Monday 16 August 2010

Picton Castle at sea; Monday 16 August 2010 בס"ד

Yesterday, being Sunday, meant I had the day off from work completely, since I'm a dayman now. Still I woke at 0600 and took a shower, charged my laptop, typed up the rest of the Captain's Log, and finished reading TCOMC by about 0930. I spent most of the day hanging out and before lunch there was the infamous “F or F” incident, which I won't relate here. At 1630, there was a fouliespike (though I just wore my sandwich mask), and the Captain explained why we were steaming instead of sailing: weather, headwinds, and a Raro deadline to meet. Collected lots of photos in the evening, then off to bed.

Today, I worked first on repairing some trimwork in the port aft cabin, then to planing down the corners of the batton wedges. Once planed, I started to beltsand them down, but the Captain came by and said that we need to have the corners planed down much more. Though the wedges were pre-cut in Canada, many of them are oak, and the Captain said that the US Merchant Marine guidelines state that softwood should be used for batton wedges. Who knew? But we'll keep using these since they're already cut to size. Pretty much worked on that while Jan put a dutchman (a Dutchman puts in a dutchman, haha) in the gaff and began work on a new rudder. At 1600, we got ready for a sail-handling workshop. We all split up to get snappy on fore-and-aft sails, since I guess a lot of people still aren't confident. I rotated with the 4-8s first on the main staysls, then the headsls, then the mizzen staysl. After dinner, I worked out a bit, then decided to make a picture frame for Jo instead of the boat model (which I won't have time to complete) and Michael Zachmann let me print a small photo with his portable sticker printer. Then I taught Jo how to play chess. Now off to bed.