A More Recent Adventure

    Considering the following was happening a year ago this month, I thought it appropriate to post. It's from some notes I wrote to Latitude38. Some of it is a little generic. I suppose I could write about the rest of the trip next, we did double Cape Horn under sail alone... Special thanks to Erica for nudging me back on here...

     ...After spending the past six years working and sailing, including two winters of school in the Netherlands, I’ve ended up here; as mate on the gaff ketch Tecla, sailing from Alaska to the Falkland Islands via Galapagos, Easter Island and Cape Horn. 

    Tecla, an ex-herring drifter, was built in the Netherlands in 1915. She has been family-owned and operated by the Sluiks since 2006 specializing in sailing adventures around the world. She completed a circumnavigation in 2014, and since then she has spent the summers exploring from the Netherlands to Scotland, Iceland and Greenland. This year (2019) will take her far from home through the Northwest Passage to some new destinations including Alaska, Galapagos, Easter Island, Falkland Islands, South Georgia, Chile, and the lost continent, Antarctica. By next summer she will have completed a circumnavigation of the Americas. She is 38 meters LOA, and sails with a total compliment of 16. 12 guest crew can join for any of the legs. Sailing as a guest includes standing watches, steering and helping with the sail handling.  There are two winches on the foredeck for trimming the main topsail halyard and the jib sheet, but everything else is hoisted by hand with purchases, which is why team work is so important. The guests live in 2-person cabins with ensuite toilet/showers, and stand watches in a 4-on, 8-off rotation. No experience is required for the guests, so a lot of my job is teaching, which is quite rewarding. Helping in the galley and maintenance projects keep me busy alongside the sailing itself.

    I’ve found there is much to be gained from sailing these traditional ships, from vigilance and hard work to a healthy respect for nature and the forces that occur at sea. Not only are there the physical aspects, but also the mental ones; patience, trust and everything else that comes with living with so many other souls for months on end.  You learn to appreciate the little things in every day, and all the burdens of life in a twenty first-century first-world country suddenly lose their priority. People talk about the benefits of a “digital detox” but this is so much more. There are also endless things to learn about how to sail the ship well and how to maintain it. These ships have histories, and sailing them allows you to become part of it.

    This trip from Alaska to the Galapagos is an unusual one. Tecla completed the Northwest Passage in 47 days from Illulissat, Greenland to Nome, Alaska, arriving on September 16, 2019. Because of the uncertainty of the ice letting her through to the Pacific side, the guest bookings couldn’t be confirmed until a few weeks in advance of her arrival in Nome. So this trip we were 4 to Dutch harbor and now only 6 on board. Being on time for start of the Antarctic summer also meant that this trip would be limited to one stop (Dutch Harbor). So we’d be spending a lot of time together offshore.

    With this long passage in mind, I stuffed a few issues of Latitude into my bag as I left home. Man, were they a hit on board! My watch mates, Australian and Dutch, found the “Latitude Thirty Eats” excellent breakfast perusal material. Soon there were discussions on the demolished derelict boats, the Baha-Ha-Ha profiles and of course the Letters. 

    The leg from Nome to Dutch Harbor was a rough one, and we were only 4 at that point. The Bering Sea is a wild place filled with depressions even during the best time of year. The short steep waves are similar to the ones in the North Sea, and they are incredibly uncomfortable. There was an ugly looking depression on the forecast, so we set what reefed sails we could and flew almost the whole way at 8 and 9 knots. It took our full strength the hoist the main with 3; any sail changes required all of us, which means less sleep if the weather changes while you're in your bunky... The rugged coast of Unalaska Island was a welcome sight, and we took shelter in Dutch Harbor for a few days. Dutch Harbor is quite famously the seasonal base for many Bering Sea fishing boats, and despite being surrounded by glaciers and extinct volcanoes there is very little going on besides the fishing industry. Oh and wild blueberries!

