Night Watch (Interlude)

Saturday Aug 27

Our night watch was absolutely fantastic.

As the afternoon progresed the sky got clearer and clearer and the wind became steady from the NW, perfect for our SSE course!

As we came on watch at 8:00pm we were till sailing along under all sails.
First business was taking in the Royals. I know they would have preferrred to leave them up as the conditions were perfect. But our watches are a bit short handed so prudence demands that the Royals come in so we could easily douse the t'gallants if needed.

Once that was done it was plain sailing.  A beautiful warm steady breeze, very reminiscent of the tradewinds, no engine or generator noise just the swish of the sea and the slow creak of the wheel.

When it was fully dark the sky was awash in stars with the Milky Way spanning across the whole sky.  With no lights on deck there was nothing to dim the intensity of the stars. The lights of the towns on the Magdeline Islands were on the Northern horizon. For a few minutes thay had some kind of fireworks display that could just be seen rising from the horizon. Best guess for why was "It's Saturday so why not" :-)

My turn at lookout was amazing. Apart from a band of darkness just above the horizon, caused by the density of the atmosphere at sea level and the temperature difference between the sea and the air, everywhere I looked there were stars.

Being on lookout is one of those times when introspection is impossible to avoid.  One developes a kind of alert but automatic scan of the hoirizon and the sea. My mind then quickly begins to do a kind of checklist wander through things of interest, worries, what ifs, plans, songs, existential musings, self critiques and all sorts of random bits of memory.

Last night, being under full sail in a gentle but steady wind, there was the added beauty of the towering masts and sails rising above me and swaying in front of the stars.

It was the last night on which we will be able to sail this fine ship, once through the control lock at Canso it will likely be motoring all the way to Lunenberg.  Knowing that I won't likely get to experience this for long time, if ever again, was bitter sweet.

 How can one fix such a moment in the mind?

My trick on the helm was also great. I was able to steer almost entirely by the stars!
So glad I've managed to get that to work. I can now steer by just standing beside the wheel, like many of my shipmates do, rather than  hunched over the wheel glued to the dimly lit swaying compass card.

The only break in the revery was cleaning part of the galley that hadn't been touched for a very long time. It was inhabited by lots of tiny cockroaches. The only ones I've seen, I guess the Atlantic Crossing was too cold for them.  Mark says that while they were in Toronto they had discovered a spot full of them which they had summarily dispatched but otherwise I've seen nothing but flies.

When "watch below" was called I stayed on deck for 10 minutes more just watching the sails, the stars, and the sea.  This one day and night makes up for all the labour I've done so far.

Is that why people go to sea?  To have those simple things to hang on to when the ship rolls and the ropes are taught and the decks are streaming.

I slept soundly indeed. I didn't even wake up when the engine was started around 4:00am and the 4-8 watch took in all our sails.

Thanks for reading.
KJ

All at Sea

Saturday Aug 27



Was a foggy chilly night watch.
Very dark too, the clouds must have been very thick.
We set the lower topsails and inner jib which was fun with only three people available to do it!  I had to keep checking the lines to make sure I had the right one. That is helped because the clew lines are always on metal pins whereas the buntlines are wood. So you can count back three metal pins and know the next one you are working on the Royal.

Steering was by compass cause there was absolutely no stars visible, so no chance to try out my new found skill :-)

Slept really well, the sleeping bag was just the perfect addition to my bunk. Nice and toasty, but very hard to get out of this morning though.

Our morning watch was chilly and bumpy. The sea had a lovely cold grey colour, the colour I associate with the Atlantic, with steep sided waves. No signs of sea sickness. Which is cool given that we are a actually out at sea in the Gulf of St Lawrence heading SExE towards PEI.  Currently we are sailing under topsails, courses, t'gallants and staysails. Nice to be sailing, the smell and noise of our engine gets wearing after a while.

It was a very busy watch, had to scrub the breakfast dishes, heh.  I love bacon but cleaning up a pan full of baked on bacon grease in cold sea water is NOT fun. Also started scrubbing the ceiling of the Salon, which hasn't been done for a while. That is hard on the neck, especially since I wear tri-focals so have to tip my head back to see!

