A voyage around the world in the Barque Picton Castle is many things; a challenging adventure, a voyage of personal discovery, a chance to learn to be an accomplished deepwater seafarer, a rare, perhaps unique way to access some remote islands and cultures as real crew in a sailing ship from the ‘Age of Sail’, …
Ever deeper into the South Pacific – Daymen on a Tradewind Passage in the Picton Castle. Wednesday was the first full workday for our new daymen. Now that the crew really know their lines and are comfortable with sail handling steering, ship handling and can follow orders well, we have broken some of the gang …
The crew really look forward to receiving mail in port. It is very exciting. Having something from family and friends that we can touch and hold on to when we’re on the other side of the world brings a smile to our faces. There is a lot of time at sea to think, and we’re …
After only 12 hours motoring out of Galapagos the Picton Castle picked up fresh trade-winds. The usual destination for westward bound vessels from Galapagos is the Marquesas, just south of due west but not for us. We are steering SW for Pitcairn Island over 2,700 miles away deep in the South Pacific Ocean. Having these …
Our multi-national (9 nations represented aboard) crew takes shipmately fun in celebrating everyone’s national day. The theme for this American Independence Day, just called the 4th of July, was a “Backyard BBQ”, with the main hatch being the “backyard”. Threads to the theme were “do your own thing” and “chillin like a villain” with an …
July 1, Canada Day started by sailing off the hook from the harbour at Wreck Bay as we departed the Galapagos Islands, bound for Pitcairn Island, about 2800nm away. Shortly after Picton Castle got out to sea, the Canadians on board met to plan and organize an event to celebrate our national day. The crew …
Picton Castle sailed across the Equator on Wednesday, entering the southern hemisphere in the Pacific Ocean. As expected, King Neptune and his royal court boarded the ship to address the pollywog issue. With kind serene senisitivities and all-knowing wisdom all pollywogs were solomly raised from their base state to a higher plane. Picton Castle is …
Picton Castle sailed from Panama almost a week ago. Bound for Galapagos we are. In many ways, this is a regular passage for us with the routine of watchstanding, workshops, meals and day-to-day life aboard. We changed the watches on leaving Panama, mixing the groups up so that everyone has a chance to be on …
Well, there we were, through the canal, the Picton Castle moored in hot steamy Balboa on the Pacific side of the Isthmus of Panama getting ready to shove off into the broad South Pacific Ocean, working hard to get provisioned and stowed, sailing time bearing down on us – and we had to get this …
Chief Engineer Christian has become the Picton Castle turtle wrangler. On the list of requests from Pitcairn Island, one of the things that was asked for was pet turtles, the little kind you have in aquariums. Just had to have pet turtles. In order to have a reasonable number of turtles make it to Pitcairn …
