature of motus, not high islands, but there were a few small beaches on Mangareva. One of these was about a 40-minute walk from the ship, and most of the crew ended up there at one time or the other. I decided to go one afternoon by myself and lie in my hammock (souvenir of Panama). It is a typical experience of this trip to sit on a beach and look out over the ocean, and know that hardly anyone has ever been there. No resorts or hotels are around the corner. Tourists or visitors of any kind are almost unknown. Even the locals don't go to the beach much, which explained the plentiful coconuts, both green and brown, all over the sand. These are both useful for cooking and eating raw and would normally be snapped up. We had recently had a coconut-opening workshop on board, and I decided to use my new skills. I was thirsty, and decided that some green coconut milk would be just the thing. The green coconuts have sweet milk and thin gelatinous meat, if you can call it meat at that stage. Such a nut is called a "drinking nut" or a "jelly nut", depending on how much meat has been deposited on the inside of the hard shell. The brown coconuts are much older and the milk is less sweet. The meat contains the goodness and is ground up with water and then pressed to make the coconut cream that you buy in cans for your Thai curry. It is difficult to husk a green coconut and very easy to husk a brown one. That explains why the one you can buy at a supermarket at home has been husked. It is not a drinking nut. Opening a brown nut starts with taking something that looks like a crowbar and peeling the outer husk off. It takes about a minute, and experts can do it in seconds. When you have the centre nut, you can poke a hole in one of the three eyes at one end and drain the water, if you want it. Then you hold it in one hand and tap it across its equator line (if it were a globe and the eyes were at one pole) with the blunt side of a machete or a hammer. If you do it correctly, the coconut will start to split into two perfect halves; a few more taps and it is open. You can extract the meat by cutting it out with a knife and then use the bowls for drinking or serving Polynesian side dishes at dinner. Opening a green nut requires a large, sharp knife, and consists of whittling away the husk to make one end a point. It takes some practice, but eventually you will have removed most of the soft husk on one side. Then you make one horizontal cut across the top and a perfectly round hole about the size of a quarter will appear. I did not come prepared with my sailor's knife and only had the Swiss Army stand-by. However, I was determined to have some coconut and went at it in smaller cuts. Eventually, I made the final stroke and the top popped off like I had opened a can of beer. This was a huge coconut, and must have contained a litre of the sweetest and most fragrant coconut water I have ever tasted. I couldn't drink it all, but wanted some of the jelly. I hacked at the shell to expose the inside and scooped it with a spoon made from some of my coconut shavings. It was like eating incredibly rich creamy coconut-flavoured jello. It was so good that I couldn't stop and ended up eating the whole thing! It was the most delicious coconut in the world. 6:24:16 PM     6:22:20 PM     6:19:53 PM     6:18:15 PM     6:15:39 PM     Pitcairn Island Pitcairn Island is a place that is very difficult to get to. This was something that was in its favour as a hiding place for Fletcher Christian and the mutineers on The Bounty, the people made famous by setting Captain Bligh and 18 of his loyal crew in a longboat and letting them drift and sail 4500 nautical miles to what is now Timor. The descendents of the mutineers liked the island so much that they still live there, more than 200 years later. We were going to Pitcairn to meet and stay with them. Pitcairn is one of the last islands in the archipelago that forms French Polynesia; east and south of it is just a lot of ocean and then South America and Antarctica, respectively. It has no air service, which means that you must arrive by sea if you want to visit. We were sailing the tradewinds from the Galapagos Islands (the trades in that part of the world go west, which means that sailing from Tahiti, which is west of Pitcairn, is difficult), a journey of 2700 nautical miles on a great circle route. We started the trip from the Galapagos on a fresh breeze that eventually blew up into a full-blown gale. We were sailing at 8 knots (about as fast as the Picton Castle will go unless in ridiculous sea conditions), which meant that we were covering a lot of ocean each day, but with the disadvantage that we were also in 10- to 15-foot swells for a while. The seas calmed down, and then went flat calm. Not wanting to drift around for days, the captain motored, but we then met an opposing wind with large swells, which slowed us down. The last 6 days of our 22-day voyage to Pitcairn caused a certain amount of seasickness because we were constantly smashing into big seas. And as we sailed out of the tropics, literally south of the Tropic of Capricorn, it cooled off, so much so that I was wearing four layers of clothes and full rain gear during night watch to keep out the chill of the wind. Eventually, we spotted the island early one morning in the cool and gloomy cloud. It looked nothing like the perfect spot that we had been hearing about. We were prepared for bad anchoring conditions, as the island is more or less a rock 3 km long dropped in the ocean, with no shelter for a sea vessel, and we tried to anchor off Bounty Bay, a small nook from which the residents launch their longboats. That didn't work, so we had to go to the other side of the island, which was protected from wind, but not big swells from a low-pressure system way to the south. The cargo hold of the Picton Castle was filled to bursting with supplies for Pitcairn. The islanders lost their last regular supply ship early this year and it is very difficult for them to get materials. Therefore, we were carrying about 4,000 kilograms of cement, a large amount of wood for building, and, oddly enough, a bulldozer blade, all of which was loaded manually at the dock in Lunenburg. This had to be unloaded and transferred to a longboat at sea, in the swells that were causing our ship and the longboat to bounce up and down about 6 feet relative to each other. Before anyone went ashore, this was our job. Eventually, the cargo was delivered and the port watch bill was posted; I was in the first group to go ashore. We loaded overnight bags into the longboat along with the second load of supplies and got on. We had to go around to the other side of island, which involved crashing through rather large swells and some surf as we came up to the dock. We arrived totally soaked. At the dock we were greeted by the residents who were going to put us up. There are no paved roads on Pitcairn, but a lot of narrow dirt ones. These are navigated by Honda ATVs, which everyone has. They really seat one person, with perhaps some space behind the driver on a motorcycle-style seat. The front and back has some space where you can strap whatever you are carrying, but everyone uses this space to move people around, so we piled our luggage and jumped on. We held on to anything we could while our hosts drove up "The Hill of Difficulty", the name of the road that takes you up to the main settlement of Adamstown, and the Hondas proved themselves magnificently. Later, I came to appreciate what an amazing invention asphalt and concrete sidewalks are. Dirt roads get muddy after rain and the mud gets on all over you, either by being splashed by the tires on the Hondas, or just by kicking it up all over your pants when you walk. I thought that the ship was hard on clothes, but all my shore clothes ended up covered in mud by the end of my stay here. There are 46 residents on Pictairn. We numbered 48, which means that we would totally overwhelm them if all could come ashore. To reduce the effect we would have on the island, the captain allowed only half of the crew off at a time; besides, half of the crew had to remain on the ship in case we had to pull up anchor and heave to (float around with some sails up) if the weather got too bad for anchoring. Not all of the residents of Pitcairn are descendents of the mutineers. There is a teacher and his wife contracted by the High Commissioner in New Zealand, plus a medical practitioner who also doubles as a pastor for the Seventh-Day Adventist Church (the islanders picked this religion for some reason that is not clear). It turned out that I and another member of the crew were put up at the house of the teacher. At first, I would have to say that I was disappointed that I wasn't staying with one of the "true" residents, but Allen and Jude were such gracious hosts that I couldn't have imagined a better experience. As well, as "outsiders", they were able to fill us in on all of what was going on with the island, since something was really going on. Several years ago, a woman police representative was placed on the island by the British government, which is the ultimate ruler of Pitcairn (though most of the government is done through New Zealand). The policewoman "uncovered" some sexual irregularities that had been going on over several years, which had something to do with men having sex with underage girls. While no one seems to deny that this may have indeed happened, the issue seems to have been blown out of proportion and now about half of the men on the island are charged with sex crimes. This has understandably rent the community, since they are really one large family (a lot of inter-marrying). The British government sent 4 law officers (for 46 people?) and 2 social workers to check out the island. They were understandably not welcome, and now only 2 officers are left. But the worst thing is that the Pictcairners get hardly any support from the British for basic services, yet they spend thousands of dollars sending legal delegations to the island to prepare to argue the eventual case. There were 3 magistrates, plus their entourage of a few others, plus 3 defense lawyers when we arrived. They fly to Tahiti, take a small plane to Mangareva, and then get on a chartered 100-ft vessel for the 2-day sea journey to Pitcairn, all of which is very expensive. Some people say that the British would like some excuse to remove many of the men from the island because it will make the community non-viable, and then they wouldn't have to support it any more. It sounds a bit paranoia, but there may be some truth to it. But enough about all the unpleasantness. It is time to describe Pitcairn. Imagine a small island that is just large enough, but not too large, filled with banana trees, coconut palms, mangoes, avocados, pineapple, guavas, papayas, and breadfruit, all for the taking. Imagine an island where overfishing is unheard of, with seas filled with tuna, wahoo, and other delicious fish. Imagine fertile soil with a climate where you can grow practically anything. Plus, imagine steep hills on which you can perch houses that have specacular views of the open ocean, yet be close enough so everyone is connected by a short walk. Imagine a place where everyone is so desperate for outside company that an outside visitor can't walk by any of the houses without being invited in for a chat, or a drink, or even a complete meal. It is about as perfect as you can get! Our hosts, Allan and Jude, were New Zealanders that were on contract to teach the school. There were more than halfway through a year contract, and were sorry to be heading home soon. This was the second time they had come; the first time was about 20 years ago, when they had stayed for several years. At that time they had their children with them, and