Tours

For tours today we were reduced to only four people who normally stand rotation, at least there were volunteers around to help us out and at lunch a few people who had the day off stood in for us. We got new shirts the other day as well, only three colours instead of the rainbow catastrophe before, red, blue and black. They have the same ‘HMS Bounty 50 Years of History’ on the front and now a picture of the boat on the back instead of saying crew. Gave my blog address out to a few people as usual.

Day off

Jesse and Katie switched days off so that Katie and I could hang out. We walked around down, got breakfast, found an amazing candy store and perused some antique stores. We were going to watch a movie in the theater but nothing great was showing so watched one back at the boat. It was Tenley’s birthday so I made her chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting.

Dennis Sullivan out on a day sail.

Duluth, MN

Spent a lot of time cleaning up the tweens, vacuuming all the seams and holes in the deck and wiping down all the wood. Amy was in bosuns cleaning as well. We had our parade of sail into Duluth, Minnesota, docked, furled everything and then got to meet up with Grant and Laura again. John’s girlfriend came and met up with him and the quickly disappeared, but Stacy will be sailing with us when we leave. There was a crew pizza party as well.

Tall ships.

Duluth.

Serving

For work party we put the boat back together, put away a lot of things that were left out from the night before. While waiting for my next job I made peanut butter swirl bars for Katie’s birthday. I started cutting out the pattern I had made for the mizzen royal yoke. When we took the watch from C John kept saying we were coming up on an amazing lighthouse and he was right, I told him the only think I knew about Minnesota was that they have a huge ball of twine. And we anchored again tonight.

Jesse and Tom serving a crane line.

Mitch serving.

Jesse.

Richard.

'Aband Lit Ho'

Yard repair.

Cookout

Tonight we anchored in the Appasal Islands. We had planed to stop and go into the beach and have a cook out, but by the time we anchored it was raining and looking a little nasty. We ended up having a small BBQ on deck instead. We had kabobs, couscous salad and smores.

Caulking and Pooh

Caulked more of the tweens for work party, Amy and I NP1-ed while Tom rigged the fire hose to spray into the heads and clean out the MSD tank. In the afternoon a lucky chosen one would go into it and break up the poop in there to help clean it out.

At capstan we talked about passenger feed back, the only down side to their comments was that the heads were not clean enough. Rich volunteered to be the one in the tank to poke at the poop with the fire hose; he said it was not that bad, at least everything was getting sanitized. Most everyone else was caulking the tweens and Justin was working on a yard.

Dina asked me if I wanted to cook for about 10 days between Chicago and Erie while she went to be in a wedding. She said we could sit down and make up a menu and she could even make things ahead of time and put in the freezer.

For a snack before dinner Dina made popcorn, one flavored with lavender salt the other parmesan, parsley and garlic salt. She also made focacia and roasted garlic butter.

Sonny NP1-ing.

Katie caulking.

Amy.

Mitch.

Tom.

Justin planing the yard.

Jesse putting cotton in the seams.

Justing chainsawing the yard in half.

Amy.

Winter and next season

Got a very abrupt wake up at 7, all hands to go through customs, luckily there was an awesome breakfast of carrot cake pancakes to follow it up. For work party we cleaned up the boat, put things back together from being docked. I also moused some turnbuckles by the tiller and put boots on them after Dan played with the tiller rope. While I was doing that Katie was laughing up on the foredeck so I went to explore, Dan had brought up a bin of some old plates that for whatever reason we were tossing overboard, yay! Tom and Mitch both threw some plates that skipped on the water nicely.

During capstan we had a nice long talk about the winter and Europe. It’s a 70% chance that we’ll be going to Puerto Rico this year and then leaving in late March for Europe. Six weeks to get to the Baltic Sea, Traci is working on lining up ports for us. The farthest inland port we’ll go will be St. Petersburg, Russia. We’d leave Europe in early October to make it back to where we were going to winter that year. For those of us who want to be on next year we have to take at least two months off during the winter because Robin firmly believes you need to get away from the boat.

