32-22N / 055-20W
The day comes in warm with a light southeasterly breeze, small seas and mostly cloudy. The ship under all plain sail that is bent on, making 4 knots in close to the right direction – not bad. Hardly cold anymore, it still serves to wear a jacket on night watch. Some of the more hardy have taken to bare feet already. Others wear sea boots. Others wear Crocs.
The 4-8 watch turns to ship’s work at 0600. They muster by the lead seamen Line (from Denmark) and Clara (from Germany) and get the day started. Hopefully the lead seamen send them for a morning coffee or tea. Then, once so fortified, they sweat up any halyards and braces that call for it. Some may have slackened overnight. A good check around aloft and on deck to see that all is good. Then it’s on with deck washdown. The hose gets stretched out, deck brushes get leaned on and deck wash begins. How many thousands of deep sea sailing ships have begun their day in this manner? Who knows? Most all I figure.
With wash down done, they freshwater off the windlass and capstan on the foc’sle head. Wooden decks like lots of salt water, steel mchinery does not. Now for some “soogee”. This is the cleaning off of smudgy hand prints that appear overnight mysteriously. The term “soogee” seems to come from the days when British ships traded to India all the time. Instead of a sponge and cleanser to remove such marks, an old piece of worn out sail cloth with brick dust as a scouring agent was the stuff bck in the day. No toxins anyway. Just dust of hard baked clay. Where would you find brick dust today?
Mr. Church is well at it in his galley before dawn. A big pot of coffee is heating up and a few pots and frying pans on the stove are making this morning’s breakfast come into being. When it is cool the galley is very popular. When its hot, not as much. But Mr. Church is there every day, cool, cold or hot out.
The generator also fires up at 0600. Besides running the washdown pump, it charges the ship’s 110 DC battery bank. This system allows us to run the generator for less than 6 hours a day but have electricity 24 hours a day. Not so bad we think.
The watch will coil down all the lines again working kinks out of the new gear, of which there is plenty. A big pile of sails lays on the cargo hatch awaiting bending through the day. A sailing ship needs sails. The 4-8 watch will get these jobs started and hand them along to the 8-12.
So begins our day at sea…