the school had many students. At the moment, there were only 6 school-age children, and 3 of them were of high-school age, which meant that they stayed at home and did correspondence courses. Therefore, the job of teacher wasn[base ']t all that demanding. However, the lack of young children was a concern for the long-term viability of the island. Most of the residents were older, and with a significant portion of "senior" age. Jude had a cookbook of Pitcairn recipes, which attracted me because of my recent interest in how people eat in different parts of the world. In this community, the food is very local for the simple reason that supply ships come so rarely that imported foods are almost impossible to get. I flipped through the book and found lots of things made from bananas, breadfruit, arrowroot flour, and coconut milk. I made dinner one night, adapting a Malaysian dish ("rendang") to what was available, and made side dishes from the book. A staple side dish is pilhi (pronounced pill-eye), which is grated breadfruit or sweet potato or green banana mashed with salt and maybe coconut milk before being wrapped in a banana leaf and baked. I had always wanted to try breadfruit, but the season was almost over. Banana trees are ubiquitous, but breadfruit trees are owned by specific families; you can't just go and pick one, like you can almost everything else. However, while on a drive with Allan I saw one on the road. Allan thought it might be rotten, but I picked it up and it looked mostly OK. I grated it and added salt, pepper, a bit of coconut milk, and a few tablespoons of flour before wrapping in a banana leaf and baking it. The result was delicious. Imagine a starchy mash with a tropical fruit fragrance, something like bananas, pineapple, and passion fruit. Dessert was something that no one had ever heard of, but is perfect for the island: key lime pie. One of the canned goods that comes by the cartons--so everyone has it--is sweetened condensed milk. Limes grow all over the place, and many people have chickens. All you need is some lime juice, a can of condensed milk, and some egg yolks. A box of gingersnaps was crushed for the crust, and presto, a new island dessert. I went to seek out Irma, the author of the cookbook I had used. She is 75, spry, and very friendly. I came to the door and was immediately invited to tea. She was thrilled to hear the story of how I had made something from her book, and I found out later that everyone had heard it within a few days. Word travels fast in that community! The Pitcairners have an odd communication network (besides the grapevine). Many years ago the British government installed a telephone system, but the technology was very bad and it doesn't work any more. Now, everyone uses VHF radios. This of course makes sense, since ship culture is basic to the island (the origin of everyone there), and VHF is used for near-distance ship-to-ship communication. The radio is on all the time, monitoring channel 16. If you want anyone, you just pick up the mike and say their name three times, standard radio protocol. If that person is home, they will pick up and tell you to move to one of the other channels, where you can continue your conversation. If that person is somewhere else, chances are that they will hear their name. In this way, the system works as telephone--fixed and mobile--and paging system at the same time. All of the Picton Castle crew got used to it, and soon were heard endless calls for ship-mates looking for each other to schedule a walk to the swimming hole or the cave. Activities during the day were mainly about seeing the natural beauty of the island. Pitcairn is a very young island, which means that it is high and steep, with no coral lagoon. (As islands age, a ring of coral forms around the perimeter. The island then starts to sink, which creates a shallow lagoon between the coral ring and the island. Eventually the island will sink completely, and the only thing left will be the coral ring. The top of the coral gets smashed into sand by the surf, which is stabilized with plants, and the coral ring becomes the island, an atoll.) A very steep hillside is the location of "Christian[base ']s Cave", a hole in the hill where Fletcher Christian hid supplies in case he was found by the British and he had to lay low for a while. This walk, like many others on the island, can be quite frightening to anyone with a fear of heights, as it is steep, with many drop-offs. The same could be said of "Ship Landing Point", which is a narrow ridge that comes to a point, overhanging a many-hundred-foot drop-off to Bounty Bay below. Practically everyone did the walks, which probably says something about how dangling from yards day after day makes you less worried about cliff edges. One activity in which all of the crew ashore participated was the weekly church service. The residents of Pitcairn are Seventh-Day Adventists, who worship on Saturday. They also follow many of the same prescriptions of a Kosher diet, and avoid alcohol (fewer than half of the residents are strict about these, though). Because of the inevitable modernization of the island (driving ATVs, using power tools, watching imported videos and DVDs) church attendance was dropping, but special occasions bring everyone out and we all went too. The day before, I was approached by the pastor who said that he had heard I was musical and would I play the organ. I said that I would prefer to sing, if that was an option. He thought perhaps that could be arranged. The reason that he wanted an organist was because the regular organist was off the island and the repertoire of the pastor's daughter was limited. I knew that one of my ship-mates, Jaime, played the piano, and asked her if she wanted to put something together with me. We looked through the hymn book, and the pastor's daughter suggested that a very popular one with the islanders was "The Sweet By and By"; in fact, it is almost the island anthem. Hymns are pretty easy to sight-sing and we had it down pretty well after 20 minutes. The only problem is that my voice is really out of shape! I was careful to do a very light warm-up the morning of the service, as I may have only had one song in my vocal chords. When my turn came up to sing, I asked the congregation to sing the third verse along with me, since the Pitcairners have a distinctive singing style, reminiscent of Polynesian singing (there is a lot of Polynesian in them now, after many generations of mixing with the original Tahitian wives that the mutineers took). It was a great experience for me, and I think the congregation liked it too. Irma came running up to me afterwards and said that hearing me was better than the story about the pilhi! Our trip to Pictairn Island was the third for the Picton Castle, and the Captain had been there before. It was a very special visit for both the ship and the residents, but soon we had to leave. The Pitcairners loaded us up with many stalks of bananas (hundreds of the best bananas we had ever eaten), a freezer full of delicious fish, and all of the vegetables they could spare. They came aboard for a quick going-away celebration and then reboarded their longboat. As had been the tradition on the island for a long time, the residents sang a good-bye song as we pulled up anchor. There were some tears, as no one wanted to leave. Eventually, the longboat returned to Bounty Bay, and we pointed the bow of our ship into the sunset and sailed off to our next destination. 6:12:18 PM     6:10:18 PM     A Party at Sea The wind has died, you are bobbing around in the middle of the ocean, the crew is bored; what do you do? Have a party! We were in the middle of an ocean passage of 2700 nautical miles (approximately 5400 km), from the Galapagos Islands to Pitcairn Island. Things can get really tedious in the middle of such a long crossing and planned activities help to break up the tedium, plus they help us get to know the other crew members a bit better. Because of the way that the "watch system" works, we spend our 8 work hours a day with the same group of about 12 people. We don't get too much of an opportunity to see people in the other watches--except at dinner--because when they are working, they can't socialize and we are probably napping. A party was announced. The party had a theme: tarts and vicars, which meant that you were supposed to dress up as either one. Creating costumes while at sea is a challenge, but at least guys can become vicars with the addition of a white collar made from a piece of sail canvas. And girls can become tarts with the aid of a lot of make-up. But the strange thing is that for some reason there is something about ships that causes men to dress up as women, or so says the captain. He was proven correct, as all of the male crew under 30 ended up in a dress. Most of them are quite thin, and had disappeared into the Bat Cave (the nickname of the aft cabin, which is populated exclusively by women) a few hours before 4 p.m.--the party start time--for lessons on how to wear dresses and even a make-up make-over. Dresses came from two places: some were borrowed from a female crew member of about the same size, and others were purloined from black garbage bags filled with used clothing that we sell or give away to isolated South Pacific communities. At such functions, the captain serves alcohol. Some, in fact many, ships are dry, but not the Picton Castle. The rule on alcohol is for the crew to avoid doing anything that would make the captain have to make a rule about alcohol. Things that would fall into that category would be: showing up for watch really drunk, falling off a yard because of impaired balance, or generally being a nasty drunk. As it turns out, two of the three things have happened (no one has fallen off a yard), but not enough for it to be a pattern that the captain has to modify. I don't know if this is universal, but it seems that the drink of choice on a ship is rum. We usually make a large pot of rum punch or pina coladas and snacks come from the hidden stash in the cargo hold (hidden because the night watches are always snacking and the party food would be gone in a few weeks if it were easily available). We ate dinner as usual that evening--it just became part of the festivities-- and the sun set at the usual early time that we get near the equator (6:30 p.m. is about average). Then the "dance floor" hatch cover lit up with a few strings of Christmas lights. A portable CD player blared tunes that the assigned DJs had assembled from various laptops, and dancing started. Here is where it really got interesting: guys had to figure out how to move around with a dress on. By far most of these guys would have failed at being a drag queen, but there were a few surprises. Another surprise was the women. Two very tall female crew came as tarts, but they actually succeeded in making themselves look like men dressed as women. (I don't think they actually realized that.) At one time late in the evening, the crew was dancing (and falling all over the place because we forgot that the ship is still moving and we didn't have dancing sea legs), I looked up at the stars behind the coloured lights, and all I could think of was that it would be impossible to describe this scene: that somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean far away from any ship or island or land-inhabiting thing--save for the occasional bird--there was a small community that had forgotten that they were floating on an object that was their home, workplace, entire world. At 10 p.m., rules say that the ship is quiet. Music was turned off, people went back on their normal watches, dresses returned to their owners, and the Picton Castle went from being a floating dance floor to being a ship again. 5:46:38 PM

