As captain of the Picton Castle for most of the last 27 years I have developed certain habits. Comes with age and experience, making mistakes upon occasion, as well as listening I suppose. This may be of passing interest to some. If not then I offer my apologies.
I usually get up at night, or early AM between 0130 and 0230 for a look around on deck and a check of the weather. The watch officers are always to call me with any changes in conditions and they do, but I often get up anyway to take a look around. If the ship’s motion changes I will usually be on deck swiftly.
Dustin has the 12-4 watch and does an great job of looking after things as Second Mate. An excellent seaman, mariner and ship’s officer. He has been with this ship on and off since 2016 and has three solid years of actual time at sea in Picton Castle. In addition he has two seasons in the magnificent Schooner Bluenose II, as well as valuable work in fishing vessels and large commercial ships, and maritime schooling at the Nautical Institute at Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia. An outstanding mariner and great shipmate, calm, steady and dedicated.
His lead seaman is Liam, a Bosun School graduate and New England schooner sailor who plans on a maritime academy after this voyage. The other lead seaman on this watch is Ryan, a commercial steamship sailor with an unlimited UK chief mate’s ticket (he has been sailing in LNG ships, ice breakers and such – not sail to be sure, but valuable professional experience that very much adds to our mix here and the cross-learning is most welcome) who came to dive into the mysteries of square-rig.
After a short chat with Dustin and a look around I will check my emails on the Iridium tablet (this thing I’m typing on now). Need to do so at this time due to the ten hour time difference between the ship and Maggie at the office in Lunenburg. We confer on various subjects typically to do with planning and future logistics. After reading and responding and sometimes some replies from wintery Lunenburg, I will head back to my bunk for a spell. In nice nights when we have in such fine conditions like these, my 11-year old son Dawson likes to sleep on the quarterdeck aft of the skylight. He likes to be near the watch. He has a mattress pad we got in Vanuatu, blanket and pillow. He sleeps like a stone, that boy.
And then about 0500 I come back up on deck on Spring’s watch which is the 4 to 8 to see the day come in and, as always, check the weather. Spring is Third Mate, she is a graduate of Maine Maritime Academy and holds a 3,000 ton mate’s ticket. We have had a good number of crew from MMA and sent a few PC sailors there to that excellent school. She has sailed brigantines, big schooners and even a year in the Norwegian full-rigger Sorlandet. She is a cracker-jack sailor and only getting better. I sleep well when she has the watch.
As I was saying, I must check the weather forecasts. We get computer modelled satellite weather forecasts in a couple times a day which are quite helpful. The short term forecasts out two or three days are quite acurate, after that accuracy erodes but these longer term forecasts are still very helpful in planing for possible routing considerations. Any long term forecasts of 6, 7 or 8 days or more are highly variable and thus suspect, but better than nothing to be sure. These forecasts can change a good deal as the days advance. Yet although far from crystal ball precise, these forecasts have much improved in recent years. But one does need to have to have a healthy skepticism of the long term forecasts even as we are keenly interested in them.
Spring’s Lead Seaman is Sara, with ten or more years behind her in some pretty fine ships including an earlier stint in Picton Castle. A great watch leader and teacher and a hard worker with attention to detail. And utterly dedicated to learning and practising the craft of square-rig. It is good to be on her watch.
About 0600 and daybreak, Bosun Line comes up and we sit on the small teak bench just forward of the charthouse and we have coffee together. We talk in generalities about ship’s work. Line is doing an outstanding job as Bosun. She was trained up in the great full-rigger Danmark followed by four years in the Norwegian full-rigger Christian Radich as well as time in the big bark Statsraad Lehmkuhl and various lovely Danish Baltic ketches. She holds a small skipper’s license and a 500 ton mate’s certificate as well. She makes her specific plans with Dirk the Chief Mate who is overall directly in charge of the work. Sometimes I get to practise my rusty Danish with her, Danish learned long long ago, in a galaxy far away.
Third Mate Spring sends her watch to get coffee before 0600 and if it’s light at that time they turn to with washing down the ship and starting the ship’s day at sea. Or they wait for the sun. The convention is to start at 0600 or when the sun comes up, whichever comes second. No slopping around washing the decks in the dark.
Chief Cook Donald (20 years in cruise ships and 16 years in Picton Castle, and every inch a seaman with STCW training as well) has been in his galley since 0530 and I will wander down for a brief chat and “good morning.” Also at 0600 Julien, our superb engineer, starts the generator to charge the batteries and make fresh water with the watermaker to keep the big fresh water tanks topped up. Great to have a watermaker! Really good to have big tanks, and kept full, should the watermaker break down. Usually he shuts down the Lister generator about 1100 – that’s all the engine noise for the day. And it wasn’t much noise anyway. Julien has brought the engine room back up to its best, and then beyond. Everything in the engine room just hums along these days.
