Wednesday 7 July 2010

Picton Castle at sea; Wednesday 7 July 2010 בס"ד

I volunteered to light the galley stove, and taught Roselyn how to do it. I did forget to put on water, though, but luckily Leonard caught me. At the end of the first hour of morning watch, the port main royal sheet parted and I relieved Brad of the helm so he could go up and stow the sail. The hour passed and so I was relieved of the helm steering SW½S by Ollie within a few minutes. I filled out the log, recording the reading on the taffrail log as 90.9, this being the first time I've used this instead of the GPS, which we no longer use since we're doing a dead reckoning passage to Pitcairn. I had been slated for third helm, but Bob, who was third lookout, noted that she'd been lookout three times in a row and so we traded. While on lookout, I reported a very light squall a point forward of the port beam. Also, later while on lookout we had to loose and set the flying jib, so I loosed it in the headrig. By 0700 we had the main royal set again, but after deckwash and soogieing, we took in the flying jib, royals, and spanker, separately but within a few minutes of each other. I went aloft to stow the fore royal with Logan, who is the fastest aloft-goer on Earth. When we took in the spanker, again with Logan and others I went up on the mizzen cranelines to stow the sail. So, in short, busy morning. Took a nap from breakfast to lunch. Read more Captain from Connecticut til 1600 when we had part two of celestial navigation and now it's starting to make more sense. Right after we had a small birthday event for Ollie where we acted like huge fans as he emerged from shipcheck. Meredith Spratt and I lashed down the totes that had been unlashed to distract Ollie in the hold. I stood third lookout, with brief relief from Paula to eat dinner. At the end of lookout I nearly shit my pants, but didn't, fortunately. Helped clean dishes in the scullery and got a quick lesson on the six planes of motion of a ship: pitch, roll, surge, heave, sway, and yaw. After watch, went over some celestial nav and started studying geometry and trig from my copy of Bowditch. Now bed.