Tours

Tours today were slow and wet, Justin got pulled away by Robin to work on a yard so there were only four people in rotation. At the end of the day we cock billed the yards to prep to go through the locks tomorrow.

Bulk Barn

Knowing that there wasn’t much to do around here I slept in for once. We walked around down, ended up going to the Salvation Army and a fabric store. Went to strange art gallery and in the park next to it there were super large table and chairs. At the mall we found the most amazing store, Bulk Barn, row after row of giant tubs filled with things and you just scoop it in a bag and get how ever much you want. Scoops of everything, chocolate covered ginger, sunflower seeds, coffee beans, passion fruit drink powder, grapefruit gummies, nutella, and dried mulberries. Also they had pie filling, dried fruit, freeze dried strawberries, maraschino cherries, noodles, flour, sugar, milk powder, soy milk powder, tea, nuts, bird food, dog treats, everything by the scoop and bag full.

Work Party

Starboard watch got to do work party all day. I started with NP1-ing the checks in the head rails, then I helped Amy and Tom tear apart a yard. Get the yoke off and the ironwork. Jesse gave me a crane line to finish serving, tarred it and then tarred the other crane lines.

Sault St. Marie

Had anchor watch last night so it was all hands all day. Did some sail handling in the morning and after lunch sailed by a fort for a photo shoot with Pride. After that we ended up furling everything, we’ve lost a lot of people recently so we were all on the fore and then all on the main, it took awhile. Finally docked around 1900 in Sault St. Marie, Ontario.

Bilges and chocolate cake

For work party this morning Amy and I cleaned forward crew bilges, specifically trying to get at the limber holes. Limber holes are in the ribs of the hull going between the bilge compartments, it took us awhile to find them and once we did we tried to squeeze and reach them. They were too far out board for us to reach them so we just pulled other things out of the bilge like the strainer that had fallen off. We then put a little soap in the bilge and sprayed it all down with the fire hose.

During watch we ended up doing a lot of sail handling, wearing and taught the passengers about wearing, tacking and boxhauling. It was also Richard’s birthday and I was the only one who had known ahead of time, it came out whether he liked it or not and since we had two cooks onboard we got an awesome chocolate cake.

Off we go agian

With another load of passengers we got off the dock and headed for Sault St. Marie, Ontario. When we were signaling up our dock lines Tenley freaked out when she found a strange green dinosaur bug, one of the passengers picked it up and kind of waved it around. Eventually some how it ended up on my shoulder and I named it Fluffernutter, later I found out it was a cicada, not like any other I had seen before.

We backed out of the dock after Europa left and waved goodbye to Grant and Laura who will be on the Roald for two weeks until we get to Duluth. Apparently they were really low on crew because their crew is only volunteer and changes frequently.

Dogged watches, on the 12 to 4 watch.

Fluffernutter the cicada.

Grant on the Roald.

Sailing away with Grant and Laura on the Roald.

Antique shops and mini golf

Sadly Andrew left this morning and headed back to London.

Had the day off so explored what Bay City had to offer. Jesse and I spent a long time in two antique shops, they were absolutely filled with everything imaginable, a lot of the costume jewelry reminded me of my great grandmother’s. I ended up buying two wood print blocks. In our gift bags we got some free drink coupons so we used those and got tea and lemonade at a few places.

Tom, John, Jesse and I went across the bridge and took a look at the things they had on the other side. There was a stall where you could throw knives and stars and shoot some arrows, the boys bought a few tokens and played a bit. Then we used our free mini golf coupons, we all had some trouble but Tom was the best and found a few tricks in the course. Finished the day with a crew dinner.

Bay City.

Antique store.

Map with where people are from.

Creepy skeleton.

Ships.

Tom throwing knives.

Jesse learning to throw stars.

Mini golf.

Bounty painting.

Best rootbeer ever.

Tours and free soda

Tours today were good, but there was so much merchandise everywhere; we had two people on it all day and that helped a lot. Tonight was the free Alice Cooper concert, about half the crew went and said it was really entertaining, I stayed on the boat and listened from there because it was right across the water. There was also the Bounty reunion that ended up not being much of one except Caleb, Rebecca and her sister and her husband and Mr. Sam.