Sunday, August 10, 2003

Galley Day The Picton Castle has a full-time professional cook. She works very long hours, starting at 6:30 a.m. for breakfast and ending at 6:00 p.m. when dinner is served. In order to make her job easier, she gets three assistants every day--one from each watch--to cart things up from the cargo hold, wash, peel, and chop vegetables, and to clean up the galley and wash all of the dishes after every meal. The cook gets Monday off, and she also takes a few days off here and there, plus she rarely works when we are at anchor. On these days, the galley slaves, or rather, assistants, cook as well as assist and clean up. There are a few crew members who know their way around a kitchen, and therefore we, since I am included in this group, always seem to work when the cook takes her day off. Galley days are posted on the notice board weekly, and I was looking for my name when the new list was up because I knew it was coming up soon. I was really hoping that my day would be later in the week rather than earlier, as we were sailing in quite hard conditions, with high winds and big seas. Unfortunately, since Monday was the cook's day off, and it was Sunday, it turned out that I was on the next day. That night I hoped that the weather would calm down over night. At 6:30 a.m. the wake-up person from the current watch came by my bunk, and as is usual, the first thing I did was to try to figure out what the seas were doing. We had been sailing for the last few days on almost a beam reach, which meant that the wind was coming from the side, and makes the ship lean over the most. I confirmed that this was still the case as I was definitely sleeping against the side of my bunk. I got up, dressed and stepped out into the early morning to see that in fact we were in the biggest seas so far on this trip! And I had to be in charge of feeding everyone in these conditions. Your day in the galley can be better or worse depending on who your fellow assistants are. Some people are more agreeable than others, some like galley day, and others hate it and sulk all day in the scullery, washing dishes. We had a great crew that day, so at least it was going to be fun. Breakfast was the usual assortment of dry cereals, milk, juices, and today, scrambled eggs. We make all of our own bread, but for breakfast the only thing is tortilla wraps, which people sometimes use for peanut butter and jam rolls. (Eating dry cereal in the conditions of that day is always a challenge. It is difficult enough to get your cereal to pour out of the bag without it being blown out of the bowl by the 25 kt. wind (we usually eat outside) before you can wet it down with some milk (powdered, reconstituted). Then you have to find somewhere to sit where you can anchor yourself with your feet or elbow or something so that you can have both hands to eat.) For the galley crew, all we had to do afterward was to collect dishes and wash them, and to put everything away. Next, lunch. The cook suggested soup. This may not seem to be too smart in such conditions, but it is easier to eat out of a bowl than a plate on such days. We discussed some options and decided that we would make clam chowder. One of the galley slaves went to the cargo hold to rummage for canned clams, one washed and peeled potatoes, and I started a batch of bread. At this time, I should try to describe, really, what the galley is like. It is small, about the size of an apartment kitchen. It has a large cast-iron stove that was built in 1870 and was converted to run off diesel a few years ago. The cooking surface has hot spots and cool ones and you just have to move pots around to find the correct temperature, but the surface never gets hot enough for me. It also has two ovens, each with 2 shelves, for a total of four shelves to bake in. The temperature of the shelves is: too hot, just a bit hotter than I would like, just a bit cooler than I would like, and warm, but not warm enough to actually bake anything. When the ship is moving, everything on the stove and in the ovens, of course, moves along with it. OK, so try to imagine the picture: you are in an apartment-sized kitchen, and today it is tilted to one side because of the wind, plus it is rocking back and forth (sometimes violently) and going up and down about 10 to 15 feet. And soon 45 people are coming for lunch and dinner and you have to feed them, and meals can't be late because they are timed to when the watches change. Making bread in these conditions wasn't too bad: Take a large bowl, add 8 cups of water, yeast, sugar, salt, powdered milk, some oil, and flour. Mix a batter and beat with a whisk for a few minutes, and then start adding flour to make the actual dough. The only challenge is to keep the bowl in one spot on the miniscule counter. Then you dump it out onto the kneading board and it stays put pretty well. At least you have something to hold on to as you knead, and somehow or other, you can tune out the constant motion. When the dough was ready for first rising we started on the soup. In two very large pots we browned some onions on the slow range. Everything takes at least twice as long to do as I am used to, so just browning about 6 chopped onions took about 20 minutes. Then we added cubed potatoes and got them just starting to cook, which took an additional 15 minutes or so. Then we added the juice from the clams and several pitchers of reconstituted milk. The milk we use is not "instant" skim milk, but full cream powder. It tastes OK, but is a pain to make because you have to start by making a paste and then thinning it with water; otherwise you get really lumpy milk, and in fact most people still don't get this and so usually it is lumpy. By using two large pots, and anchoring them on the stove with guide rails that have a special name like everything on a ship and I can't remember, we were able to keep the soup in the pots despite the fact that it was sloshing around. While the broth came to a simmer (which took about an hour), I punched down the risen bread dough and shaped it into loaves. Then we added the clam meat and worked on seasoning. This is actually a challenge because you have to multiply everything by several times as compared to how you would season even a dinner-party-sized dish (for, say, eight people). Instead of a few shakes of salt, you do ten. The bread went into the oven while the counters on the aloha deck (the lower deck at the stern) were set with bowls and cutlery. Because of the uneven temperature, the bread has to be rotated through all of the oven shelves to get even cooking and browning, but eventually I had 8 loaves of fresh bread. We carried the huge pots of soup, one at a time with two people so you have one hand for the pot and one for handrails or whatever else you need to balance yourself, and rang the lunch bell. People always seem to be starving on the ship, so everyone runs to get in line. People also get really excited about fresh bread, so lunch went down really well, except for the few people that never like what is served. Some even said it was the best chowder they ever had, which just shows what kind of an appetite you can work up at sea. OK, lunch was out of the way, so it was time to get ready for dinner. We had decided that we were going to something with chicken, and we had retrieved two huge bags of breasts from the freezer to thaw out over the day. How to cook them? And what would stay on the plate, and in the pot while cooking? I decided to try something Italian, which is always popular, and settled on something like Chicken Parmesan, or chicken baked in a tomato sauce with cheese on top, served with pasta. The three vegetarians on board could eat pasta with some sauce reserved for them with grated cheese. The first thing was to brown 45 chicken breasts, which as I said takes a long time because of the lack of sufficient heat to actually brown. That was easy, as they didn't slide around a lot. However, the huge pot of tomoto sauce was trickier. We had to make in all in one pot because we needed the other one for boiling the pasta water, which takes about an hour to get to simmering. Fortunately, with the lid on, the sauce stayed in the pot (mostly). One thing about a lot of pitching and rolling is that there is always one wave that comes along every several minutes that is larger than the other ones. So if you put something down and think it is safe from sliding away or falling over, eventually it will slide or topple. Over the course of the afternoon, more or less everything went for a ride. We decided to make dessert (peach crisp, made with canned peaches, since after about 10 days at sea you are completely out of fresh fruit), and we had peach halves all over the floor after they had stayed in their bowl for a good half an hour. The tomato sauce somehow or other managed to stay in the pot for a good 2 hours, but just as I was pouring it over the chicken in the baking trays, a wave came along and there was sauce everywhere. And baking saucy chicken was trickier than bread because the liquid would slosh around in the pans. Finally, I distributed the boiling (barely) water between two pots and dumped in pasta. We carefully carried the pans of chicken to the main salon (we eat dinner inside when it is dark, and in this part of the time zone in the equatorial winter the sun set at around 6:30, with only about 15 minutes of twilight). When the pasta was ready and dinner was complete, the dinner bell rang and the usual stampede ensued. Anything pasta-like is always a hit, and with dessert that evening, the galley crew were heroes. By the time we cleaned up all of the dishes, pots, and galley, it was 8:00 p.m. The captain came by and asked the galley crew to find him when we were finished. Shortly after, we met him on the quarterdeck and were led to the officer's mess, which is where the captain eats, occasionally with selected crew members. The captain produced a bottle of wine and gave us a commendation for exemplary service in challenging conditions. We shared the bottle, which was a great way to end that day, and then went below to fall into our bunks, totally exhausted! 2:53:09 AM