Approaching Dutch Harbor

    After our departure from Dutch, I was impressed at the size of the Gulf of Alaska! As we sailed rather quickly east to get on the right side of the Pacific high, our position on the small-scale chart crept along like a tiny lethargic bug. Eventually we were able to start our way south with the wind, and that was when we started going like a rocket. In fact, our progress was so good that it allowed us to make a stop in Santa Cruz. Having been mostly away sailing the last six years, it was a very special experience for me to bring a ship into my homeport! It was a meeting of worlds seeing Tecla anchored in Cowells.

Close-hauled day on the Gulf of Alaska

Sunset in Santa Cruz

    We had another epic sail leaving Santa Cruz, but eventually the wind petered out and left us rolling around about 200 miles off the Socorro Islands. Some lighter breezes slowly pushed us towards the equator, but the rest of this trip has been wrought with light airs and mixed seas. Not only was the weather trying, we received news from the officials in the Galapagos that we now required an inspection and hull cleaning in Ecuador before being allowed to stop in the Galapagos. This meant sailing right past the islands to Salinas. It was a little demoralizing. However a nice little puff of wind came up yesterday to blow us the last little way into Salinas. We are now stocking up on some nice fresh veggies and with the inspection hopefully finishing Monday, we will be on our way again. 

Messy mid-ocean hitchhikers

Swimming in a calm

The Adventure Continues

There are some places that I never anticipated finding myself in. Cleveland, Ohio is one of them. But for all it's more-or-less-flatness, midwest-ness and general seediness, it hasn't been a bad place to be for a few days. There's a big park that I can walk into that stretches for miles, and the weather has been kind. And after the busy months I've had recently, this is all I need.

For the first time ever, I left Europa before the end of a shipyard. It was weird, it didn't feel right leaving her in pieces, and everyone getting ready for the last-week scramble to the finish. I'll be coming back to her, but it felt like a somber farewell on that cloudy quiet Sunday morning.

The next part of my adventure starts tomorrow on Pride of Baltimore II. We'll be sailing out of Lake Eerie and down the coast to Maryland to wrap up her sailing season. The opportunity came unexpectedly but I'm looking forward to the challenge and the change.  

A Thought on Love

There are times when cold reason and harsh reality overtake sunny dreams and great expectations. The need for practicality arises and must be met there and then.

In dire straits and times of darkness, I only hope my heart can rise to the occasion with the deft thoughtfulness of a true friend.

February Cleaning

I cleaned out my closet this weekend. Now that doesn't sound exciting, but considering I've been at sea for three months and some of the boxes hadn't been opened in close to three years, it was interesting. I found all sorts of things, a lot of which I was curious as to why I had kept. Some things were sentimental favours that just aren't part of my life anymore and there were quite a few clothes that I will never wear. There have been many changes happening since I went to sea, emotionally, relationally, work-wise, and I realized as I cleaned my closet that it's also important to clean other areas of one's life as well. If you don't get rid of the old stuff, there isn't going to be room for the new things. Patterns, reactions, and baggage from your past will come back to bite you if you keep carrying it with you and you don't pull it out, examine it and decide what to do with it. When things are painful or difficult, we bury them, put them in a box in the back of the closet, and hope time will heal them. Time helps with the initial pang, but you get to a point where you have to deal with whatever it is and move on. Don't let the past define the future!

A nice conversation

The fire alarm went off for the umpteenth time that afternoon, and I threw down my spanner impatiently to grab a vhf and check the compartment. Was Garry conducting heat gun experiments in cabin six again? No, this was from the engine room and as we trooped down, you could see the oxyacetylene hose leads going down the hatch. One of the carpenters came around the bend of the corridor.

"Oh yeah, he's been using a torch down there, you should really have put someone on fire watch." As I already had the radio, the others left me to it, and I climbed down the hatch to make myself acquainted with the yard worker. 

Shipyard is a busy and chaotic time. It's exciting because we get to knock out all the jobs we can't do at sea, but it is hectic and can be a bit scary as the ship gets pulled apart. 