My trick on the helm was nice, sailing takes much bigger turns of the wheel to correct her course,  but there is a bigger sense of control than when motoring. I used the clouds to check for the drift of the ship's heading and it worked well. Woot.

Rumour has it we may be through the Straits of Canso either late tonight or tomorrow. The cadets from the Maritime Academy on board are hoping we go through in daylight since their whole school will come out to see us go by!

It is 1:36pm and I just got back from loling in the sun on the main hatch. it is now one of those stunningly beautiful sailing days. The waves are a dark blue with scattered intensely white horses. We are sailing with all our sails set. Even sails I never saw set on our trip. This makes all the wet, dark, heaving and hauling worth it!

The clouds along the horizon are non-threatening which is nice for a change.

Erin says the forecast is for the wind to drop around sunset so I suspect we will be back to motoring for our night watch. After we take in all these acres of canvas of course :-)

More later...


Check next post for musings on my last full sail night watch.

Here are some pictures from this beautiful sailing day.

A Tall Ship and a Star to Steer Her By

A Tall Ship and a Star to Steer Her By

That is probably one of the most famous lines from any Sea poem/story.  I always thought it meant using the stars to navigate with. That is, in the sense of figuring out where you are and how to get to where you want to go. Last night I finally figured out what it really means.

One of the things I was told on my previous voyage was to use clouds or objects on the horizon to steer with rather than chasing the pointer on the compass around.  I was never able to make that work.  My second time at helm on this trip, while sailing along Lk Ontarion,  Mark the Aussie AB on our watch told me pointing at the compass "Don't look at this, look at this" indicating with a sweep of his arm the broad expanse of stars and sky.  I still wasn't able to force myself not to look at the compass and try to chase the course around.

Last night however it seems to have clicked. The Fog blanked everything up to about 45 degrees above the horizon but above that the stars were pretty clear. So I found a bright star, in Cassiopea I think, that was lined up between two stays on the main mast when we were on course.  Watching that star I could see when the ship started to fall off her course. Looking down at the compass I could see that the compass heading hadn't changed at all! Then suddenly it would begin to show the course change.

That is the secret! The compass is on the quarter deck right in front of the wheel it will only start to register the turn when the bow has already started going that way.  The apparent motion of the star, or a cloud or point of land, is way faster so correcting the ship course by watching for the shift in these objects corrects the course before the compass has even registered a turn.

The fog this morning was so thick you could actually look at the sun briefly, it was just a bright disk, I used it the same way as a star to figure out how many spokes of the wheel were necessary to make her turn or stop turning.

Sweet.

So "a star to steer her by"  is just that, using a star to keep the ship on course because the relative motion of the ship forward of the compass registers a change in course way faster than the compass does.

Thanks for reading.
KJ

Foggy and Damp Motoring Towards Gaspe

Friday Aug 26

Had a very interesting night watch, the fog was very thick, but not very deep vertically. From the focslehead on lookout you could see the stars and then nothing below but grey.  As it got darker the bow wave began to light up as it broke. There is now some phosphorescent organisms in the water. A pretty good indication that the sea is nearby.  Lookout was really tough. I have a bunch of floaters in my eyes and they kind of spark and glow against the mushy grey of the fog. If I thought I saw something I would blink and look a different direction, if it was still there then it was in my eyes not on the sea!

It wasn't all that cold but without the foulies one would very quickly be wet through  by the fog and then the wind would chill you to the bone.

My trick on the helm was great, I actually used the stars to steer successfully for the first time, more on that later.

Our watch this morning was more of the same, only with the sun shining the fog became intensely bright, necessitating the use of sunglasses. These are very quickly streaming with water, which means they are very hard to see through.

I ended up looking over my glasses and then looking through them to check out anything I think I saw.  Not ideal but with the brightly lit fog any object will be a dark spot which would actually stand out pretty well. The mate says we have had several big ships pass within 2 miles of us but we didn't see a thing. You could tell when another ship were nearby because our fog horn sounds for a while.

