A Typical Day at Sea
Friday, September 30th, 2005
“This is your wake-up call. Twenty minutes till watch.”
Without thinking, it comes almost as second nature, clothes on, found at the foot of my bunk, flashlight in my pocket. Up and out of my bunk I start up the Salon steps. Ugh, back down the Salon steps, grab my toothbrush , a cursory quick rub over my teeth so I don’t kill people with bunk breath, back up the steps, ugh, back down the steps, grab a sweatshirt just in case.
They say the coldest part of the day is just before dawn. Well, here I am. It is “four o’ dark AM” in the Barque Picton Castle. Up on the hatch I join the rest of my watch who are also bleary eyed. We sit on the port-side of the hatch mustered for watch waiting to be given our duties by the lead seaman. At the sound of my name I try to focus my eyes. “Kimberly, look-out at five and helm at seven.” Got it. He moves on to the next person. I wait to hear the rest of our muster and then head quickly for a cup of coffee. The off-going watch has made us fresh pots of coffee and these are greatly appreciated. After my second cup, I wander up to the quarter deck to hang with the rest of the watch. The sky is just beginning to change colour from inky black with stars to a bit of rose off to the east. The talk is of food: what you would eat if you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life. The mate is in and out of the charthouse watching a vessel on radar that was reported by the watch before us. We all try and figure out what it is and how close it is; this is better than TV for us!
My look-out hour comes and I go to relieve the person already up on the foc’s’le, which is the deck farthest forward. “Anything to report?” I ask the crew member I am relieving. Basically when I am up there on look-out, I am looking for any traffic, or squalls, general things floating and anything else that may wander into my vision. It is also important that I look around 360 degrees of the horizon and not just forward. The ship from earlier has passed and I cross under the arching foot of the foresail to check the other side. Nothing there, either.
I love being on look-out. It is one of the only times on the ship where the quiet is all yours. It’s amazing how fast it goes. Soon I am relieved, and I go off to do my ship check. When I am done, I report to the mate on watch that I have been relieved, that there is nothing to report from lookout, and there was nothing to report form my ship check. In fact, all is well.
I have an hour before I am due up on the helm, so I start to help get ready for the deck wash that happens at this time every morning—6:00 AM or dawn, whichever comes second. The cook is just stumbling on deck to start preparing for breakfast. We don’t try and chat until she has woken up a little more. The sun is turning the sky beautiful shades of red and orange, and we stop to admire it before we head aft to move the fishing-gear chest and fill up the salt water rinse-sinks for the dishes from breakfast.
I like the 4 to 8 watch. It has the benefit of the sunsets and sunrises. However, the down side is that it misses most of the general ship maintenance that happens on the 8 to12 and 12 to 4 watches. Later this morning the mate has asked us to prepare the rail so the next watch can varnish, but we are limited to things that do not make much noise.
“Helm” means steering the ship. Standing at the big teak wheel on the quarterdeck, I relieve my fellow watch-man and ask the course and how many turns he has on the wheel. The ship is easy to steer this morning and it feels like she is just cruising on the water. Slow I think, but I can’t really tell. The Mate wanders back to check my course. All is well. The Captain comes up on deck and checks the sails, looking up and around at the weather. He comes aft, takes a look at the compass, asks me my course and notes I am a little off. How he does this I am not certain. I haven’t strayed off course for over 30 minutes, yet it’s like he may have magnets in his pockets. I give the wheel a couple of turns and wonder what is for breakfast. Soon enough the hour is over, and I am done and relieved. I plot my position on the chart and log my course, barometer, and weather conditions in the logbook. The next watch is mustering and my watch is waiting for me to finish up so they can go eat breakfast.
Breakfast seems like lunch to us. We’ve been up for 4 hours and it takes us a while. We are the off watch now, and so we relax and eat slowly. When that’s done most of us wander off for a nap or a read of our book, at least for an hour or so. I manage to nap for a while and awake only when the 8-12 watch are unloading the canvas for sailmaking out from under the salon “sole,” the area beneath the salon floor.
Back on deck, I take my book to the hatch before becoming entranced with an ongoing game of Scrabble that is taking place in the sunshine. Then “Hands to the main braces!” is called out, so we all pitch in bracing the main yards to catch the wind a little more effectively. I return to my book and my sun cream, which I had abandoned on the hatch while I helped brace round. I have a few minutes until it is time to have our workshop on ditty bags (the bags where we store all our sail-making tools and general gear). Mine isn’t coming along too well, but I persevere until the sail-maker tells me that I may have to take out that particular row of stitches.
Then it’s all of a sudden lunch time. How this happens is always a mystery, how the days seem to pass by. After a beautiful lunch of pasta, blue cheese, and bacon, and some of the remaining lettuce for salad, I go to help with mending the sails if the sail-maker will have me after my terrible stitching earlier. By four o’clock I feel that I have had a busy day. It is back on watch for me now, and I muster on the hatch with my watchmates for my duties to be given to me. “Kimberly, helm now and Look Out at 1900 hours.” Off I go to the wheel.
“What are you steering?” I ask the helmsman. He tells me and I repeat it back so he knows I have it right. The watch passes uneventfully with a quick brace up around 1830 hours. Dinner is chicken breasts and gravy and tastes so good! We eat quickly on this watch as… we are on watch! When 2000 hours rolls around I am ready for bed. I muster and have happy thoughts of getting in my bunk to read. We get stood down, and the watch wanders off to different parts of the ship, some folks to bed and others to sit and chat, but for me 4 AM comes early. Toothbrush in hand—one final job tonight—I brush my teeth on deck and check out the scenery and then it’s below to bed, piling my clothes at the end of my bunk to be ready for my next watch.
I love being at sea. Life is simple. Some days are more exciting than others, and some days are worse than others. But mostly they are fairly quiet, with workshops to busy yourself with, learning how to navigate and take sun sights, projects to fill your free time, ship work to do, painting and sail-making, carpentry, loosing stowing sails aloft, watches to stand, a ship to sail and maintain . . . it’s amazing how busy you really are!