Filming Day

Thurs August 18

Filming Day

An interesting day.
Started by lashing down large timber topmast blank to the rail. Then we lashed all the canal fenders, large 8x8 timbers used to protect the side of the ship in the locks, on top.  We will be heading out into the lake to continue filming tomorrow.  That will be my first sail on this ship since June 2009!

Woot :-)

The crew that are being extras left to get costumed and setup for the filming.

I went with Mark to move the skiff to a new mooring away from the ship then we walked back, shortly thereafter we were told to go move it to a new spot which we did.

By the time we got back they had started filming so we hung out on the Quay watching the fun.  A lot of hurry up and wait as is typical of such activities.

On the plus side they gave us a big feed which was awesome. The film crew called it "lunch" about 4:00pm. They are planning to keep filming till the Sun goes down. We have been ordered to standby in case they need us to move something and then we will have to furl the sails that are hanging in their gear for the shots.

I'll be standing my first anchor watch tonight which will be interesting, only one hour as we are all hands.

The film crew is coming back aboard as I type this so we'll soon see what the evening will be like.

More later

Just finished my first anchor deck watch, was with A-Ron a very interesting fellow who was on the whole trans Atlantic trip. He walked me through the lines while we were doing the ship check and I got most of them right!

Monique and Christie you were right once I hit the deck a lot of stuff came back. :-)

Since A-Ron and I had first watch I'm hitting the rack!

Thanks for reading.
KJ

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 :-)

Packed and ready...

Sort of.

Got most of my gear packed up and it all fits in my old seabag!  I made the seabag during the last stretch from Bermuda back to Lunenburg when I was last sailing on the Picton Castle.

My plan is to check the seabag and carry an old cloth backpack on the plane. That will have the absolute bare essentials so that I could still join the ship even if the seabag goes awol.  I am flying Westjet so that isn't really a concern, unlike another "Nationally Named" Carrier I could mention.

The tricky bit of the packing was clothes. It is currently really hot in Toronto where we will be starting but who knows what it will be like after we get out into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. I really only need three sets, work clothes, general and travel clothes, and a nicer set to wear if I have to go ashore, and not look like a ruffian from the docks, heh. All that fits in a very small space.

Biggest amount of space taken so far is my foul weather gear it just doesn't fold up very small. I'm also carrying my old rubber boots just in case of cold water, they'll probably never leave the bottom of my seabag.

So tomorrow afternoon my little adventure starts. It'll be fun to just get on the plane and leave all the FB\News\Social madness behind for a couple of weeks.

Updates as I can wrangle them.

Thanks for reading.
KJ

P.S. The current plan is to get the ship ready to leave on the 21st planning to arrive in Lunenberg Sept 1st or 2nd. Between the time I get there on the 17th and the 21st the ship will be involved in some filming which will be interesting to be in on.

Knots 'n lines and sails oh my!

Four days to go before I fly out to Toronto.

Woke up in a cold sweat this morning.

I was dreaming that I had been ordered to do something on the ship.  Only I had no clue how to do it!

Eight years is a long time, and even though I have been sailing since it has never been on a vessel with all that lovely rope and billowing canvas. The panicky feeling of that dream lasted all through breakfast and I figured I better do something about it. So I got an old shoelace and started doing knots.  All the knots I could remember. Then I looked up the ones I couldn't remember and tried them.

The simple act of doing that was very calming.  Riding the bus downtown I kept doing all the knots, must have looked a little strange, but then this is Calgary, heh.

It's a kind of Sailor's Rosary or something.


Thanks for reading.
KJ

Off to Sea Again

Well.
It has been almost 8 years since I last headed out to Sea on the Picton Castle.
Now I get to go on another passage on this fine Barque.

Two weeks ago I got an email from Maggie, who keeps the administration of the ship moving smoothly, looking for crew to help sail the ship back to Lunenberg.

Thinking about it for all of 4 hours I jumped at the chance!

So on August 16th I'll fly to Toronto to join the Picton Castle for her trip down the St Lawrence and back to Lunenberg.

I've rebuilt my little netbook "EEEbin" with a new OS and have started packing my seabag.

This post will be the start of a new chapter on this blog.

I'll try to write something everyday and, like last time, I'll update when I get a chance.

Wish this old sailor luck in getting my sea legs back!

As always thanks for reading
KJ