So it begins...

Tuesday Aug 16 16:33
Made it to the Airport with lots of time to spare.

That is a big change from the last couple of times I've had to go to the airport, which was a great way to reduce my stress level, heh.

Now I'm hanging out at the gate waiting for the flight to take me to Toronto.

FB refuses to load on the Airport WiFi with a security warning and no possible exception,blah. I hope that isn't indicative of EEEbin's behaviour on hotspots.  On the plus side GMail and Blogger work just fine

More later.

It is later and I have landed in Toronto, collected my seabag and got a hotel room to spend the night.

They charge for WiFi if you can believe it!  Sigh.

After doing some digging it appears that the lobby has free WiFi but I can't seem to connect, sigh.  I'm thinking there must be something about EEEbin's browser that doesn't like these hotspot networks.  Maybe I should see if Anderson will spring for data on my cellphone then I could tether it. Just for blog updates of course :-)

Tomorrow I have to figure out how to get to the docks.

Then the fun really begins.

Thanks for reading.
KJ

Wed Aug 17

Joined the ship officially this morning after a pretty speedy rush hour cab ride across Toronto.
I signed articles at about 10:30am , was aloft for a refresher by 11:00 and covered in tar a half hour later :-)

The ship is being "dressed" for her role in a series "Alias Grace" by Margaret Atwood so everything is covered in black paint and wood patterned wall paper.  She looks quite bedraggled poor thing.

The crew looks like a fun bunch so far. Chief Mate and Captain are nice (so far).
Very different kind of feel from the previous passage. Will be interesting to see how it all works.

My old shipmate Niko is the new cook as Donald is back in Grenada.   The ship's cat is a juvenile female called Fiji :-)

This afternoon we will be raising the gaff back into place and continuing with the maintenance that never ends.

Oh and the smell is absolutely fantastic! Brings back lots of memories :-)

More later.
Hoisted the gaff back up into place, which was a fine bit of sailorizing.

After we cleaned up the deck and coiled everything down we had a nice spell of socializing and tale telling on the hatch. 

I am officially in the Starboard Watch according to the First Mate Dirk.

Woot! Wifi at Sailors Mission :-)