With about 300 people living here, Baltimore is not a huge place. But it is stunningly beautiful, fun and friendly. First of all there are pictures of the Schooner Pride of Baltimore everywhere. Not just in the pubs but on peoples houses and worked in iron on their garden fences. But I get ahead of …
The late afternoon of Tuesday June 17, 2008 found our Picton Castle with strong and building winds and seas astern and making good way in squalls and rain into the small bay of Baltimore, Ireland. Weather reports of building gales and rising seas in the waters along the south coast of Ireland had us headed …
Monday morning: We are underway again after being hove-to in fresh northerlies yesterday. The sun came out Sunday evening for “marlinspike” and Shackle got dressed up in traditional marlinspike attire: a floral shirt and sarong. We’re pretty sure he’s the only guy at sea on a barque at 50 North wearing a sarong, lavalava or …
0800: Picton Castle is at 49-40N / 016-08W and the ship is hove-to in strong easterly winds, about 30 knots, well short of a gale but plenty of wind none the less. If we were bound towards any western quadrant we would be sailing nice and smartly. As it happens the wind is coming directly …
43-50N / 025-48W Wind SEly at force 5-6, steering NEly at 5+knots under upper topsails, courses, fore & main topmast-staysl’s Our skies are grey, overcast and low clouds scooting across. But the barometer is pretty high and steady, we are sailing along just fine. The Picton Castle is about 800 miles from Ireland, the Azorean …
30 miles NW of Flores Island, Azores, Portugal Early this morning the helmsman of the Picton Castle was given the order to fall off four points (come to port 45 degrees in this instance) and steer for Ireland. Over 1500 miles from Lunenburg (and more if you add the meandering miles), it had come time …
40-01N / 034-37W 0448, dawn: Overnight the mates have been doing their jobs, calling me from time to time as wind and sea conditions pick up. Winds are now blowing from the south at about 25-30 knots, gusty. Seas are moderate but have been building, blue with plenty of churning white-caps. We are steering east …
Pretty much an ideal perfect day here in the Picton Castle. We are about 1100 miles from Lunenburg getting close to the Azores. Skies are blue, seas small and sun spangled. The barometer is high. The watch is reeveing off new t’gallant and upper-topsail braces from fresh manila rope and bending on the main royal …
The Picton Castle is having a typical North Atlantic passage. Maybe better than ‘typical’, so far. Right now we are at 42-18N / 045-00W sailing due east. That’s about 900 miles from Lunenburg and 1550 miles from Ireland. The trick is to not get too deep into the fairly stationary high pressure system that tends …
Wind went light early this morning. There was talk of setting the deis’l and motoring a while, but thankfully the wind perked back up a few hours into a nice 15-knot westerly. A weak low-pressure system has finally passed over us, and now we are catching the top edge of the incoming high. We’ve been …