Sunday, July 27, 2003

The Galapagos Islands To travel with expectiations is not a good thing, usually. On the other hand, traveling with a certain expectation that then having it completely turned upside down has a certain pleasure to it. This is what I experienced in the Galapagos Islands. We seem to all have knowledge of the Galapagos Islands, probably learned from some National Geographic documentary. As it turned out, the things that I thought I knew weren't completely accurate: like that Darwin went there and therefore formulated his theory of evolution (that is actually not entirely accurate, as he came up with the theory much later, even though things that he saw here were an inspiration). And that his theory explained the exotic animal inhabitants (also not correct; there are a lot of exotic species here, but the ones that were the key for Darwin were the various finches, which are probably the most boring animal on the islands). And that for some reason we expect islands on the equator to be hot and like a rain forest (in fact, it is quite cool here because of the Humboldt Current which keeps the water quite frigid, and a lot of the islands are arid and barren). The last of these details became apparent as we approached land. The week we arrived we were sailing just one degree south of the equator, wearing multiple layers of clothing because of the cold, and our first view of land was a moonscape that would not be unfamilar to those who have been to the Big Island of Hawaii. We hadn't seen blue sky for about a week because of the persistant low cloud that characterizes the cool season and were really hoping for somewhere warm and sunny. It didn't look good. However, at the far end of the island was the very small town were were to anchor at and it looked like a local weather phenomenon burned the cloud off. Things looked better. When the Picton Castle is in port or at anchor, one of the three watches has to remain on the ship to make sure that the anchor stays secure (and sail the ship if it has to pick up and move somewhere more secure). Plus, there is always ship's work to do and while at anchor is the best time for large-scale painting. My watch was fortunate in that we were able to go ashore on the first afternoon. Though conditions on the Picton Castle are not bad, really, all of the crew members will take practically every opportunity to get off! So it was with some impatience that we all had to remain on board while the immigration officials came aboard and processed our passports. We packed overnight bags and waited until we were cleared. Our motor skiff dropped off the first load of crew members ashore in the early afternoon of our first day and we realized that we were in a very rustic and charming town. Our only stop in these islands was the island of San Cristòbal, which has a town of about 5000 and another small town inland called El Progresso. (The latter is built on the site of a sugar cane plantation built by an "entrepeneur" 150 years ago who ran it like a concentration camp. He was eventually killed by the workers and the site became an agricultural town.) Here is where expectations played a part in my experience. We were expecting to see the famous sea lions, marine iguanas, tortoises, and blu-footed boobies. They are all there; in fact, sea lions are all over the towns beaches, sidewalks, and small boats moored in the bay. Blue-footed boobies circle around looking for fish and then dive in formation into the water like an amphibious aerobatic team. But, in the middle of all this was this charming, sleepy little town filled with cafés, bars, restaurants and shops. Everyone was so friendly, and proprietors come out to say hello when you walk by somehow without hinting at an expectation that you are going to come and spend money in their place. I supposed that this island is what beautiful places are like before they are spoiled by rich tourists. The local economy seems to be thriving, yet we were incredulous over the low prices of everything. Beer, which we consume in copius amounts (safer than water!) is $1 (Equador, which governs the Galapagos Islands, is on the US dollar). Breakfasts at a charming bar overlooking the ocean are $3, and dinner in a wonderful restaurant is $8 to $13 dollars. And now I must spend some time talking about the food here. The food in the Galapagos Islands is something wondrous. This has something to do with the environmental policies of the Galapagos province. Importing anything from the mainland and further afar poses a risk to the indigenous plants and animals, so the islands are as self-sufficient as possible. Despite the islands being largely arid, they all have one area (the windward, rainy side) that is suitable for agriculture. Things like bananas, oranges, guavas, and other fruits I have never heard of such as aranjillas and tomates de arbol grow abundantly. The locals consume them in large quantities, usually juiced at one of the several juice bars. One of the rules of eating fruit and vegetables in non-first-world countries is to only eat things that you washed and peeled yourself. However, despite all of the lectures on board about what happens if you don't watch what you eat ashore, we couldn't resist and therefore had fresh fruit juiced at least once a day (a large glass for a dollar; everything is a dollar). Besides, another rule of eating in strange places is to avoid tourist food and eat what the locals eat. Breakfast is taken at sidewalk cafés and bars by locals and tourists alike and usually consists of coffe or tea (cafe con leche, or café au lait), sweet rolls with butter, queso fresco (like real Italian mozzarella), and jam (the latter often being guava marmalade), eggs, and juice. Occasionally you can get local things like bolòn verde, which is deep-fried shredded plantains and cheese. For some reason, whatever you choose always comes out to $3. Dinners for me always consisted of seafood, since that is a food group not well-represented on the Picton Castle. All of the restaurants serve fish prepared in several ways (and it is all the same fish, being what the fishermen are catching that day, wahoo being the catch the week we were there), spiny lobster (i.e. without claws), squid, and shrimp. Some restaurants will serve you a mixed seafood grill presented on a hibachi in the middle of your table, from which you pick the fish as soon as it has sizzled to your liking. But the highlight was ceviche. As I said, we were lectured on eating food that wasn't properly cooked, and ceviche is raw fish marinated in citrus juices. However, some of the crew tried it, pronounced it delicious, and then we couldn't get enough of it. Being somewhat careful, I only had it once, though some people had it for lunch and dinner for several days in a row (and I would have like to as well!). It was incredibly delicious, the fish having been marinated in fresh lime and orange juice to which was added some green peppers, fresh tomatoes, and cilantro. You get it as a main course in a bowl with a spoon, like soup, and the standard accompaniment is fried plantains. Between breakfast and dinner, you can stock up on sweet or savoury pastries, or sandwiches made at one of the several small bars. Everything is so inexpensive and delicious that we spent a lot of time eating. There is also something about working on a ship that makes one ravenous all of the time, which certainly enhanced our gastronomic experience. Enough about food. There are other things to do on these islands. The island of San Cristòbal is not the main tourist centre; that is on the neighbouring Santa Cruz, which also is the site of the Darwin Centre. However, there still are many things to see. There is only one road on the island, which goes about one third of the way across. At the end of this road is a "galapaguera", or tortoise reserve (Galapagos means tortoises). You can walk around a path through an area where the land tortoises live and are cared for, since their population still hasn't recovered from the wholesale slaughter of the 19th century ships that came for whales and tortoises. There is also a beach called "La Loberia", or place of wolves. In the local Spanish, sea lions are called sea wolves, so this is a place where they hang out, though as I mentioned earlier, they also hang out all over the town, so you don't really have to go far to see them. The beach also has populations of the famous black marine iguanas. The sea lions are extremely cute. I'm sure that the locals regard them as pests, especially if they have a fishing boat. The small bay around which the town is built is full of fishing boats tied to private mooring bouys. They seem to be a favourite hangout for the sea lions, as the boats often have one or many crowded on the small fore-deck, or even just inside. Some owners put barbed wire on the boats to keep them off (we thought it was to keep people from stealing their boats at first). But best of all, if you go to one of the many beaches and go swimming, you will usually attract some pups, who are curious and want to play with you. You can tell that the adults aren't happy about it, since they seem to bark to warn both you and the pups from too much contact. But snorkelling with playful sea lions certainly was a highlight of our visit here. One of the strangest thing to see on an animal is the colour blue. On birds, this isn't unusual if it is the feathers, but one of the most common birds here was the blue-footed booby, with its startlingly blue feet. They are a sleek and beautful bird that spends much of its day dive-bombing for fish. They also have the reputation for being very friendly and walking all over you and your boat, but we didn't experience that. After a packed day of nature-viewing and eating, we would retire to our hotels (if we had the night off). Rooms were $20 to $30, and most people shared, which made a day on these islands about the best travel bargain I have ever experienced. We all had an incredibly great time. I wonder if I would have such a good time if I returned by jet? I wonder now if there is something about arriving somewhere by ship that makes our land experiences so much richer compared to that of your average traveller? 1:22:28 PM

Thursday, July 24, 2003

5:13:24 PM     5:12:32 PM

Tuesday, July 22, 2003

The Equator A few days after passing through the inter-tropical convergence zone, we were off the coast of Equador, and would soon be across the equator. Again, something quite unexpected: who would have thought the equator would be cold? There is something called the Humboldt Current, which brings cold water up the coast of South America, and it shoots directly toward the Galapagos Islands (which explains the presence of penguins on one of the islands). It also cools down the air. During July, an inversion layer is created: cool water creates a low cloud layer, which prevents the sun from getting through and keeps the cool air down. It was actually getting quite chilly. I had cold-weather clothing for the first week of the trip stored away and I had to break it out of the sealed Ziploc bags (to prevent it from molding). To get through night watch, I had to wear 4 layers of clothes, plus my rain gear just to keep the wind off (there is not really rain in this kind of weather, just fine mist). We don't wear shoes on board because of the constant water that sloshes across the deck, and whereas before it was always like bath water, now it was really cold. This was not what we expected the equator to be like! Of course, with the crossing of the equator comes the "crossing the line" ceremony. This is a time-honoured tradition on ships that pass over latitude zero. King Neptune temporarily seizes control of the ship and calls for all "pollywogs". They go through an "initiation" and then become "shellbacks". Some of these "ceremonies" have been quite violent in the past. In Eric Newby's book "The Last Grain Race", he describes being coverered in rotten food, tar, poisonous read lead paint, and then more or less being beaten up. Of course, our ceremony was comparably muted. On the other hand, the shellback crew tried to use as much psychological torture as possible in the days leading up. Mysterious notes appeared in the companionway where ship work schedules are posted--supposedly from King Neptune's spies--warning of what was to come. Diagrams showing methods of torture on the ship were "left out" to be discovered. And to add to the tension, we didn't know when we were actually going to cross the line, as we were steering almost parallel to it and the GPS was covered up so we couldn't peek into the charthouse to see our position. Finally, one afternoon we were sitting around doing our normal stuff and there was a loud pop as someone fired a flare. Then the shellback crew appeared dressed in various costumes banging pots to heard us all into the main salon where we were locked in for about 20 minutes and left to stew. Then we were called out to greet the court of King Neptune. The captain doesn't want us to describe the entire hazing ritual (and he specifically didn't like the word "hazing"), but it consists of the court calling out each person and reading their "crimes", for which various punishments are meted out. A lot of these have to do with being painted with tar, and everyone ended up being dunked into a foul bath of water sea water spiked with a vile combination of ingredients from the food section of the cargo hold. After it was all over, we cleaned up the deck and washed ourselves off, as much as we could. I didn't really feel cleaned up until 3 days later when we arrived in the Galapagos where I could have a hot shower and dump all of my clothes off at a laundromat. 7:13:53 PM     The Inter-tropical Convergence Zone Our next destination after Panama was the Galapagos Islands. In order to get there, we had to cross the equator, and a meteorological feature called the "inter-tropical convergence zone." This is a region that hangs around the equator, sometimes north and sometimes south. Usually it is a few degrees toward the hemisphere that has summer, so it is currenty north of the equator. It is a miserable place. There is no wind, more or less constant overcast, and constant thunderstorms as well. It did not disappoint. The day after hot Panama, the temperature dropped, and the sky darkened. I was on helm when we entered the storm cloud. Rain started. Thunder could be heard in the distance. Then we could see flashes of lightning lighting up the dark clouds. The thunder was crashing and rumbling closer to the time of the strikes and then we started to see forks. Lightning was striking a few times per minute now, and several were so close that we were blinded by blue light, and then almost deafened by extremely loud crashes, bangs, and crackling. We don't think that the ship was hit, even though at least two strikes must have been within a hundred metres. This went on for a few hours. Finally, the lightning faded away and we were just left with the gloomy cloud and drizzle. This continued for one more day and then we were out of it, back to partly sunny skies and relatively calm water. I had no idea that there was a strip (2 - 4 degrees of latitude) of such constantly miserable weather that circled the earth. We were glad to have put it behind us. 6:43:42 PM