Plus all day long we got free soda from a stand where you could buy a glass bottle and get refills in it. All the stuff was homemade; the root beer was perfect, not too sweet, sarsaparilla, cherry and lemon. The best was mixing the cherry and lemon.

Tours and Merch

Starboard watch did tours and port did work party, it always seems to turn out that way. We also got our laundry done; put it in a bag with your name, boat and how many pieces of clothing. Amy and I ended up choosing to be stuck on merch for half the day, we made a good team of her working the machine and me folding and assisting people. It’s nice to have an actual cash register to keep track of what we sell and to tell us how much change to give back, but it’s also frustrating while trying to learn it.

Justin and I had duty today because there was a reception on board; luckily they had food in a tent and just wondered around the boat afterwards.

Bay City, Michigan

Had a very nice anchor watch and got up at 8 to do work party with everyone else. We were getting ready to head into Bay City, Michigan so Tom, Amy and Mitch busted up some of the sails, Andrew and Rich put the generator case back together and I sanded some epoxy off a yard. Robin had put it together the other day but our epoxy was old so it didn’t hold, I sanded and scrapped it off, then I got to help him put it back together. Mixed some of the new epoxy up slathered it on the two halves, screwed it in place in two spots then put a bunch of clamps on it.

We started the parade of sail early because there was a forecast of thunderstorms and hail; we only set staysail and motored in with Lynx and Roald flowing us. There were a few bridges that lifted for us to go under and old bridges that we went by. We got into a tight spot at one point; the bridge was going up but then started to close and there was an old bridge in the way. Robin was wonderful instantly put the motors in reverse and slowly pulled us back, a moment later the bridge did open up again but it was scary.

After docking and putting the boat to bed most everyone ended up going to a bar that one of our passengers happened to own, the Stien House. We got small gift bags with lots of coupons for things around town, a note pads, pens and some candy. Amy and I ended up going to the crew dinner, we were the only Bounty crew there at the time when they started listing the captains and having people clap. She was still wearing her crew shirt so I told Amy she should have stood up and pretended to be cap because he wasn’t there, but she didn’t. They did have goodie bags for the captains or for the liaison to take to them; neither were there so we decided to go take Robin’s for him. We got the bag, turned around and there was John and Peter.

Holes and Swim Call

We set sail in the morning because we wanted to play with the boat a little but then the wind died down. Had another fun work party playing with the sails, this time I went and looked for holes in all the sails. There was a bunch on the fore, a little on the main and none on the mizzen. I also measured the leech of the fore topgallant because Dan is thinking of adding a leech line to it, make it easier to furl I think. We heaved to and had another swim call, this time we let out the yard arm tackle for a swing.

We struck sail after the swim, had dinner then had to furl. Motored slowly through the evening.

Detroit River

Went throught the Detroit river today, it had the most amazing blue water, it felt like we were sailing through a pool. For work party I got a to do some sewing, the jib, fore course and the topgallant. Lynx passed us in the river and we were followed by Pride and Roseway. When I got on watch it was really difficult to steer because of the current and all the buoys.

Watch Swap

Got off the dock after we got pumped out, Zach and Doug were there to cast our lines before they left us as well.

The watches got a big shuffle this morning because most of C watch was gone.

A watch, Peter, Tom, Amy, Mitch and me.

B watch, Darren, Jesse, Grant, Laura, Sonny and Justin.

C watch, Cory, John, Katie, Andrew and Tenley.

Sailed off the dock with our passengers headed for Bay City, MI.

Last day in Cleveland

Last day of tours wasn’t so hot as the first two days. Also had our passengers arrive and another crew party.

Day off, crew comes and goes

Sadly this morning Brooke and Scottie left to go back home, I’m really going to miss them.

John, Tom, Amy, Jesse and I all went to the rock and roll hall of fame in the morning for free with our crew passes. I’m not a huge music person so I didn’t know who half of the people were but there were some interesting costumes and original notes for songs scrawled on scrap paper.

