Today was Studding Sail day (pronounced ‘Stun-s’l’). The last bit of canvass we can set in PICTON CASTLE extends out beside the square sails on booms. These sails are reserved for moderate conditions and long passages where there won’t be too much bracing or other sail handling. We carry three of them on the weather […]
A beautiful Sunday at sea … that is until the Flying Jib developed a large tear. We quickly got the sail down before more damage could be done and got it unbent and back to deck. The poor old sail has given many miles to the ship and we have a new one on the
Our tradewind passage continues, we are expecting though that the winds might get a little light at our current latitude so in the morning watch we wore ship to head further south in hopes of steadier winds. With the good weather the flurry of day work continues as well: many new ratlines going up, coatings
Trade winds at last! The wind shifted North East last night and we have made our turn to the West. Can’t have much better sailing than this, with a fresh wind, small seas and every stitch of sail we have bent set the Ship is moving along marvellously. Trade wind passages are typically, in sailing
The crew kept busy through the night. With the wind gaining strength and then decreasing again throughout the night there were many sail changes. The energy was well spent and the ship earned another good day’s run at almost 140nm. More sail changes today, this time the Main Upper Topsail. It is a bit of
Our good sailing continues. We had a few squalls during the night and the crew reacted well getting sail off aft to get the ship downwind. After the squalls blew out it was back to the halyards and under full sail again. Turns out all of that practise on the calm nights has paid off.
The wind continues to slowly build and we are now consistently making between 5 and 6 kts on a beam reach or ‘half wind’. In the forenoon watch all hands were called to participate in a fire drill, getting all the fire extinguishers, hoses, axes and turn gear out for an exercise. Today we also
And the wind finally came, a Force 4 breeze filled in a little North of West last night and we shut down to sail. We will start to pull away from the Iberian coast but continue to sail in a southerly direction in search of the North East Trade winds. As we clear away from
The wind again left us last night prompting us to yet again fire up the trusty B&W. We will continue to steam through the day and the forecast is finally looking favourable for finding the NW trade winds sometime tonight or tomorrow. And find them we must as PICTON CASTLE will have to make well
We continued to sail slowly through the night along the Iberian coast. This provided a great opportunity to drill in sail handling at night and the watches ran through the preparations for squall response in getting all of the sail in aft and the getting in the ‘kites’. A square rigger’s safest point of sail