Sunday, July 20, 2003

The Panama Canal and Panama City We arrived in Panama in the afternoon two days before we were to go through the canal. We anchored just off a yacht club oustide a town on the Caribbean side called Colòn, very near the canal shipping lane and its near-steady stream of freighter traffic. The town itself has a very bad reputation; even the Lonely Planet guide, which is usually quite adventurous, says to stay away. A quote: "If you emerge from a bank, even in broad daylight, you will be mugged." The reason: it is the original shantytown that was created for the labourers after the canal was finished. They were supposed to be given jobs, but they never materialized. The town started off as a slum and is more or less unchanged. One thing that I should note now is the temperature. The Caribbean during the summer is a very hot place. Ever since the BVIs, the temperature had stayed at about 30C with about as high humidity as possible. That is very hot. We were getting really tired of the constant heat; sleeping was very difficult for about 10 days because of the lack of cooling air of any sort during the night. Therefore, the primary goal of the entire crew in Colòn was to go to the yacht club and have a cold drink. But the main reason we stopped there was because we had to prepare the ship for passage through the canal. According to the rules, any ship going through cannot have any protruding features. Modern freighters and cruise ships are designed especially this way, but a tall ship is not. Therefore, we had to take the boats hanging on the side from the davits and place them on the deck. We also had to twist the yards fore-and-aft and even drop one end of the main yards to keep them inside the ship. That process took an entire day, all through manual labour. One semi-amusing event had to do with the customs and immigration people. They didn't like the fact that the ship didn't have "approved" boarding gangways. A sailing ship doesn't have drop-down gangplanks with handrails and stairs, and they wouldn't board without them. The captain asked if he was supposed to modify the design of the ship for them, and they said they would go and "talk with the our agent". They were probably going to ask for a cash payment to make it "safer" for them to board, but they also insisted that we weld on a handrail. Our engineer did, and labelled it the "sissy bar". Because of the debacle with the officials, we were given a less-than-favourable slot to enter the canal: 5 a.m. We were all awoken at 3:45 and got the ship ready for departure, loaded our pilot, and were underway. The Panama Canal is really an amazing feat of engineering. For those interested, I recommend reading a history in a book or on the Internet, but an interesting detail is that it is completely dependent on the local rainforest for its operation. There are no pumps for moving water in and out of the locks, just gravity. The water that feeds the locks comes from a very large fresh-water lake (created by a dam) in the middle of the canal that is constantly fed from the rain. The entire economy of the country depends on the operation of the canal, and the canal depends on rain from the rainforest. Therefore, protection of the rainforest is imperative for the continuing existence of the country. We went through the first 3 locks during dawn and then anchored in the lake for 3 hours to wait for the second pilot that would take us through the lake and through the 3 locks down to the Pacific. This was not unusual, as scheduling sometimes causes freighters to anchor there, and in fact there was a large container ship doing the same thing not too far away. However, modern frieghters have very good on-board facilities, so the crew doesn't immediately jump into the canal and have a fresh-water bath. It was quite incredible to be diving off the ship just after sunrise into swimming-pool-warm, clean, fresh water, followed by a climb back on deck to lather up with shampoo and then jump in again. Several people also took the opportunity to wash clothing. The passage through the canal was fascinating, as you go through a large lake in the middle of a very dense rain-forest jungle. The wildlife in that area is supposed to be great. We didn't see much from the ship, but there are smaller tour boats that will go right along the shore, where you can see toucans and howler monkeys. People in Panama scoff at Costa Rica with its eco-tourist reputation, because Panama has at least as much, but only about one-tenth the tourists, and it is apparently much cheaper. This last detail became very apparent when we came out of the canal into the Pacific and docked at a marina just outside Panama City. What a surprise: Panama is a large, thriving, and fascinating city. It is also a place where you can have a really inexpenisive holiday. The currency is the US dollar, and a good hotel will run you about $30 per night. Taxis within the city run a few dollars a ride, and there are many very good restaurants where you can have a feast for not much. Shopping is amazing. Panama is a centre of clothing mass-production and they sell a lot of it there. Excellent quality t-shirts were $3, shorts $6, trousers $10, and good short-sleeved shirts also about $10. We were in Panama City for 4 days, which allowed all of the crew members a full 2 days to explore the city. In such a short time, you can really only get a taste of a place, but it was a good introduction. I could recommend it as a travel destination, but go during the drier season when it is less humid! 7:45:27 PM

Sunday, July 13, 2003

12:58:25 AM

Friday, July 11, 2003

Screwed up software Hello readers. As you may notice, the dates on my web site are all screwed up! I'm sending a test post from Panama with the date reset to see if it does anything. Some pictures coming... 6:45:23 PM

Thursday, January 8, 1970

The Watches Commercial ships of all types use a "watch system" that operates 24 hours a day in order to sail and do maintenance all day and night. There are different ways of dividing the crew, depending on the number and how hard you are expected to work, and the Picton Castle does three watches: 12-4, 4-8, and 8-12. If you are on the 4-8, like I am at the moment (soon to end, as we rotate every few weeks), you work 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. The time in between is yours to sleep or read (or do laundry or have a shower, which can be a production). It takes about a week to settle into a schedule, and mine goes something like this: I start my day with lunch at noon, have 4 hours off and start work at 4. Our watch gets a half-hour break for dinner at 6 and then we are off at 8. I usually go below right at that time (the sun sets early in the tropics so it is dark), read or write for a bit, and then go to bed. I am awoken at precisely 3:40 a.m. (3:30 if there is rain for extra time to put on rain gear, which has only been twice since we left the North Altantic), and have to be on deck ready to work at 3:50. We get off at 8 a.m., have a bit of breakfast and go back to bed until somewhere before noon, at which time the next day starts. Different watches have different jobs that they do, mostly because of what kinds of things you do at that time of day. Our watch is (unfortunately) the "cleaning watch", but we also do a lot of sail handling. At the moment the sun is rising at around 6 a.m., so we sit around for the first two hours in the dark and then scrub down all of the decks with a salt-water hose and lots of brushes. Then we grab buckets and sponges and wash down about as much of the exposed parts of the ship as we can until our watch ends. Toward the end of our watch, the captain assesses the wind and sea situation and may as a result change sail configuration. Often, the royals (the top-most sails) are taken in overnight (so you don't have to send people up 90 feet in the rigging in the dark in case you go through a squall), so we set them again. Sometimes the courses (the lowest and biggest sails) are taken in overnight so they are reset in the morning. Sometimes, the courses are taken in because the captain doesn't want to use them that day so we go "up and furl", which means climbing aloft and tying them to the yard so they don't flap around. The afternoon (12-4) watch is often painting or varnishing, so we continue what they started and then clean up after them. Because the captain isn't running a slave ship (merely a "hell ship", in his words), we often get the hour after dinner off, unless there is sail handling. This means that out of our eight hours of work per day, we really only work solidly for about half that, and the rest of the time we are on stand-by for whatever is required to sail the ship. (The same goes for all the watches--half the time is real work and the rest of the time they are standing by for sail manoeuvres.) At all times, two people from the watch are doing quite important jobs, helm and lookout. A "trick at the helm" lasts one hour and so 8 people from each watch every day steer the ship. Steering is actually quite difficult, and changes hugely depending on whether we are beating, on a reach, or running before the wind (different directions of wind on the boat). Steering under sail versus under motor is also very different. Compasses (in the old style) are divided into 32 "points" (using 360 degrees is the new-fangled way), and you have to try to steer within a point. When you relieve the helmsman, you state, "I am here to relieve you" and ask for the heading. He or she will reply something like "southwest by west", which you repeat to confirm that you got it, and then you say "you are relieved", which starts your trick at the helm, as they call it. Lookout is much simpler. You stand on the fo'c'sle head (around the bow) and just scan the horizon. Anything that you see that isn't ocean is reported to the mate on duty. This includes the occasional freighter or (more rare) yacht, and any large flotsam. I like lookouts because you get some time to yourself and there are often interesting things to watch. More or less all day, you see solitary, or schools of, flying fish leaping and gliding over the water as they jump to get out of the way of the ship. They are about the size of a trout and can fly 50-100 m. In the night you can see the bioluminescent plankton sparkling in the wake of the ship (even though it hasn't been as spectacular as I have seen it in the Pacific); sometimes you see flashes of it below the surface as a larger fish kicks after being spooked by the ship. In this way, the ship is a 24-hour operation. Even if we are only going 4 knots in a moderate breeze, we will make about 100 nautical miles, or almost 200 km per day, and that has been how we have made our way to Panama in 22 days. I am writing this while we are at anchor in Colon, waiting for our slot in the canal tomorrow, very early in the morning. 7:57:40 PM

