We passed by tiny Ascension Island last night, leaving it fifteen miles to port at midnight. It was quite a rare sight to see lights on the horizon – there’s been hardly any shipping since we left St Helena a week ago and we’re not used to neighbours. It was helpful for the celestial navigators […]
Part three of the rigging workshop this afternoon and celestial navigation classes and practice continue. The weather is consistently hot now – it’s getting to the point of needing shoes to take noon sights or dancing about to stop your feet burning on the hot decks. SHIPS WORK: Work continues on the new royal yard:
Part two of the rigging workshop this afternoon with advanced serving techniques. Celestial navigation continues – Emil, Nikolaj,and Alex joined Bruce, Sam and Bob shooting local apparent noon today, and some of us are taking sun lines and sights from stars and planets too. The sun is almost directly overhead now as we run down
Ann’s Place The Picton Castle crew always find a meeting place in every port we sail into. Ann’s Place is a sweet café set deep into a lovely park near the waterfront under tall shade trees with cats sleeping lazily in the sun and birds chattering away high above. It was closed on Sunday but
Rigging workshop this afternoon on worming, parcelling and serving over an eye splice to protect wire or rope underneath from chafe, weather and sea water. Celestial navigation continues. SHIPS WORK: Fresh stone paint on the forepeak scuttle today makes the workshop up forward look much tidier. Sailmaking continues in between pesky rain showers, which send
St Helena Island: 15-56 South and 005-43 West, 1700 miles from Cape Town, Africa and 1800 miles from Brazil. And 3,600 miles from Grenada in the West Indies. Right in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean with nothing nearby. We had an excellent passage from Namibia and made landfall and came to anchor off
Sailing along in fine tradewinds. Blue seas following us along. Had some odd clouds lately. Getting into the swing of a long sea passage. Celestial navigation classes coming along. SHIPS WORK: A sailmaking bonanza today – six people working on five different sails at the same time this afternoon! Tarring aloft in the rig, and
Happy St. Valentine’s Day! We’re expecting to make St Helena tomorrow morning, so we had an impromptu Valentine’s marlinspike party this evening since we’ll be in port tomorrow night. We retarded the clocks last night to Greenwich Mean Time. A clear night and almost no swell made for a great evening for star sights tonight
At 12:43 and latitude 18°47’S Picton Castle crossed the Prime Meridian and passed into the Western Hemisphere. It’s been over a year since we last recorded our longitude in degrees West of Greenwich, then we were in the South Seas, somewhere to the east of Fiji. SHIPS WORK: Sailmaking, carpentry and holystoning continue. Work on
We understand aboard the Picton Castle here in Namibia, southern Africa, that there have been some serious proper winter going on in North America. Seems that there has been a big old winter storm in New England and Ontario that went on to Nova Scotia – even made the news here on the radio in
