It's been a good week. I had tuesday off, and went out with the office goddess, Kathy, to a bar down the street. It's the only bar in town with a tiki bar outside on the lake - kinda reminded me of being at carlos 'n charlies on lake travis. not quite as cool, but good for around here. and get this - almost EVERY bar around here not only knows what Dark 'n Stormies are, but usually make them with Mount Gay rum, and if they don't make them with Mount Gay then it's GOSLINGS. it's freakin great. i've basically gotten drunk on mt. gay & ginger ale 3 nights this week. geez now that i think of it that's a lot of drinking...
well anyway hanging out with kathy is a blast. she knows everyone in town and she's just plain fun to talk to. her friend denise joined us and denise is hilarious too. it's a small town and they both have all these great stories about everyone. i've had it in my mind to learn a little more about yacht racing, and the yacht club is a short walk from our boat, so kathy went ahead and spoke with some people about getting me on a boat for wednesday night races. i had to work this last wed, but she still took me over to the yacht club after the race to meet folks and arrange a spot on a boat for the rest of the wednesdays this summer. i've asked for wednesdays and thursdays off all summer. i figure after wed night boat races i might hang out with the crews, so it'd be good to take thursdays off too.
so i was sitting there at the yacht club when i saw two kids about my age walk by towards the bar next door. i was pretty sure i recognized them from myspace, of all places. i'd been trying to network with local maritime folks and i felt certain that these were two of those people i'd found online. kathy and i were going over to the bar anyway, so i broke off and walked up to these two and straight out asked them if they were in fact "sonja and justin." they were slightly shocked and confused, which was funny... and i told them who i was and it was so great - justin stood up and gave me a huge bear hug and told me they'd been talking about me for days.. which made me laugh. they asked me to join them and we drank for hours. it was weird and fun.
i invited them out sailing, and sonja did come out the next day. she hauled her ass off, and thank god because the wind was blowing over thirty knots so tacking was a workout. she jumped right in there. she even helped put the boat away after the sail so the cook asked her to stay for dinner too. sonja's a great chick. she's going to school to be a ships engineer. last night the maritime academy boat pulled in so i joined her and some people from the academy at a bar downtown. it was like hanging out with mikey's navy friends back in hawaii again. these guys can drink. and dance - they dance all crazy and goofy and don't give a shit. the band at this bar was pretty sweet - they played a lot of sublime and 311 covers. i even DANCED. these guys wouldn't have had it any other way, though. OH and i met a guy among that group named seth who crewed with kelly landen back in 2000 aboard tole mour. in fact i'd probably met him back then because he also crewed with brian clampitt on tole, and kelly and damien took us out to that boat back when we all lived on oahu. he even knows adrian lipp, and used to work for the boat company! so we chatted it up about traditional boats. i biked back to the boat, drunk, at 2am. yeah it was bad to stay up that late with 3 sails happening the next day, but it was worth it.
we did our first all tourist sailing day today, and it went pretty well. i finished bending on the main topsail this morning, and it set OK except for some tack foulage. cap went up and fixed it up though. it's hard to believe, but this boat flies a main, fore, 3 headsails and one maintop with an average of 1 captain and 3 crew. we also run a "bar" where beer, wine and soda is sold. it's actually kind of cool because people are having a good time and just hanging out. all our pax were pretty decent today. helped haul too.
the best part of today was the $40 in tips per person (5 of us), which pretty much doubles my income for the day. suddenly it all seems a lot more tolerable.
The Lakeshore
Last weekend some local friends picked me up and took me out to Sleeping Bear Dunes Park, which is a big park along Lake Michigan with lots of little roads leading to different parts of the park. We went to an old asparagus farm with a few nice vacated, boarded up buildings and rolling fields, surrounded by groves of deciduous trees and bluffs that overlook Lake Michigan. There's also lots of wild leeks growing along the trails, and morel mushrooms - though I didn't see any of those. We then hit the beach in Empire, where the Asparagus Festival was held this weekend. Below are some photos from that day.
2 sheets almost to the wind
We SAILED this week. It was fun and of course I rediscovered my love for the whole shebang. Our 3.5 hr, twice daily "schoolships" are pretty labor intensive. There's only us 3 crew besides captain and cook, and the cook is very experienced on this boat and will come up to help with the heaviest hauling. If anyone reading this has worked on Denis Sullivan, you may know her (Wendy). She's so, so awesome. I may have mentioned that already... anyway, right after leaving the dock we set up the trawl net to round up the slimy science material, as this program is mostly science-based and not sailing/history focused. The work really starts when we haul up that net full of slime and zebra muscles (bare hands, mind you), which seems to have a pretty heavy drag on it all the while, after that we set the anchor and do maintenance for awhile (I've been re-seizing the headrig net) and then free-hauling up the anchor, which I'm definitely looking forward to NOT having to do all summer. I mean sheesh there was skim ice on the lake and hauling on a wet anchor rode is such a freakin joy with frozen water. Then we set the sails - we do get the kids to help hauling on everything except the headrig. We had hs seniors one day and we were in HEAVEN! Most of the 11 year olds are pretty soft. I give them all the typical Lady-style motivation: "I'VE SEEN FIRST GRADERS HAUL BETTER THAN THIS!" "TAKE ALL YOU CAN! GIVE NOTHING BACK!" and I think that amuses the adults.
