By Kate “Bob” Addison While watches are kept night and day while we’re at sea, on a long passage like this one, we also engage in a time honoured deep-water sailing ship tradition of turning some of the crew to on deck as daymen. In fine weather on long passages, large sailing ships would take […]
We just passed the mouth of the Amazon and Para Rivers, which pump huge quantities of fresh water into the Atlantic here. A strong adverse current is slowing us down at the moment but in just a few miles it should come fair and give us a boost of nearly two knots most of the
Sunday at sea and thoughts are turning to the Caribbean in our near future – maybe in just a week! The Captain gave us an introductory West Indies talk this afternoon to whet our appetites for small boat sailing and wonderful islands, with more in-depth orientation to follow over the next few days. SHIPS WORK:
Steamed overnight from 1600 to 0800 as winds were light and variable and we want to push on to Grenada. If we’re taking in or setting all sail we tend to do it at the change of the watch so we’ve got twice as many bodies to help without having to call all hands. With
An exciting day today! Firstly the new topmast studdingsail was finished so we bent it and set it for the first time – it looks great, especially for a sail completely made underway, from design and first layout all the way to hand finish work. Sadly the wind was gusting too strong to hold it,
Squally squally equatorial afternoon March 13, 2015 The Picton Castle is about 200 miles off the NE corner of Brazil just about on the equator. All square sail is set barring the fore royal which is waiting for the just now finished shiny new royal yard to be sent up and crossed. The yards are
Another fine day of trade wind sailing and we’re getting back into our fair weather routines. Captain ran another splicing workshop this afternoon: mostly a refresher for most people, but with the aim of bringing everyone up to the same level. He ran through eye splice (with different tapers), with-the-lay sailmakers’ eye splice, short splice,
By Kate “Bob” Addison For Picton Castle and some of her crew, it’s already been a voyage of two and a half years. We set sail from Lunenburg late in 2012 in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, bound around the world and with a couple of bonus loops of the South Pacific and months of
We seem to be finally out of the wet and squally weather and back into trade winds and there was even enough sun to get a noon sight today for the first time in a week. Hurrah! The ship is bowling along nicely with almost everything set. Captain held a long splice workshop this afternoon.
The winds continue light, so mid-morning the Captain told the engineers fired up the Burmeister & Wain Alpha seven-cylinder main engine and now we’re steaming through the doldrums, getting far enough north of the line to pick up the trade winds again. Age of Sail mariners would have been plenty jealous of our reliable Danish
