Tours

It’s been far too long of a day. We had to set up the boat this morning for tours, deck wash, sweep and mop and exchange the brows to one that had slats, it’s a steep climb. I started to do a deep clean of the heads, took everything out from it’s storage place, clean out the inch of dust and put things back. I found two globes and a never-ending supply of bleach.

After lunch I complained that I was tired of it and we were getting more tourists so I got to give tours. I did a few fully guided ones and other times I was just stationed somewhere, picked up some people and talked them through a few things. It’s more fun when they ask questions then you having to give a whole talk. The funny thins is that as a kid growing up your parents tell you not to talk to strangers, now I’m being paid to do it.

I took one group of people around the boat about one and a half time for an hour or so, they were from LA and kept taking pictures of different things. Robin had told us that people were going to ask us where we were from, where the boat had gone and how many crew we had. What I got asked most besides that was if the food was good. I also ended up giving out my blog address to someone.

After dinner Katie and I got to hang out for a bit. Went to the grocery store, got candy, walked around and ended up playing at the park. Those who had their day off did about that same thing, ate around and looked at the town, it’s really small.

Docking in St. Michels

Another night at anchor, anchor watch is so much fun, get loads more sleep. For morning work party I painted the upper main futtocks and Grant and Michelle started to tar some backstays. By the time we got on watch we only had about an hour or so left till we got to St. Michels. Michelle was on the helm and I was on boat check so I ended up being power assist for her. It was some crazy driving around that we had to do, zig zagging between buoys. We anchored out because we didn’t want to dock in the middle of the day, we thought we might wait till the morning but ended docking after dinner.

For the second half of the day work party we busted up the sails and furled the staysails so everything looked pretty. People kept coming out and looking at us, we had a really sweet Skip Jack come out around us a few times. The view from aloft was amazing, huge houses next to the water and lots of trees, everything was really green and cheerful. It was also a lot warmer than I thought.

Docking was really amazing, came in slowly and all these people were there waiting for us. Some of Bounty’s old crewmembers were there to visit and they caught our dock lines which was great because they know how things work. Spent some time after that setting up a brow and doing chafe gear. Unlike at Peanut Island there is no giant tower so the brows are pretty steep and we had to put some boxes on either end. Sadly we left a few boxes back at Peanut Island, some really big ones we had stored on shore, maybe the Lynx will bring them up for us.

I was suppose to have duty but Michelle kindly took it away from me. Today at capstan she announced that she is leaving in Baltimore, she’s going back to some boats in Alaska. So I got to go out with everyone, Jesse and I walked around and explored the main street; everything was closed but still looked at all the shops. There’s a Christmas store that appears to be entirely devoted to selling only Christmas things… all year long.

Grant on forward look out.

Phone reception!

Robin.

John and Dan beating up the anchor.

Cory and Dan in the small boat.

NP1

Anchor watch was great because it was only an hour, by the time you did everything, boat check and two plots it was time to wake up the next person.

For work party Michelle and I NP1ed. During watch it was still really foggy so we had to keep an extra sharp eye on what little of the horizon we could. Two buoys came out of no where and Grant was at the wheel and he had to turn it hard.

Fog.

Mast.

More fog.

Chesapeake

Work party was good, finished rust busting the futtocks and got a coat of primer on them, mmmh metal primer.

At capstan we had another Key West fact from Cory and then Brooke gave her little talk about flares that I didn’t really understand much of.

Watch was amazing, we went through the Chesapeake Bay, we had to steer through the buoys and I really suck at driving. It was really bad and I was stuck on the helm for the better part of an hour, I was dying. When Katie came and relived me I was super thankful.

The Chesapeake has a lot of little fingers of land and is not that great to navigate at night so we anchored, that means only an hour of watch for everyone tonight.

Submarine.

John and Cory on the jib.

Maisie making baggy wrinkle.

Dan and Robin working on the mast.

Mitch tapping the tween deck to NP1.

Brooke tarring a backstay.

Michelle on the helm.

Peter and Grant looking at the chart.

Dan and the mast.

Freezing

Watch was relatively boring, it was just really freezing. C watch again had a really good watch again, saw a lot of activity in the water. The water was really calm, still like a lake, no wind at all.

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.

2 hour furl and coil

Brooke woke me up telling me there was hot water for tea if I wanted some and that they had a very eventful watch. Zach had seen some flares go off the stern, woke Robin to ask what they should do, in the end the furled everything and motored towards the direction of the flares. They also flashed the deck lights to try and signal to them. After an hour they gave up and got back on course.

We ended up having to help furl what they had recently just set because Peter wanted to motor. We spent the first two hours of our watch furling and then coiling down, great way to make things go by pretty fast.

Was a very calm night, had some good talks with Peter back at the helm, learned a lot about how much this industry pays. Not a whole lot, but defiantly get a licenses so that you can be paid more, Bounty just sucks on pay, there are others that are better.