Steering this morning was very easy as we are motoring with no sails set. Only a couple of spokes either way needed to keep her on course.

It is more than a week since I left my Jayne  and Calgary to join the ship. How time flies when you are having fun :-)  Sitting here in the salon typing up my blog posts it feels like the patterns of being at sea are falling into place. The steady rounds of watch, eat, sleep, scrub, haul, eat, sleep etc are like a big clock ticking the days past.


On the plus side my hands are mostly healed up and I have only felt a slight queasy twinge when below in the chain locker on ship check.  I am wearing my motion sickness bracelet just in case but so far so good. Will see how they work out on the sea proper.

More later...


It is still foggy but now it is raining too. Blah.
We are eating dinner down in the salon for the second day in a row.
On the plus side I can hear the 4-8 watch setting the topsails, the sheets are chain and they make a distinctive rattle a they are sheeted home. Hopefully that means there is enough wind that we will be able to sail tonight too.

On the minus side it will mean that it will be much colder on watch too. Sigh.
I broke out my lite weight sleeping bag and stuffed it with the stuff I have been sleeping under so it i ready to dive into when I get off watch.

Thanks for reading!

KJ

Sailing Down the St Lawrence

Thurs Aug 25

Currently sailing (yay!) under upper and lower topsails, t'gallants, main royal, foresail and inner jib. We are making a good 9 knots over the ground. It is a chilly grey day with the occaisional rain shower.

Had a crazy watch last night. We were motoring down the seaway from Montreal and the steering was nuts. Thankfully I didn't have to have a trick at the wheel, I'm not sure I could have done that in the dark leapfrogging from lighted bouy to lghted bouy.  We were going faster over the grownd than I have ever seen the Picton Castle go, 12.3 knots! For us that is really flying. There was a 6 knot current from the river helping us along. She felt like she was on the edge of control, like when you are going too fast on a bicycle :-)

So instead of a trick at the helm I did lookout and then Shauna and I scrubbed the overhead in the galley and tried to make coffee. The coffe procedure is very primitive now. You take a big pot boil water in it then throw in Foolgers coffee grounds, wait a few minutes and laddle it out into a thermos to put aft on the Aloha Deck. Ick.

It was pretty strong, it was still there at breakfast and it really did a good job at jump starting me caffeine wise :-)

We motored past Quebec City last night around 4 AM and we are way downstream from there now. No wasting time on this trip!

When I came on watch this morning it was still pretty warm, with scattered clouds. We were motorsailing under the lower topsails. Typically our watch does the domestics, cleaning the heads, sweeping the salon etc, but today almost the entire watch was spend setting sails. First the upper topsails, then the main topmast staysail, between the main and foremasts, and then the t'gallants and royal on the main.  Once that was all set the engine was shutdown and we have been sailing in blessed quiet since then.

I did my trick at the helm and, for the first time I stayed on course pretty well and was pretty confident by the end. A very pleasant change from the schmozle of the previous tricks. Well see how I do tonight.

My hands with stood all the line hauling while we were setting the sails so maybe they are starting to toughen up.

The temperature has been dropping steadily all morning but I wasn't cold because with just the four of us on the watch it was a lot of work to set all the sails,  but I'm thinking I might need to start layering up for our night watch tonight.

Erin, our mate, says we might start to see whales in the St Lawrence soon, so I'll try to keep my camera handy just in case.


Later

It is now 4:00pm and what a difference a couple of hours make.
I was trying to sleep and realized that I couldn't seem to warm my legs up!  As the water temperature has gone down the hull has cooled off too and it sucks the heat out of my bunk. Had to put on my flannel shirt and get my blanket over my legs.

Now outside it is rainy and foggy and very damp/cold.

You can even see the fog rolling down the salon steps from the deck!
Going to need my foulies tonight I'm sure. I hope I don't need all my cold weather clothes tonight because I suspect this is not as cold ass it will get. Sigh.
I'm hoping this just feels cold by contrast with the heat we have had previously and once we get more accustomed it won't feel so sharp.

The engine is back on and  Bryson just came off watch and told me we are making 13 knots over the ground.  Woo.


Thanks for reading.
KJ