Wednesday, December 31, 1969

An unscheduled stop A few days ago we left the Atlantic Ocean and entered the Caribbean Sea through the Anegada Gap, a passage just south of the British Virgin Islands. In the haze, at about 20 nautical miles away, we could just see the outline of Virgin Gorda, one of the larger islands. We were a bit disappointed that we still had more than a week before we would see land on which we would be disembarking. However, after dinner we had an all-hands muster, and the Captain made the surprise announcement that we were going to make a very brief stop at Jost Van Dyke, one of the smaller of the BVIs. The mood was extraordinary; for the first time we realized that this trip is about destinations as well as just sailing. It was too late to head for the island that evening because the captain didn't want to anchor in a small harbour in the dark. Therefore, we took in most of the sails and "hove to", which means that we just floated around, hardly moving in any direction. Early the next morning we set the sails again and sailed into the island chain. It was our first experience of what a sight we are. Here we are sailing past multi-million-dollar vacation houses and everyone is out on their balconies with binoculars. It is not every day that a barque sails by. We arrived in the bay where the customs house was located and dropped anchor. We were only going to stay for 2 days and half the crew had the first day and the other half the next. I was in the "bad day" group, which was the first day, since we only got from noon until the night, while the second day got to leave first thing in the morning. I packed a day bag and went ashore in the skiff. Most the my group went from the dock to the bar across the street for Mai Tais etc. I had a celebratory cocktail with the group and some lunch. I was in the mood to explore, and after the rest of the group was on their fifth round, I finally found someone who also wanted to go across to the next bay. We walked the steep road in unbelievable heat, and were rewarded by one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen. It was all there: white sand, brilliant turquoise water, palm trees gently swaying in the breeze, with the bonus of hammocks strung up by the owners of small bars to attract customers. After a few hours of blissfull relaxation and some quite good snorkelling, the afternoon sun started to wane and I walked back to the other bay to meet up with some crew for dinner. The group that I left was still at the same bar. They stayed there until the last skiff back to the boat. They never saw the beautiful beach. 9:40:33 PM     Living on something that moves It is probably impossible to describe fully the experience of living on a sailing ship at sea, especially mundane things like the fact that your "ground" is constantly moving. But just try to imagine never having terra firma below your feet, and I mean never. Things that you take for granted become difficult, at least until you get used to them, if you ever do. How about walking up stairs, especially the steep ones on a ship? Don't try it without a firm hand on one or both handrails. What about walking to the scullery at the stern for a cup of tea? First of all, the breezeways, the passages along the sides of the lower deck, go up and down when the ship is rolling, which is most of the time. And then try to come back with the cup of tea. Even trickier. Once you start to get your "sea legs", which just means walking with your feet wider apart than normal and taking very deliberate steps, you can start to walk around without crashing into everything, or even falling over. Then you can get used to doing all the normal things we take for granted when on land. Take eating. When we are at sea in the heat, we eat outside; the food is brought out in large trays and placed on the cargo hatch in the midships section of the ship (which moves the least). We line up and grab plates and reach for food in the trays and try to get it on our dishes without it landing somewhere else. Then you have to eat it, which means finding a seat somewhere where you can anchor the plate on your lap somehow. I'm trying to remember how I ate dinner tonight, since we are currently in quite rolly seas. We had lasagna, and it is easy to eat because it only requires a fork. I got it on my plate and then made it to the side of the ship where I anchored myself on some heavy manila ropes, tilting sharply against the sides so when my side rolled away from the sea I wouldn't be pitched into the centre. I don't remember having trouble eating, so it must have been successful. It is sometimes disconcerting, however, when looking out the sides, because one time you take a glance and you can see horizon, and then the next glance you are staring right into a large wave that is higher than the main deck of the ship. Sleeping is interesting, and here is my biggest surprise. Sleeping with moderate motion is actually quite pleasant. In normal swells (i.e. the size of the biggest ones you would ever get taking the ferry to the Gulf Islands), the sensation is of gentle rocking. But every once in a while, like last night when the swells were quite bad, your sleep is disturbed because periodically you get slammed over to one side of the bunk. That isn't great for getting a good night's sleep. In any kind of swell, there is always the "normal" motion, and then there are the "rogue waves", which seem to come about every 7 waves (different cultures around the world peg that number at anywhere from 3 to 19, according to Michael, a fellow crew member). You always have to keep your senses alert for them. Typically, someone will put a cup-- or water bottle or plate or whatever--on the hatch cover, or a bench, and it will stay there for a few minutes. Then the "big one" comes and whatever it was goes sliding off, usually with a crash. That is the signal to look for a hand hold if you are in a precarious position, as the ship usually rolls twice. And every several rogue waves is a "really big one". Those are usually louder because pots in the galley or plates stacked in the scullery start to go for a ride. There are usually big crashes, accompanied by a few screams as people grab for whatever they thought was stable where they left it. These almost always finish with a loud sloshing noise and more screams because such large swells usually splash over the sides and soak everyone on either port or starboard midships. The saying goes. "you can get used to anything." I don't know if I will every get used to really big seas, as it requires all of your concentration to just walk 2 steps when the seas are 10-12 ft. high. However, I would say that I am surprised that when the seas die down to 3-5 ft. swells, you really don't even notice it. Out in the ocean, even when the winds are calm, you seem to always get swells. When you are living on the sea, it is just part of the experience. 9:10:06 PM     Clothing There is something that everyone should know if they are interested in living on a working ship for any length of time, and that is what kinds of clothes to take. I packed for this sailing trip, with extended stays in Australia and maybe Hawaii. Therefore, my packing list included: - my best t-shirts - some tank tops - some OK shorts - some dress shorts - my best dress shortsleeve shirts - my best lightweight long trousers - various other pieces of clothing, including outerwear I didn't think that I would be wearing my best clothes on the ship so I packed them up in extra-large-sized ziploc bags and put them at the back of my storage compartment. However, after a few days of working on the ship, I put practically everything else back there as well. It turns out that living on a working ship is very hard on clothes, and I expect to throw out everything that I wear every month or so. Everything on a sailing ship is basically dirty in some way or other. It's not that the ship isn't kept clean, as there is constant cleaning, but the maintenance of a ship requires everyone to get really dirty. First of all, there is tar. The rigging is made of steel, and to protect it from the salt air and water, every steel cable (i.e., the shrouds that support the masts) is constantly painted with Stockholm tar. The same goes with the ropes strung across the shrouds. Every time you go up the rigging, you are going to encounter fresh tar somewhere, so it gets all over your hands, legs, and any piece of clothing that happens to touch it. It doesn't seem to come out. Then there is grease. The masts are greased because the upper topsail, the t'gallant, and the royal yards slide up and down. So, if you have to go aloft to loose or furl a sail, you can get covered in grease. And then there is linseed oil. Any wood that isn't varnished, which includes the entire deck and the fife rails (rails around the fore and main masts to which the the running rigging of the course sails are belayed) are oiled. So your clothes are now oily as well as greasy and covered in tar. And finally there is paint. Because this is a steel-hulled ship, it is constantly being painted to prevent it from rusting away. You start from one end of the ship, and when you reach the other, you go back and start again. If you were at home, you would be tempted to just throw everything in a hot water wash with lots of detergent every day. The problem here is that there are no washing machines and limited fresh water. So, here is how you do laundry: Get a large tote (large solid plastic storage basket) and dump your clothes in it. Add some sea-water-dissolvable soap (which is usually dishwashing liquid) and several buckets of salt water that you get from over the side. Let soak for a day. Take your sandals off and stamp around in the tote as if you are crushing grapes. Wring out the salt water and drain the tote. Fill it again, add some soap and go at particularly bad stains with a scrub brush; at this time you will notice that for some reason the first process just added some inexplicable rust stains. Wring out the clothes and rinse in more sea water. Do one more sea water rinse, followed by a fresh-water rinse. Hang to dry. As you can imagine, this takes a lot of time, in fact about an hour and a half if you have an average load. Therefore, you get used to wearing dirty and smelly clothes and praying for a laundromat when you get ashore. The only consolation is that everyone else is in the same situation so you don't care. 8:32:05 PM

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

Sailing, finally After the Horse Latitudes we were in the middle of a large high-pressure region that went all the way down to the Caribbean Sea. That meant light winds and more motoring. But in the northern hemisphere winds circulate around a high pressure area in a clockwise manner. Therefore, when we were at the bottom end of the high, we could catch some east or southeast winds and sail. That finally happened on the 11th day of our trip. There were light, but steady, winds and we started to set sails in the morning. In a barque there are 3 masts, with the 2 forward having square sails and the aft one with fore-and-aft sails, like a sloop. We had been motoring with the spanker (the large sail on the aft--or mizzen--mast) and the foresails (the main topmast staysail, the inner jib, and the outer jib, in order of aft to fore). Now we were going to set the square sails. Our watch ended at 8 a.m., but we used the overlap time of the 8-12 watch because so many sails require a lot of people. The first square sails to be set are always the lower topsails, the second from the bottom. Then we set the next ones up, the upper topsails, and then the courses (the lowest and biggest ones) and the t'gallant (second from the top). The royals (the highest sails) were set by the next watch on their own, and after breakfast I was able to look up at the masts and see all "the laundry" out (as our engineer calls sails). Later in the day, when all of the watches were awake and on deck, we practiced tacking and jibing (sometimes spelled gybing), which is two ways of turning the ship around when you end up pointing with the wind on the other side of the sails. To do such a manoeuvre smoothly requires a lot of crew, and a lot of commands from the mast captain (whomever is calling sail-handling commands). The trainee crew had barely learned all of the considerable lines (175 of them, apparently), but we chased fore upper topsail bunts and downhauls, main t-gallant braces, flying jib sheets, etc. for an hour and executed the required changes in courses without damaging anything or any lectures from the captain or mates. I think that we'll get it soon. Of course the thing that we were all really looking forward to was to be on the sea without the now-hated droning motor. Now the only sound we hear is the thump of the swells hitting the hull, the splash of water when it lands on the deck, and on the whirling of the wind electric generator on the quarterdeck. The captain celebrated the first day under sail by having a private dinner in the officer's mess with 3 other crew. I was fortunate enough to be on the guest list. Talking with the captain is always somewhat intimidating, as he is the ultimate boss of your life while aboard and your experience depends somewhat on your relationship with him. I felt that my co-guests felt the same way and for the first half hour I feared that we wouldn't be able to break into any interesting conversation. Fortunately, though, the captain served 2 bottles of wine with dinner and soon people loosened up. My personal interest in conversations with the captain is to hear about some of his life experiences, as they are very different from mine or any of the people that I know. We heard about his favourite places to visit in the Carribean (almost anywhere) and the South Pacific. His most interesting comment came when he described his answer to a question he was asked after he started his world voyages on the Picton Castle. Someone asked him if he was living out his dream, by sailing from one small Pacific Island to another, meeting and trading with the locals, and experiencing the local culture. The captain said, no; rather, he was living out the dream of sailors from the last century that used to speed through the South Pacific with a cargo of grain or nitrate on their way home to the UK. They always dreamt of coming back with a smaller ship, and taking a slower, tropical (instead of the faster, southerly) route and to stop and experience the South Pacific islands. But they never did. The captain, and we, his trainees, are living that dream for them, which is our own small personal connection with the great age of sail, now long gone. 9:40:38 PM     The Horse Latitudes Somewhere south of Bermuda the sea flattened considerably and the temperature went way up. It was a good thing that we were sailing in a barque with a motor and considerable fuel, because if we were just a sailing ship we would have been becalmed. We were in what are called "The Horse Latitudes", which get their name from a rather gruesome story. Apparently, sailing ships that were caught at these latitudes (because they had strayed from the tradewinds and come too close to the the continent) would be becalmed and drift for days and days. When they were nearing the end of their water, they would throw the horses overboard, because they required so much water to keep alive. We had no such problems because we were motoring. In fact, we had been motoring ever since we had left Lunenburg because we were trying to make up time after having left a week late. Besides of the general schedule, the coming hurricane season made dawdling in the Caribbean a bad idea. The main effect of these latitudes on the crew, however, was the heat! Instead of fighting hypothermia just days before, we were now unbelievably hot. I packed up my long-sleeved shirts and jeans in a garbage bag and put them in a far corner of my storage area. The only thing we could imagine wearing now is t-shirts and shorts. After a few days of stifling hot sun, the captain allowed us what he called a "swim call". We were all dying to jump into the water, and now was our chance. We had been doing safety drills (man overboard, fire, and catastrophic hull damage) and then the ship was slowed, the motor turned off, and the ship set adrift. Most of the crew could hardly wait to jump into the water, which was warm enough that it was barely refreshing. So, here we were, swimming in what the charts said was 3500-ft deep water, 1800 km from coast of Florida. Despite the seas still being almost glassy calm, there were still long, slow swells, and floating on the surface we saw no horizon because you always seemed to be looking uphill at water. 8:54:51 PM

