Salty Sea Dogs

We have now been in Lunenburg for about a week and a half, and I belive that we may be starting to get a little salty.

Monday was our first official all hands muster during which we all signed the ships articles and officially became Picton Castle crew. I think that we all feel pretty honoured and are all pretty pleased with our crew and excited to share this awsome experience with such a fantastic group of people.

Since then our days have been loaded with training and ship work. In a typical day we get up at about 7:00am, have breakfast at 7:30, muster at 8:00 then we break into two groups to do deck wash and domestics (cleaning all of our indoor living spaces). At 8:45 we muster again and spend the morning doing all kinds of safety training and drills. Then, at 12:00 we all gather for lunch either in the main salon or sitting around the hatch mid-ships. At 12:45 we muster again and then break into ship work, which lately has meant a whole lot of paintining, I think I have painted more in the last week and a half than most people do in a lifetime. We sure are good at cleaning paint brushes now though. At around 17:30 we start to clean up, and then at 18:30 it's dinner, usually followed by a trip to the Grand Banker, the pub down the street where we sit for hours and chat or play crib.

During our drills and training we have covered fire fighting, abandon ship, life jackets, flares, life rafts and harnesses. We have learned alot of ropes and sail handling. We have been to the pool and floated around in PFDs and in full immersion suits, and got the chance to all climb into a life raft wearing our immersion suits. And, for the first time, we all went aloft. I couldn't be more proud of our crew. We seem to be working together really well, and we all get along like family.

Last night we had a party at the Dory Shop around our brand new dory. It was a fantastic event attended not only by us, but by some of the Bluenose II crew, dory builders, a fiddler who played beautifully for us, and other friends of the Picton Castle, including some of the servers from the Banker.

Our departure date has been pushed back a couple of days to the 20th, but we're all enjoying Lunenburg, so we don't mind too much. Ryan is out visiting and spoke to the Captain who has invited him to join the crew!! He will go back home on the 18th where he will do a few courses, and will then join us some where in Europe as soon as he can. I think it's going to be really fun, and can't wait for him to return.

All in all it has been a really good week.

I'll probably blog again next Sunday.