Back When I Was a Sailor on a Sailing Ship....

My great great grandparents left Denmark aboard The Forrest Monarch Ship. I've been to the harbor where they, and it, sailed first to England and then to America. I've also done a lot of reading about ships: Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander", the Horatio Hornblower series, and most recently, a biography about Captain Cook. I've longed to learn what it was like to be on an engine-less, large sailed ship. I realized that dream the past week when I was one of 13 student sailors aboard the Schooner Mary Day out of Camden Harbor in Maine. (Remember the CBS t.v. show on Sunday nights, "Murder She Wrote"? Camden reminds me of "Cabot Cove", it's a great little Main Street town with clean shops, bakeries, chowder restaurants. It's a wonderful place. This was my 4th time to coastal Maine, a favorite place of mine, but my first to Camden. What a great place!) This one week, once a year sailing school usually has 24 students. We had 13. Good, in that we each had more time at the helm/wheel; bad, in that we did twice the work of a regular crew. 3 or 4 of us were on a "crew" or team that rotated daily doing 4 "watches". For the first 4 or 5 days we learned by doing. The last days we had control of the ship, with Captain and the rest of the teaching crew available to help us if needed. (The crew is comprised of kids that have graduated from college. Wonderful people. Smart, strong, girls and guys both. As far as we went, the youngest was 46, the oldest 83. He began sailing at age 70. "Ed" was my mom's age, 78. This was his 7th time on the Mary Day as a sailing student. He became coming 7 years ago when after his wife died unexpectedly, he didn't know what to do with his time. This man knew the ropes! I sailed shoulder to shoulder with a corporate lawyer, an engineer, college guidance counselor, a female pharmacist - the only smoker among us and she was very considerate, and a guy older than me with mulitple PhD's from Columbia University name Tom who, this being his 26th trip on the Mary Day, taught me a lot, he knew I was from the West so when I had trouble with ropes he would say, "Think of this as roping a calf, now how would you secure the rope to the saddle horn?" He was much help.) There is so much to do, to learn, so much new vocabulary, so many pins and pinrails, each responsible for a different sail and part of a sail, that I usually had to ask for explanation. I got sick the 2nd day out, (we saw whales in the distance, so all the sails went up and we took off at a very fast clip. I was on bow duty, front of the ship, where the heaves and swells are felt the most) but I recovered quickly, stuck with my duty, and enjoyed fluke slapping and whale spouting. We also so a blue tuna in pursuit of a smaller fish. Amazing stuff.

HELM WATCH is responsible for actually steering the ship. The Captain is at the helm. He taught us how to look at the water to determine, by eye, high vs. low depths. We also had access to an electronic depth monitor, but it was also viable to look at water, notice differences in wave trough and peaks, and then ascertain where and when we might be just above rock ridges or sand bars. Cap taught us how to sail by the amount of wind in sail, especially the large main sail. He taught us to use the compass, then not to depend on the compass, but look to the horizon.

MARLINSPIKE WATCH is all about learning the ropes, tack and pulley systems, securing ropes when in use as well as when not in use, knots, pins and pinrails, etc. It's a very compicated process. I've read about "Able Sailors", but had no idea what an Able Sailor really is. I'm not one. Look at the photo of the coiled ropes. I've just coiled the large section, but have then started to "Ballentine" it (Celtic/pretzel like) into an even more secure coil. It holds it's place better on a slanted deck, as what happens when the ship is leaning 45 degrees due to the wind and full sails. Ships have to have perfect order. A dangling rope could easily trip a sailor, or get caught/knotted when a free line is needed to hoist or take down a sail in a hurry. Lives depend on the ship being in orderly fashion. It's a big deal. Therefore, ropes have to be secured either in these kinds of coils, or on pins on the pinrail, "to the bitter end", meaning, literally, to the end of the rope where special knots are tied. Pulleys. I've seen them, I knew they gave mechanical advantage. But until I hoisted sails, I never fully appreciated this amazing system. There's a price to be paid for this "mechanical advantage", the amount of rope is increased dramatically with every additional pulley, so that means a lot of more to tend to. But it's so worth it. I'm amazed by the tack and pulley system.

NAVIGATION WATCH includes using compas readings, landmarks (when land can be seen), nautical speed awareness at all times, low and high tides, weather forecasts/watch, and competent use of ocean charts. I love maps. I learned that map show you where to go on land. Charts show you where NOT go go on water. Use of a hand caliper helps in using "The Six Minute Rule", meaning, the captain needs to know not only where we are at present, but where we will be in 6, 12, 18, 24, etc., minutes. Tacking (turning the sails) at the right time and not the wrong time, is crucial. I knew that both LaSalle and Champlaine had sailed these waters centuries ago. I asked Cap, "How did they do this without charts?" He said, "They brought their own cartographers and charted these waters as they went." Wow. New England's north Atlantic waters are ridden with massive rocks seen only during low tide. I am in awe of sailing these waters, more so when thinking about doing so without charts.