In the afternoon Jesse and I went to the West Side Market, he got 14 grapefruits for $4, we also got some cheese and other fruit.

Got a new crewmember as well, Justin.

Work Party

For work party we added a few more flags to the end of the strip from the mizzen to the spanker boom because now that the mizzen is taller we have the space for it. Radio Disney ended up having their spot right across from out boat and it was loud and annoying all day. Jesse took down the main top lifts and re patch served them.

Melting

A super hot day of tours, work party ended up bagging everything in the galley so that we could bomb the boat for little critters. Ended up having a bbq on the dock for dinner and got to go bowling for free with our crew passes.

Cleveland, OH

Another long day, we hove to around 3 am, Grant and I stood watch from 0530 to 0700, woke Peter and then everyone else. Was on the dock in Cleveland, OH by 0800.

Some of the passengers left and we had some time to kill before we went back out for the parade of sail. We ended up painting the sides of the boat because the dock was just there, it was boiling, we were all melting. We left the dock at 1100, ended up having a swim call and then the parade of sail with everything set. Got back to the dock and Dan, Laura and Tenley were there waiting for us.

Cleveland, OH.

Light house.

Bounty and Niagara.

Ashley putting chafe gear on a dock line.

Swim Call

Woke up at noon after having had such a nice morning watch to a very hot day. Set every sail and turned off the engines and generator. We ran into Roald Amundsen and a guy jumped over and swam to our boat, they were doing drills and launched their small boat. We tried to get a bag of popsicles together before he went back over, but he jumped in and swam back over. We finally set our fore topgallant and royal with some trouble, something about the halyard not getting enough purchase. We slowly passed up the Amundsen and then launched out small boat to take pictures of both boats and to deliver the popsicles. They gave us a really cool salute, clapping their hands on the side of their boat made a great noise because their steel.

We finally got to get in the water ourselves, it was perfect. The Amundsen’s small boat came over to say hi and the guy who had previously climbed aboard went straight out on to the bowsprit and dived off. They also said they were making us something and would bring it to us when we were in Cleveland.

Eventually got out of the water, had dinner, motored and had to furl.

Roald.

Richard and the German.

Bounty and Roald.

Bounty.

15 hours

Just had the longest day ever. Got up at 0320 for watch and didn’t get to go to bed till 2000. Brought up the anchor half way and waited around until we got a call from the canal saying we could come in. We ended up docking just outside of the canal, work the rest of the crew at 7 and got in our first canal at 8 with Appledore IV and Denis Sullivan. When we were in between locks everyone laid around on deck still half asleep and trying to stay in the shade because it was getting hot, as Amy calls it, a flopper diver.

We didn’t have work party, but it was still all hands all day, we went through all 8 locks in the Wellen Canal, it took 10 hours. Right after A watch took the deck in the afternoon Grant yells from the fore deck, “Hard right!” Tom at the helm turns and slides along a buoy and then since he’s turned so hard we were heading towards the canal wall. After that Peter tells us all to go to bed for an hour. Having that small nap really helped the next three hours go by without a catastrophe.

Sullivan coming in behind us.

Water rising quickly.

Gates closed.

Flopper diver.

Parade of sail to Cleveland, OH

I was put on work party today while more tours went on. I cleaned passenger cabins with Rich and Doug. Finally at the end of the day singled up, shook out every sail and had the parade of sail on the way out. Furled everything and anchored for the night.

Unicorn costume party

Another day of tours with lots of people. Had someone come on from Niagara and say they were jealous of our head room, that we didn’t have to change sleeping area into dinning and that our cannons were cute.

Unicorn was having a costume party so a handful of us dressed up and went. I wore my fancy period coat, Jesse wore the unicorn hat from bosuns, Tenley was a gypsy, Richard was a gentleman, Cory a mariachi payer, Katie and Ashley dressed up as girls, Ashley ended up trading with the Capitan of Unicorn, Rachel who was a shipwreck and then later a drunk nerd. Amy was the best, got a scrap of sail, wrapped it around and put a gasket at her waist.

Ashley, Rich, and girl.

Cory and Tenley.

Amy.