Wednesday 14 July 2010

Picton Castle at sea; Wednesday 14 July 2010 בס"ד

Awesome day. In the morning I stood second helm steering SW½W, which was unusually tricky until the last five minutes when the wind died down. We then braced up a bit to adjust. I was going to do deckwash when Siri had me go aloft on the mizzen with her with a bucket, scrubber, and sponge to wipe off all the soot from the stackhouse off the mast. At the turn of the watch we brought the braces in a bit back to how they had been before. After breakfast I did some quick line handling for the riggers as they bent on our new fore royal, then I lain in to carpentry work with Paul, Jan, Robert, and Alex. At first I did planing and lines for power-sawing before lunch with Alex, who was laying in for shipwork since she was on watch. Then Paul and I sawed the plank into two to prep for laminating them together to make the gaff for the monomoy. After lunch, I worked on the mast and boom of the monomoy with Paul and Jan and learned how to take a square board and make it round and then give it a taper. Did that til 1500, took a half hour nap, and up again for watch at 1530. We had the final ditty bag workshop at 1600, where we learned to make the becket and worm and serve it, and also to nail in the bottom board. Dinner was at 1730 for light-savings purposes, and so we finished galley clean earlier. I did 100 pushups upon the quarterdeck, was stood down from watch and did the first splice of my becket. Now bed. Maybe I'll be able to do a 16+hour day again tomorrow?