The 4-8 watch gives the ship a deck scrub, soogees various finger and grease marks off paintwork here and there and gets a start on what ship’s work the Bosun has planned for the day. Donald has taken to sending me a plate of breakfast up to the bridge on this voyage. I do not know what has gotten into him. Maybe he wants me fatter. It is interesting to observe the various reactions of crew bringing me this breakfast and actually told by Donald to serve me. It seems some find it odd, or worse. Some think it’s a nice thing to do it seems. Hey, it’s Donald’s idea! Around this time I get to sit and enjoy the morning at sea (if it is enjoyable!) with my wife and ship’s purser Tammy and I get morning hugs from Dawson. And hear about what monsters and strange worlds he has conjured up in his book of drawings.
Breakfast is in two shifts. One at 0730 for the ongoing watch and daymen. The second is at 0800 for everyone else. Eggs, porridge, buns and bacon is common. Donald’s fresh cinnamon buns are popular!
A little before 0800 the 4-8 watch is relieved by the 8 to 12 and Chief Mate Dirk takes the deck. Dirk is Chief Mate in PC of long standing, heaps of ships bragged about elsewhere and a stint as skipper of Picton Castle on a challenging voyage up into the Great Lakes and back a few years ago. He will have a short conference with Bosun and his lead seaman Clara, and off they go starting the day’s work. Clara and Dirk are both German but they converse in English. Also part of the morning routine on the 8-12 is what we call “domestics.” This means cleaning all the heads and showers, as well as tidying up living compartments. This should not take long.
The day’s work today includes Carpentero Dan replacing the the newly varnished mahogany on the port mizzen pinrail that recently had all its steel portions overhauled. Others are reassembling the anchor windlass, also nicely overhauled. Stowing the newly revarnished studding sail booms. Various ratlines renewed, greasings and coatings here and there. Those working on sailmaking turn to at 0800 instead of the traditional dayman’s day which started at 0600 back in the dark ages when I was coming up.
On the 8-12 we will see sextants come out of their varnished boxes and assault on the sun. I will usually get some sleep in the 8-12 but get back in time to have a planning discussion with Dirk. Dawson is in “home-schooling” with his mum and also Diane is reading with him. Then seagoing veteran Tammy on her fourth world voyage (Dawson, his third) tackles ship’s accounts in the messroom. All those different exchange rates and odd reciepts from vendors in the markets in different island ports can get confusing – they are to me, but it must be done. A big challenging job to keep it all straight. Liam does what passes for calisthenics with Dawson on the hatch at some point but it mostly looks like goofing around to me.
Lunch is in two shifts. 1130 and 1200. In good weather all gets trundled back to the shade of the counter on the fantail, which we call the aloha deck, a term coined by Cousin Tim when we were fetching the ship from Norway in 1993. Time flies.
The ever able Dustin takes the watch again at noon with the 12-4. This gang carries on with the Bosun’s work list. If we are having an afternoon workshop then the decks are cleaned by 1600. If no planned workshop on some seafaring subject at 1615, the 4-8 will carry on with ship’s work a bit longer. I will often conduct the workshop on seamanship subjects both practical and theoretical, or maybe others will. Dustin just conducted a fine workshop on outboard motors, their care and feeding, operations and trouble shooting. Spring has done a few on stars. Dirk has been leading the celestial navigation mob. Some workshops, like seizings, are difficult to do for a large group so I will do that with Bosun, Mates and lead seamen and they can take the crew, break them up into small groups for instruction. In this way the instruction is both more intimate and more effective. A list of workshops to come along later.
Usually just before supper the watch officers and I gather at or around the chartroom for an evening Bridge Resource Management (BRM) meeting to consider the coming night watches and what might be particular or pertinent to this one ahead. BRM is an outstanding ship’s management tool to make sure all are in the picture AND they can and should offer any perspectives for consideration. This does not release the Captain of the duty to make decsions but makes for a broader and more complete grasp of things – and you never know where a good idea is going to come from. Or a critical one. BRM is a powerful tool. No captain knows it all. All captains should employ BRM.
Supper is all hands at 1800.
After supper, after looking at the new weather forecast with the BRM crowd, I will write up the night orders in the canvas bound logbook. These instructions are in addition to the specific standing orders already printed in the logbook. Unless I am called, get up on my own, or the weather gets rough that will be it for me in these light tradewind conditions. Then I am usually in my bunk by 2000, ready to repeat the pattern in the coming 24 hours.
From time to time, if weather and sea state cooperates, I might host a “Captain’s Dinner” in the small messroom left over from the ship’s Norwegian coaster days. This would be a mix of the leadership crew and trainees. We dress nicely for this. There is a small CD player to churn out music picked up along the way and of course “oldies” as befits a son of the 1960s such as myself. Maybe a bottle of chilled wine is served with dinner in this otherwise dry ship. A cup of chilled wine is a pleasent thing with a nice dinner at a beautiful mahogony table in an oak paneled ship’s messroom, surronded by old ship pictures and a shelf of interesting books on the sea, ships and islands This a pleasant chance for me to get to know all hands somewhat outside the work and watch environment. Donald likes these dinners too as it gives him a chance to display his outstanding cruise ship experience in food presentation, and of course, he is often in the mix as well. Maybe once a week in good passage conditions.
And that is a typical day for me in Picton Castle at sea in fair conditions in these tropics. Not bad, really.
Daniel Moreland, Captain of Picton Castle for now.