Anyways, I got into the hazy engine room and there was the guy torching one of the drive shafts. I regret to say I still don't know the man's name, but we've referred to him before as "the guy with the cigarette" because he always has a smoke hanging out of one side of his mouth, sometimes lit and sometimes not. He noticed me and cut the torch with a bang as I removed the smoke detector on the ceiling. 

"Ah yes, annoying things, those. Always going off down here while you're trying to get something done." He shifted the coupling on the end of the prop shaft, "just the other one left to do." With that he turned to the starboard engine, drew a lighter,and  lit first his cigarette and then the torch. As he heated the starboard side, he told me a bit about what he was doing, and then a story. 

"I once sailed out of Newport Beach in California, they build a lot of boats out there. Yes, plastic fantastic! That's just what this thing was, fantastic and thinner than paper, just ready to break apart. And brand new, fancy. We sailed it all the way to Amsterdam via the Panama Canal. Great trip. It was owned by a rich guy though, and that whole thing gets old after awhile, all the cleaning and keeping the boat pretty. Made great money, better than I do here, but we got to Amsterdam and I said see you later. I'm happy with this job. See, what I have to do next while this is cooling, is assemble those pumps again." He pointed under both the generators. 

"Tight spot to work!" I remarked

"Yeah, it really is a pain down here, impossible to get to anything. But I like engines, and ships like this, so I don't mind." 

Props to the Travel Writers

I've been really bad at writing lately, and for the longest time I've wondered why it is so difficult for me sometimes. My life is full of ample material, more so than probably ever before; why can't I just put it down on paper? I envy those travel writers in magazines and online everywhere who take a weekend trip to the Mediterranean and manage to express a full length article from it. I spent a total of six weeks sailing in the Antarctic region and a month traveling Southern Africa, with hardly more than one little blip written down. However, after having a think about it, the conclusion I've come to is perhaps my life is a little too busy and therefore it takes me longer to process experiences into remotely readable words. And I never allow myself enough time to thoroughly write.  I've discovered it takes about a month after an experience or place before it starts turning into words. I suppose I prefer removing myself some distance so the thing becomes simple enough in my mind to relate. 

A Living Tradition

There were some things in life I left to sort out when I first went to sea, thinking the salt and the rolling swell would help me come to some conclusions on the direction my life should take. Ironically, here I am thousands of nautical miles later and in some ways no closer to knowing where I'm headed. But I have made some incredible discoveries in the meantime, many of which have confirmed to me that the sea is indeed a good way of life despite its hardships, and it has its place in the modern world as well.

Sailing around on a tall ship may sound extravagant at first; time and money thrown into an old steel hull, some rigging and a crew to sail her to exotic locations. We're not transporting cargo or doing extensive scientific research (we do record and transmit our weather observations though), so many would be inclined to think it's just a millionaire's hobby, a weird sort of cruise taking wealthy people on holiday to unusual places. 

But a tall ship is so much more than that; if the above description was what we were all about then I can assure you tall ships would no longer exist. 

Before the days of steam or Diesel engines, the oceans of the world were traversed by sail. Countries invested fortunes and men invested their lives to sailing. It was a way of life, a catalyst of world trade, an efficient mode of transportation. 

There were also hundreds of years of tradition along with that; how a ship should be kept, the hierarchy of the crew, and a proper way to do everything. With natural fibers and manpower, we sailed the seas until the advent of the marine engine. In a rush for speed and perhaps warfare, the big old ships were left to rot and rust, and an ageless way of life was nearly lost. 

Fortunately for us, there were a few who realized the importance of keeping it alive. There is much to be gained from sailing, from vigilance and hard work to a healthy respect and understanding for nature and the forces that occur at sea. Not only are there the physical aspects, but also the mental ones; patience, trust and everything else that comes with living with fifty other souls for months on end.  You learn to appreciate the little things in every day, and all the burdens of life in a twenty first-century first-world country suddenly lose their priority. 

And that is what we share with those who come sailing with us; a change of pace and a different way of life that challenges how society has trained us to think. The most profound experience that we encounter is not the destination but the journey. A tall ship is a living tradition, and not one that should be forgotten.