Sunday, June 22, 2003

The Horizon After having experienced total sensory overload by the effects of the sea, and having started to get used to it, more subtle things could be appreciated. One of these was the constantly varying horizon of the open sea. I am used to looking out over seas with some chop and a small amount of swell, with land always in the distance. I was expecting the open ocean to be similar, but without the land. However, it is nothing like that. The horizon at sea depends a lot on your elevation and the state of the swells. Sitting amidships--just 2 m above the surface--and looking out, your horizon can be as short as 10s of metres. When the swells are 3 m and the ship is rolling, you often look out into a wall of water. Then the ship will lift as is goes over the swell and you see a bit more of your surroundings before it dives down. In these conditions you can see more of the horizon if you get yourself higher. The quarterdeck and the fo'c'sle head are one level above midships and your view is higher. I find that what you see from there is somewhat eerie. In all ocean conditions except for absolute flat calm, there are always some swells much larger than others, so-called rogue waves. From the upper parts of the ship, you just get high enough so you can see the tops of them at the horizon. Rather than seeing a line, or perhaps even an undulating horizon, you see a spiky pattern of menacing wave crests of the highest swells. You know that when you encouter them, they usually end up sloshing on deck and soaking whoever was standing in the area. In order to see something that really looks like a horizon that goes on forever, you have to get even higher. For those who have travelled on a huge cruise liner, this is the normal view. For those who have been to sea on a sailboat, this is a rare view. But on a tall ship, there is significant time spent in the rigging when the sails are raised and lowered. When the sea is active, most of what you are thinking about is to go up, do your job, and get down. However, the view that you get from well up the mast makes it worth your while to stop and take it in when you have the chance. It is the only time that you actually get an idea of the fact that you are in the middle of the ocean, and that it is immense. 9:27:17 PM     The Gulf Stream We had been told about it and so it was expected, but the meeting of the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic was hard to believe after the cold wind and rain from the days before. Well off the coast at approximately the latitude of Northern New York state we encountered the significantly warmer Gulf Stream water and, therefore, air. The water that constantly sloshed around on deck from large swells flooding through the chocks in the bulwarks was so much warmer than the air that I was finally able to shed my leaky boots and wear amphibious sandals with long pants and have constantly warm, if wet, feet. Every day it just got hotter and hotter. We were now in the weather fixture called "the Bermuda High", which is a high-pressure system that sits around Bermuda (and to the south) and is responsible for its fine climate, depite it being just at the latitude right between the Carolinas. The sea started to diminish to a benign roll and the wind dropped to just being able to fill the sails while we motored. For the first time, the decks were not contantly inundated with sea water and would dry out. One of the jobs of the 4 to 8 watch is to do a deck scrub-down with a salt-water hose and lots of people with deck brushes. It finally started to be worthwhile. 8:54:16 PM

Friday, June 20, 2003

The North Atlantic The first part of our voyage was in the North Atlantic. According to the captain, the first job we had to do was to get out of the North Atlantic. Apparently, it has a reputation for being a very unpleasant stretch of water. It is quite stormy most of the year, and though June is one of its better months, it is still affected by low-pressure systems that shed off the east coast of North America that intensify as then hit the ocean. The first several days of our voyage was simply endured. First of all, it was cold. At the 3:30 wake-up call for our watch, I would get out of my bunk and put on practically all of my clothes, starting with long underwear and ending with rain jacket and pants, even if just to cut the wind. The swells were still quite large, but we were beginning to get used to them. There was even a short stretch of sunny weather, and things seemed to be getting better. Then we had a general muster with the captain where he decribed some weather that we would be encountering. There was a low-pressure system that was coming from the coast that would intensify the wind and bring some rain. It wasn't anything bad, but it was going to get worse than anything we had yet experienced. That night was a continuation of the day, and then next day was the same grey sky and rolling seas. Then our watch ended at 8:00 p.m. and we went below to get some sleep before our early wake-up call. I noticed that the motion in the bunk, which had up to them been almost a pleasant, if strong, rocking, started to develop in intesity. It took a lot of bracing to keep from rolling back and forth and then there was a feeling of up and down acceleration to deal with. Sleep was impossible. We had been motor-sailing since we had left Nova Scotia, but to the noise of the engines was now added a lot of water sloshing on deck. I pitied the crew on watch who were at that time being pelted by rain and waves breaking over the sides. Eventually, after some dozing, the watch call came and it was our turn to step into that weather. Fortunately, the worse was over and it was just wind, drizzle, and the normal rolling seas. Still, I remember standing lookout and shivering while rain was running down my neck from the wind that had got under my sou'wester hat. At least at dawn I was lucky enough to spot a gang of about 20 dolphins that played in the bow wake of the ship and seemed to herald improving weather. 9:42:33 PM

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

The Sea For the first while, it is all about the sea. One day you are a normal person walking around on soid ground and the next your entire being is dictated by the fact that there is no more ground below your feet, only a small bit of deck that moves at the whim of the sea. The captain had delayed the departure to avoid bad weather, but I wonder how it could have been worse (it could have been, but I don't want to even consider it). We left the flat water of Lunenburg's inner harbour and entered the outer harbour, where we first encountered a preview of ocean swells. As we passed through the last bit of protected water and into the Atlantic Ocean, the swells got bigger, and increased from there. Soon the ship was in full roll and pitch, and one could hardly even stand up. Faces started to turn green. We were given jobs to get our minds off the motion, like stowing lines and cleaning up the deck in general. That didn't help. We had an all-hands muster with the captain, where he said there would be some seasickness to come. I had come prepared with every medicine known, including one that is only available in the UK and that I had to import via courier at great cost. But I had started with "the patch", which is a trans-dermal drug delivery device with scopolamine as the drug. Several other people had it as well. It didn't do anything for me, but perhaps it was because the conditions were truly awful. Just over an hour after we had left the coast completely, people started to succumb. I was among the early bunch, but with just dizziness rather than full puking. Others were worse off, and there was a lot of running to the side of the ship to empty stomach contents. But the motion of the ship only got worse. About three quarters of the trainee crew and half of the professional crew was seasick. The swells got to about 10 to 12 feet, which also made walking very difficult. Of course, there are always people who seem to be impervious to seasickness, and they carried on doing their tasks cheerily, and asking when meals would be. My biggest worry about seasickness before the trip was that there would be no escape, and that it might go on for days. Fortunately, I was wrong on both counts. First of all, a lot of us found that to lie stretched out on the cargo hatch at midships and stare at the sky or close one's eyes provided a very needed respite from the horrible feeling. The other thing that I was very surprised about was that going below to your bunk was also an escape. Normally, going below is a sure cause of seasickness in a small boat, but in this case, being prone in a bunk in the main salon seemed to be fine. Of course, I was lucky to be in the main salon because the cabins in the fore and aft sections of the ship did move a lot more. After spending much of the first day horizontal on the cargo hatch with a lot of the crew (and battling hypothermia as well as seasichness) and then the entire night in my bunk, I had my first watch at 4 a.m. in the morning. The weather was windy and very cold. I actually was able to have some cereal for breakfast, but didn't feel like doing much. One's entire existence is dictated by the sea at this point. The ship rolls and pitches because of the motion of the sea, and it requires all one's concentration to walk from one point to the other. And because of the amount of motion, a large amount of water sloshes across the deck before it runs out the scuppers on the opposite side as the ship rolls back. This requires a pair of good waterproof boots; the ones that I had bought at the Lunenburg sailing outfitter store turned out to leak. Any part of the ship that moves more than normal is avoided, lest it intensify queesiness. Particularly bad parts were the scullery in the aft lower deck and the fo'c'sle (the cabin right at the bow). The quarterdeck, where the helm is, was also very bad, but after one got used to the sight of the bow diving up and down into the water, and the sudden rush of up and down motion, it was fine. And I now know what drugs actually work. The patch works for some people, but I think I had more side effects than help from it. The other thing I tried was Stugeron, imported from the UK. It definitely did work, and I would highly recommend it for anyone contemplating ocean voyaging. It's only drawback is that it won't work on very seasick people because it is a tablet, so it won't do anything if you puke it up. For that, the patch may be better. But for a mild case like the one I had, it completely removed queeziness. There were some things that I was looking forward to experiencing, like my last sight of land, but they were all missed. For the first while, the only thing that I saw and thought about were the sea swells and their effect on the ship and me. 9:46:22 PM     Leaving Lunenburg The day arrived that we were actually going to leave Lunenburg. The captain had delayed the trip by an extra day because of bad weather, and on the morning of the new date, we had a rushed breakfast to be ready for work at 7:30 a.m. with a 9:00 departure. Faye, our wonderful hostess from the B&B in which four of us had stayed, came out to wave us off. Watching a departure must be very emotional, because she cried. I was so filled with apprehension about what the sea would be like that I didn't think about anything else. Since the time I had decided to do this trip, I wondered about that. Everyone in Lunenburg, upon hearing that I was to be crewing on the Picton Castle, always asked first, "do you get seasick?" I knew that in the many years that I had sailed across Georgia Strait in all kinds of weather, the answer had been no. However, everyone says that the open ocean is completely different. We left the waving crowd on the dock and started the first leg to Panama. 9:29:10 PM

