Flares and Black Water

Really beautiful day, but not a whole lot of wind so have been motoring for awhile now. For morning work party Grant, Michelle and I all went aloft to rust bust the futtocks. Grant and I were both on the uppers, he on the main me on the fore, grinder wheels aloft and really long extension cords, my favorite. It really was not as bad as I thought; we were hardly rolling so that helped a lot. Michelle sprayed corroseal on the lower futtocks.

During capstan Robin talked a lot about the flares that were seen last night. He’s chased many a drunken fishermen setting off flares for fun, its one reason why he stopped looking after an hour. In the ended it was concluded that it was most likely not someone in distress because the past few days we’ve seen a lot of military vessels, not just ships but helicopters and planes as well. We also talked a bit about eperbs, how they work, what they are for. Like on when Concordia sank off the coast of Brazil the Brazilian coast guard received the signal and called Concordia’s office that had registered the eperbs. Asked them to contact the boat and see if it was set off on accident or something, that’s one of the reasons they were stuck in life rafts for 36 hours before being rescued.

Then came some strange bad news. Robins said that that morning while pumping our the grey water tanks some part of the pump broke, that means that we wouldn’t be able to use the heads. We were all confused a little at first, but then we started talking about alternatives and it was kind of funny. Peter liked the idea of using buckets and Robin said they had done that in the past. We also thought it would be great to actually use the head of the ship like it use to be done, or a bosuns’ chair with a hole cut in it. The best idea or really the funniest would to just lean out the windows of the great cabin, set up a privacy curtain and your good. We were all pretty set on this idea, then Robin told us April fools.

Maisie then told us how Robin had gotten the crew the year before, they were still docked in St. Pete and he said that some guy was buying the boat to sink it and make it into a dive site. Everyone went about their chores that morning really pissed off thinking what was the point of cleaning it. Maisie got really mad about it and was about to start a campaign on facebook because the Niagra had one as well, at the time she didn’t have money to even have a sailing season. Caleb was apparently in on it so gathered everyone back at capstan saying Robin had more news for them, put the phone on speaker and again April fools.

As a deck hand we’re not always let in on all the info and the happenings, so it looks like we’re finally going to heading to our destination. If we can we’re trying to St. Michele’s, Maryland on the 4^th and then Baltimore on the 8^th. I also heard there’s a day sail in there some where.

Last night and tonight we watched a movie in forward crew, there’s more space there for a bunch of us to spread out.