We're not setting the topsail or flying jib yet, but this boat IS 114' overall, with a 21' beam, almost 100 ton and with only three of us doing the heaviest work, I'm muscling up pretty fast. I'm letting my hands callus up because doing the work with soft, lotioned hands is just too painful. Although yesterday they cracked and bled so that was bad. I was getting thinner until Wendy came. Now I'm just getting more and more muscular but with a nice layer of blubber to keep me warm. My face burnt pretty bad yesterday, what with the sun and wind for hours on end. It's sunny and windy, but my face is all that gets exposed because I still wear 4 or 5 layers on top, 2 pairs of pants and a balaclava most of the day.
Hmm what else... cowboying the main and fore is sketchy because he keeps them really high even when in the lifts. The headsails are a dream to furl. SO FAST. But the rigging of the sheets is totally fucked. Plus the jib is cut wrong so it has that vibrating luff going on. I got pretty pissed yesterday, having to handle both jib and staysl sheets while setting the sails in a heavy wind, especially since where they're made off outboard crosses and, and then making them off to the inboard pins they cross again. I don't know. You'd have to see this ridiculousness to believe it. I'm making too big a deal about it, but I'm not going to lose my g'damn hands just to save the sheets from flying away. At my suggestion we re-rigged them yesterday so they don't cross as much. It worked a little better. I would say that Lady's headsail sheet arrangement is very sensible. Bill's flying jib sheet pennants leave a little to be desired, but this boat's headsail sheets are plain silly. The cap would probably be annoyed with me if he read this. He keeps his boat in good shape and has earned the pride he feels when it comes to this boat's operation. There's just not enough time or money to be thrown at a few little things that would make a better sheet setup, jib cut, perfect varnish job in the salon, etc. He keeps quantity and quality in an efficient, if not always satisfying, balance.
One more thing - Joe Bartlett bought a web address for my zine!!! How freakin cool is that? It's now officially jacktar.org
Oh and last night I went to a yacht club party that they have up here at the beginning of every season. I met a guy who captains charters down in Tortola for a new charter company that's actually based up here, and some real partying 40-something women who promised an action filled summer of local fisherman bringing us tons of salmon, nightly campfires next to our dock, and they themselves hang out at the beach by our dock in bikinis and boas and come down to toss or catch our lines. What a show that will be.
We're not setting the topsail or flying jib yet, but this boat IS 114' overall, with a 21' beam, almost 100 ton and with only three of us doing the heaviest work, I'm muscling up pretty fast. I'm letting my hands callus up because doing the work with soft, lotioned hands is just too painful. Although yesterday they cracked and bled so that was bad. I was getting thinner until Wendy came. Now I'm just getting more and more muscular but with a nice layer of blubber to keep me warm. My face burnt pretty bad yesterday, what with the sun and wind for hours on end. It's sunny and windy, but my face is all that gets exposed because I still wear 4 or 5 layers on top, 2 pairs of pants and a balaclava most of the day.
Hmm what else... cowboying the main and fore is sketchy because he keeps them really high even when in the lifts. The headsails are a dream to furl. SO FAST. But the rigging of the sheets is totally fucked. Plus the jib is cut wrong so it has that vibrating luff going on. I got pretty pissed yesterday, having to handle both jib and staysl sheets while setting the sails in a heavy wind, especially since where they're made off outboard crosses and, and then making them off to the inboard pins they cross again. I don't know. You'd have to see this ridiculousness to believe it. I'm making too big a deal about it, but I'm not going to lose my g'damn hands just to save the sheets from flying away. At my suggestion we re-rigged them yesterday so they don't cross as much. It worked a little better. I would say that Lady's headsail sheet arrangement is very sensible. Bill's flying jib sheet pennants leave a little to be desired, but this boat's headsail sheets are plain silly. The cap would probably be annoyed with me if he read this. He keeps his boat in good shape and has earned the pride he feels when it comes to this boat's operation. There's just not enough time or money to be thrown at a few little things that would make a better sheet setup, jib cut, perfect varnish job in the salon, etc. He keeps quantity and quality in an efficient, if not always satisfying, balance.
One more thing - Joe Bartlett bought a web address for my zine!!! How freakin cool is that? It's now officially jacktar.org
Oh and last night I went to a yacht club party that they have up here at the beginning of every season. I met a guy who captains charters down in Tortola for a new charter company that's actually based up here, and some real partying 40-something women who promised an action filled summer of local fisherman bringing us tons of salmon, nightly campfires next to our dock, and they themselves hang out at the beach by our dock in bikinis and boas and come down to toss or catch our lines. What a show that will be.
foggy sail
went sailing today! well it was thick fog and barely a whisper of a breeze. i think we got up to 1kt under sail... but hey, we three crew plus the cook work pretty well together. Speaking of our cook Wendy, she's incredible. A very cool woman with plenty of experience on this boat, who loves to bake - we have fresh bread or sweets at every meal, and tons of great food.
this boat is covered in bugs. i sat aft on the main boom to "cowboy" that sail, and ended up practically cushioned by a bed of dead flies. Including a fat spider that crawled out of the folds. I LOVE SPIDERS!!!....NAAAAAAHT! There must be at least five living in every deadeye. what else... oh yeah i'm putting the headrig net back together... whatever that's callled. I'm not so up on my terminology lately.
site for that pic (not our boat)