Saturday, June 14, 2003

10:40:37 PM     Weather finally did improve, but then it became foul again. Actually, it is a bit difficult to get used to weather here after what we get on the West Coast because it changes so much. Two days ago it was sunny and in the twenties. Today it is pouring and cold. Two days ago we were in shorts and today wore multiple layers and rain gear. And, because of weather, our departure was delayed again. We were supposed to leave today, but the captain decided that it was best not to start the trip in a gale and have half of the crew incapacitated due to seasickness. The weather forecast looks better tomorrow and we leave in the morning. I have become the ship's plumber. This is not a title that I would like to hold throughout my tenure on the ship, but unfortunately it has stuck for now. It was my fault for volunteering to connect the heads (toilets) on the ship that weren't working (which included the one in the main salon, where I and 18 other people sleep). All of the heads required a tune-up, and I have installed and tuned-up the same type of toilet on my own boats several times. Some of the work is actually quite disgusting and I will spare readers the details. Then, several days after the date on which we were supposed to depart, there was a plumbing emergency. The scullery sinks (where we wash all of the dishes) backed up. Even worse, they backed up the floor drain in the captain's bathroom (which has a bathtub!) and then dirty dishwashing water started to pour into the engine room. I was called to have a look. I traced the problem to the outlet pipes that led to the through-hull, which dumps the contents of the sinks into the ocean. I took all the pipes apart and found that they were so plugged up that you couldn't see through them. They were filled with smelly black stuff that looked like what you would find at the bottom of a compost heap. After cleaning the pipes out and re-installing them, the first test was a disaster. Water poured out many small holes. The pipes were very corroded and had been held together with paint and whatever was coating the inside. Everything had to be replaced. I wonder what we would have done if this had happened at sea, with no marina store to run to? Fortunately, the rest of the crew does appreciate my plumbing work. It was my birthday a few days ago. I received a card signed by the crew that was converted from a "Plumbing Projects Made Easy" brochure someone had found at the hardware store. After my scullery plumbing experience, I insisted on doing some work that had more to do with the sailing part of the ship. The weeks before departure have been filled with a lot of rigging work, where the 20 or so sails and the 175 lines are connected. This requires people to climb right up to the top with lines, feed them through blocks and fairleads, and eventually connect them to the sails. I wondered if I would work aloft, as the captain gave us all a lecture on how it was not the type of work for everyone. However, I thought that I should give it a go and helped to bend (attach) the main sail, which is the lowest of five on the middle mast of a barque. Eight people climb up the stays that hold up the masts and then step onto a steel line slung under the yard. You slide sideways along the yard to get to your position and wait for people on deck to pull the sail up. As soon as the head of the sail is at the yard, you tie robans, which are short thin ropes that are used to tie the sails to the jackstay, a thin rail along the top of the yard. I would have to admit that I was in a mild panic on my first time aloft, but I stayed up for about 25 minutes and tied all three of my robans. Up to now I have been up several times, including the next two higher yards, and am not exactly in a panic, even though I am not exactly relaxed either. That is perhaps for the best; you want to remember that you are dangling 50 feet above the deck, standing on a steel cable with only your hands on a small rail to keep you from falling off! Work has finally started to wind down on the last two days before departure. The carpentry team that has been making cabinets for the engine room non-stop has built their last shelf, all the sails that we need for the first leg to Panama have been attached, the plumbing seems to work, and the cargo hold is filled with donated books and clothes (to give away), and food (for us). The small boat that we completely refinished is on board and everyone has bought every conceivable thing they can think of from the local yacht shop, hardware, grocery, and liquor store. Life will change again tomorrow when we set sail. 10:18:17 PM

Thursday, June 12, 2003

1:53:00 PM

Sunday, June 1, 2003

The ship is finally back in the water. The dry-dock was repaired and the Picton Castle was refloated. Now, at least, the ship, the warehouse, and the dock are all in the same area; no walking blocks back and forth to get tools. Work on the dinghy continues: the glass has been applied and we are getting ready to paint. Soon we will do a sea trial. Meanwhile, there is a lot of activity on the ship. Yards are being hauled up the masts in preparation for rigging and sails. The only problem with the outside work is that the weather has been generally awful. Today it rained buckets, with a driving wind as well. If you weren't wearing full rain gear, your clothes would be soaked through in a few minutes. Unfortunately, work goes rather slowly in these conditions. All we can do is hope that the weather will improve, as our departure date approaches quickly. 7:12:59 PM

Thursday, May 29, 2003

Monday morning was the first day of real work for the crew. We had breakfast and then went for our daily muster at 8:00 a.m. where the Captain and the Mate talk about what will be going on that day. Since the ship was still stuck on the dry-dock, most of the jobs were ones in the warehouse and on the dock. People were chosen and sent off with members of the professional crew to scrape, sand, varnish, paint, haul boxes, re-arrange the warehouse, and pack books. I think that some of the trainees were quite surprised that they would be doing that kind of work, but it seemed quite normal to me. At this time of year, it is the standard thing to do for any boat-owner. There are two differences this year, though. One is that this boat is a large ship, and the other is that for each job, there are several people. It really is amazing to see work done by a team that I have done by myself in previous years at one quarter the pace. There is nothing skilled in it: just pure manual labour, which goes so much faster with a crew. On the second day, I was assigned a job with another fellow that used some of my previous experience as a wooden boat-owner: epoxying. The captain bought a flat-bottomed dinghy (or rather, was probably paid to take it away) that was going on the ship as one of the auxiliary boats for hauling people and cargo. The only problem was that it was in really bad shape. The floorboards were cracked, the old fibreglass was delaminating, and the transom was missing the top third. We had to restore it to serviceability. So, out came the scrapers and a crew of about 5 people attacked it. We also had two power grinders that we used to remove a lot of the old epoxy. Then we added a brace across the floorboards and started to plug some holes. Next we will measure and cut the glass cloth and apply the exopy. After filling and sanding, the boat will be painted and will look not half bad. Of course, the most important thing is that it float! One thing that I had fogotten about when packing clothing for this trip is that boat work is so dirty! Most of my clothing is more suitable for wearing in port than on the ship or during the time before we go. Therefore, the crowd at our wonderful B&B made an outing to the local Frenchy's second-hand store. Here, you can buy all sorts of used clothing for a fraction of the cost of new. I have bought at least two completely new outfits, which I may end up throwing away just before we leave, or perhaps will keep as boat-working clothing for when I return. 6:49:09 PM

Sunday, May 25, 2003

My journey across the Pacific ocean started in my apartment. Thanks to the movie industry in Vancouver, furnished apartments in good locations command such high rents that the income possible from the place I call home could almost pay for my passage. However, an only semi-finished apartment wouldn't command anything. So, the first thing on my to-do list was to complete the renovation started more than a year ago. A floor was tiled, lighting was installed, and thanks to the generosity of some family and friends, a pipe was disguised, a retractable wall was built, and a counter was installed. After a whirlwind of last-minute packing and cleaning aided by even more friends, I took one last look at a place that I barely recognized, denuded as it was of my personal possessions and looking strangely sterile. I closed the door and hoped that the person who would be living there would enjoy it as much as I had over the past year. My trip to Halifax was the second that I have done, the first being the one last autumn when I went for the interview with the captain and crew of the Picton Castle. I was struck again by the vast distance between one coast and the other. They say that you should never start a trip with a sleep deficit, but my weeks of sleep deprivation allowed me to pass the time with some quite pleasant naps. I had a surprisingly fine lunch, watched some of the movie, read a bit, and landed in Toronto. I hardly remembered the second flight, having dozed off some time after the take off. I barely remember more food, and awoke only when the landing gear hit the runway in Halifax airport. Halifax was like a step back a few months, as the weather was like February in Vancouver. After the first sleep of more than 5 hours in weeks and a brief and enjoyable visit to a farmers' market, I met some old friends and had a family dinner before my departure to Lunenburg to sign on to the ship. I travelled by bus and was dropped off in the town centre with my bags that the airline had marked "heavy". I loaded everything that I could onto my back--duffel bag, knapsack, and laptop--and picked up my dive bag filled with fins and shoes and somehow managed to walk about five blocks towards the house where we were instructed to check in. Some crew members spotted me as a new trainee and told me to meet me at the pub. Even better, one of the professional crew that I met last year at the interview also spotted me and helped me with my bag. I dumped it off and we went to the pub. On the way I was filled in as to the situation. We could not move onto the ship. The reason was that the ship was stuck in drydock. The day before, when the ship was being relaunched--with the crew on board and after just having performed some celebrations--a winch broke and left the ship jammed. The situation was unstable and the crew was evacuated. In its precarious state, there was no way that any of us could move aboard. We would all have to stay in a house, taking up every square foot of floor space with foam mattresses as beds. I supposed that it would be a great introduction of communal living, but the "mattress" that I used was barely separating my body from the hard floor. I slept through the night, but awoke with a back-ache. The next morning more crew arrived, including someone that was a friend of a friend from home. By that time there was really no space--and no mattresses--to speak of, and he went off to look for a bed & breakfast. A decision had to be made: should I join him and get a few nights of quality sleep, risking a reputation for someone that couldn't hack it? Sleep was more important, so I went for it. I hope that I will be able to recover from the reputation that I might have earned. Tomorrow we have our first muster, and will find out what jobs await us while we wait for the ship to be finally back in the ocean. 6:51:28 PM

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