Thursday 17 June 2010

Picton Castle at sea; Thursday 17 June 2010 בס"ד

Morning watch was much different than on 12-4. Besides the fact that both of our daily shifts have sunrise and sunset, our duties for the morning watch involve doing a deckwash, holystoning the deck, and squeeging down the exterior bulkheads, pinrails, and everything else that gets salty once the sun is up. I stood first lookout with Roselyne, and taught her the basics. I did the deckwash and wipedown, but not holystoning this time. We did a bit of handling the fore-and-aft sails, and Ollie told me that he was interested in following me around for his documentary, which I said was fine with me, although I don't know when or what he'll film. After watch, I got to enjoy breakfast, which is new. I worked out a bit, took an hour nap on the hatch, did some reading and became the new trainer for Spratt and Bob, and did some working out with them. I then spent some time sketching ideas for new additions to my collection of one. Basically, I had tons of free time during daylight, something I didn't get much of on 12-4. I stayed up until my afternoon watch, which pretty much started with an hour of good downpour. We set and struck the staysls more than once, spent lots of time slacking lines, and collected rainwater in buckets to fill the casks with. After dinner, I quickly relieved Joanie from lookout (there is only one dinner aboard so the 4-8s eat fast and relieve the helm and lookout so they can eat too). When she came back, we set the headsls, the staysls, and the lower topsls. I was told 4-8 was the watch that got the most sail-handling, and they weren't kidding! After all the excitement, we cleaned the galley and I took advantage of grinding the coffee beans to get a good left arm workout (my left arm has been smaller than my right since my fractures years ago, and could never catch up to being even again). Got relieved from watch and came to the brocave to catch the second half of Zombieland. Now off to bed.