BOW WATCH is the ears and eyes of the ship. Positioned at the front tip, we were responsible to warn (by yelling and hand signals) the Captain back at the helm/wheel, of any and all obstacles and danger. We learned Sail Theory (difficult stuff, like how the wind effects both sides and the top of the sails), Rules of the Road (who has right of way when coming to another vessel), and how to set and then retrieve anchor, an art in and of itself. The chains and anchors are very heavy and have to be taken in in a layered manner, like stacking a cord of wood so that it drys properly, otherwise, if knotted, would prevent quick anchoring which is sometimes needed in emergencies.

The Mary Day is all wood. No metal hull. The masts and sail booms are huge wooden trees. The sails are strong, tough canvas. One can understand the torque tension placed upon the hull when the sails are full, especially in a strong wind. We were able to sail over 250 miles given the week's high winds. The food aboard was amazing. A young gal from Canada is the cook, her sleeping berth right next to the wooden stove/oven that she lights ever morning at 4:30 sharp. Homemade breads and desserts are baked therein, delicious main dishes cooked above. A large ice chest near the anchor chains on deck is filled with ice the day of departure. An ice pick allows us to cool our water, which is kept is a barrel and retrieved with a dipper and funnel. Everything is very efficient. "Heads" or toilets, are used by stepping down two steps, or when privacy allowed, off the deck. "Showers" are early morning swims in the Maine Atlantic waters, or, if lucky, getting water from the wooden stove water heater tank before it's used by others, for a quick shower on deck while in shorts, or better yet, a sponge bath. There's not a lot of time for grooming.

We thrilled to here the ships bell ring 3 times a daily announcing meals: "For lunch today, cook has baked honey-glazed bbq chicken breasts on a bed of fresh coastal vegetables baked in cheddar sauce with smoked almonds. She's baked 2 fresh loaves of 8 grain sunflower seed sour dough bread and has fresh Maine blueberry jam with cinnamoned butter. We have iced peach tea and cranberry limed juice on ice. For dessert, we've baked double chocolate brownies with cream cheese frosting and we have spiced raisen cookies with white chocolate chips. Remember we have cherry-orange scones and melon balls left over from breakfast that we need to eat too." I was glad to get a reprieve from one of my duties one night to take my turn cranking one of 2 ice cream freezers. Dessert that night: homemade ice cream, CoffeeToffee and Vanilla, complete with an array of toppings. I would go back and do this again if for no other reason than the fabulous food.

Nightly we anchored in a safe harbor near one of the hundreds of tiny islands off the Maine and Canadian coasts. Cap is a kind man. He knows of an older man, 94, widowed for 20 years, that lives alone on Swan Island. When the Mary Day is in the area he goes ashore in the morning (as we did nearly every morning to stretch our legs. I learned so much about lobster fishermen this way. I so respect them and their ruggest, hard lives.) "Earl of Swan Island" is a wonderful character that was proud of his island garden, (he gave us fresh veggies for our supper that night), but prouder still of his new scope for his .22 which is used "to keep the critters from crawlin' under my garden fence." Yet he had hidden in his very neat wood shed, rabbit food, which I suspect was for his 4 pet rabbits that he allows to run freely, as if they owned the place. Notice in the photo of his home he has a "sunroom" (not much sun up there) where he can keep an eye on the goings and comings of the harbor. The Mary Day, without her sails up, can be seen in the distance.

For the past 15 years I've done a lot of traveling. My good wife doesn't have the penchant for travel that I do, nor would she have been overly excited about my "travel on a shoestring" methods (i.e., sleeping in the trunk of rental cars, various Youth Hostels in cities and Alaska, antics of bus travel, staying an extra night in an airport so as to redeem a voucher for a free flight later when my flight was over booked, etc.), but she's never complained. Rather, she's been very supportive. I so appreciate this. On these last 2 trips, first to Rhode Island where I did research at Brown University, and then this Maine sailing trip, I missed her greatly. Nightly I would crawl into my cramped sleeping berth, sheets moist/humid and cold, and think of our clean home and warm, flanneled sheets, me not with her. This was all compounded when somewhere between my tour of the JFK Presidential Library and the John Adams National Historical Sites tours I became sick. Stuck in Boston, I knew if I were home I would be given her tender care. So I resolved this was my last trip without her. We'll travel some, sure, there's places I've been that I want her to see. But we've pretty much determined that our travel time and resources will now be towards going to see our kids and grandkid(s).

I spoke earlier about safe harbors. I know now, literally, what that means. Without question, Genia and our family, is my safe harbor. She and they are my anchor She and they are my safe passage.

Be well. Do good...