Tuesday 17 August 2010

Picton Castle at sea; Tuesday 17 August 2010 בס"ד

Began work today by finishing planing the edges of the wedges, then powersanding them all down so they're nice and smooth for when we soak them in linseed oil. Then I helped Bracken and Jan epoxy on some fiberglass to the gaff over top the dutchman. After coffee break, I began to work on my first independent project: making fairlead thingydingies for the spars of Sea Never Dry. I had to measure out what I needed, select my own wood from the wood pile, plane it down, and draw out the shapes. I did all this before lunch. After lunch, I waited a bit for Ollie to finish grinding down mother-of-pearl shells, because he was in my working area using the grinder. Then I cut out the thingydingies (two each of three different kinds) with a coping saw, and got to work planing, rasping, and sanding them so that they're identical. We were shut down at 1500 by WT, because he needed to penetrol the galleyhouse hatches before our 1600 workshop, so we finished cleaning up at 1530, or so we thought. At 1550, WT came to us on the aloha deck and said that if people are still cleaning, we're still on duty, so we went back but it was pretty much all done. At 1600, we got a demo from the Captain on flaking out halyard coils so they run freely, then Mate Mike and Bracken demonstrated how to take in and set the royals, tgallants, and courses quickly with just two people. A few pairs of people got to do it, but by the time I was ready to go, the call for up and stow came, so I donned my harness and stowed the foresl. After dinner, played chess and studied geography. Tonight we retard the clocks an hour.