Sunday 18 July 2010

Picton Castle at sea; Sunday 18 July 2010 בס"ד

Dammit, another double entry. I must force myself to write logs or else. Yesterday was a lovely day. I was third helm in the morning and did some holystoning as well. It is a regular occurrence now to brace up or brace in a point or so with the winds and/or take in or set the kites, and I can't always remember every instance. Forgive me. After breakfast I worked on carpentry sanding down the spars with Brad. After lunch, I passed out for a bit on the Aloha deck, and then at 1400 we had a bro-sponsored poker game on the hatch in celebration of Shawn's 24^th birthday. The weather was perfect and the ship wasn't rolling a bit. Then, before my watch, I was putting on my harness when Vassos was like, “Dude, you're not even going to need that,” and I was like, “Well, maybe I'll have to go aloft or maybe weather will happen,” and she was like, “Dude, no way.” Well, first thing I was told to do was, “Fred, loose the gaff topsl!” Then after dinner, a big squall was approaching, so we took in stunsls. We had two separate swells plus strong winds at this point, so the seas became quite lumpy. A party in the brocave finished it off.

This morning I stood third helm again, steering SW½W. No holystones today, just stunsl work at dawn, and bracing, and deckwash. After breakfast, the lower stunsl yard had snapped in half (it's made of a huge bamboo chute) and so we took it in. I worked for a few hours on my translations of Nauticalese, this time in Hebrew. After lunch I studied math and trig functions. In our evening watch, we parted the weather sheets of both the royals and we were quite snappy on the handling. A marlinspike was planned but it was too lumpy with squally bits and subsequently canceled. I stood third lookout, and overall this watch felt like we were all A-game with everything, from sails to galley.