Two more days.....

The count down is on and we're almost ready to go....

We've spent the last week doing tons of ship work including working aloft to bend on 13 sails. This involves climbing up the rigging, then climbing out onto the yards (the large beams that hold up the sails and cross the masts) then shimmying out to the end of the yards and holding on for dear life while hoisting a massive canvas square sail and holding it there while we lash it to the jackstay (a metal bar attached to the front of the yard). It's a pretty weird experience and a bit nerve-wracking, but after the first ten minutes or so you get so caught up in what you're doing that the nervousness wanes and you suddenly feel like maybe you could be a sailor after all.

I've been really enjoying the ship work. I think that sailing comes with a whole different mind set than what we're normally used to. If something needs to be fixed or replaced, we fix it or make it ourselves rather than waiting for someone from the outside to do it for us. I've been working a bit at sewing chafe gear onto some of the lines, which are just pieces of canvas or leather sewn around a line to stop it from rubbing on some surrounding metal or rigging and wearing through. This job uses the same skills as sail makers use and I could see myself becoming very interested in learning more sail making in the year to come. There is a sense of craft to everything we do. Even coiling a line is a bit of an art and not to be done haphazardly.

We've also undergone a major Transport Canada Safety inspection which involved us going through all of our safety drills for the inspector and a thorough inspection of the ship. When it was finished the inspector mustered us all and told us that he was extremely impressed by us, and had found not a single fault in our safety, and would even love to sail on the ship himself if ever he got the chance. This was a huge honour, and apparantly a very rare one, and of course, under the circumstances and attention that has been paid to safety in the last year, a very great relief for all involved.

Now all that is left to do are some final preparations and then we're off!! None of us can believe it!!

Depending on the weather we will be setting sail on either Tues. or Wed. this week.

Next stop Ireland!!

I'll blog again from the other side of the Atlantic.

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.

New crew.

After the horrible moment of saying good bye to Matt at the Vancouver airport, two long flights, and a two hour shuttle bus ride, I arrived in Lunenburg in the early afternoon of Thursday May 1st. My crew mates John, and Kevin and I had all shared a shuttle bus ride with Greg from Kiwikaboodles, and arrived at the Picton Castle feeling excited and nervous, and speaking for myself, a little like a fish out of water, especially while watching all of the pro-crew confidently climbing aloft, painting, welding, and generally preparing the ship. We joined in as soon as we had settled and changed, and were in harnesses painting around the bottom outside of one of the decks before we knew it (There is an actual sailor term for the part of the ship that we were painting, but I suspect it will take me a bit of time to learn that, and the million other things there are to know).

More and more trainees have been arriving over the last couple of days, and the last of us will be arriving today in time for our first official all hands muster at 8:00am Monday. The amount of work that needs to be done before our departure date (presently set for May 17th) seems overwhelming, not to mention all of the training that is going to be starting, but the pro crew are all fantastic, and it's the most amazing thing to be part of a large group of people who are all working together to achieve a task. Yesterday we unloaded everything from the hold, and then did an inventory and loaded it all back in in a much more organized way. This was a huge job which involved all of us forming a massive chain of people to pass things from the bottom of the hold (which I would say is almost two stores deep) up to the upper lever of the hold, then out onto the deck midship, and then up onto the dock and into a logical place, and then repeating the whole process again in reverse. After our work day we had a gathering on our dock with the crew from the Bluenose II, and had a great time.

I am living in "the batcave" which is an all girls portion of the ship, with three room mates at the moment, all of whom seem really great. It was somewhat cold the first couple of days that I was here, but we have a space heater in the batcave and it stays really cozy. The sun is out now though and it's a beautiful day for a day off.

Alot more hard work to come in the next couple of weeks, and then, it's off to Ireland!!

I will post pictures when I can figure out how to.

Take care, and I'll blog again next week.
Nicki