Mail Call!
Tuesday, October 4th, 2005
Sunday afternoon the Picton Castle cleared into her current port of call in Suva, Fiji, and there was only one thing more exciting than arriving at a new and exotic port: Mail Call!We had not had a mail call since Rarotonga, and that was four ports of call ago! Lo, the ship’s agent, stepped aboard with paperwork, and after some time had passed, Captain Moreland called a muster amidships and introduced Lo to our crew. She gave us some advice about places we might like to visit, and places and people we might like to avoid. And as it turned out, she had brought mail with her! Cheers all around! We were given the opportunity to pick out our mail and read as much as we could before we get the order to “Up and stow.”
I circled the hatch, looking at the piles of envelopes and boxes. I had two letters in the first stack, and few more letters scattered in the next few stacks. I even had a big, bubble envelope that rattled a bit when I shook it. SCORE! I hit the mother lode of mail calls! First postcard made me cry, the pathetic guttural sobbing kind of cry. Not so embarrassing now that I’ve been living with this crew for nearly six months. Second post card was from my father, and I laughed so hard the Captain even came over to read what was written. Third and fourth envelopes were Thanksgiving and Halloween cards, respectively, and my family had thought to stuff the cards with tiny Halloween confetti that static clung to everything it came in contact with. I recognized the writing on the next envelope as that of my best friend of more than 16 years, and I had just begun to tear into it when we got the order to “Up and stow” (go aloft and stow the sails).
I stood up to anchor my mail under some items on the hatch, and I realized it was the first time I had looked up since I sat on the corner of the hatch to read my mail. Boxes were torn open and their contents were strewn everywhere. Colourful witch hats and bags of chips and chocolate, magazines, t-shirts and fans were scattered in every direction. The scuttle door had been covered with a plastic Halloween sign that had battery operated lights.
The crew scattered to the Fore and Main Masts and laid out on all the yards. I was still wiping my runny nose when I laid out on the Main Upper Topsail and then Lower Topsail with Morgan (sailmaker’s assistant, Canada) and Jeff B (trainee, USA). We busted the sails up onto the yards and had a short discussion about a gasket that was too short. The sun was shining, the weather was warm, and typically we would stay out on the yard as long as possible, feigning some kind of work, but from where we were aloft, we had a direct line of sight to our unopened mail. Calls of, “Laying off!” were heard all over the Main Mast as we hurried down to deck again. I scooped up my mail, and that of my cabin mate, Mhairi (trainee, Canada), and slipped below deck and into the Bat Cave to open the rest of my mail.
It was like watching a hungry person eat. I held the envelopes that were impossibly bound with too many layers of tape and I felt absolutely desperate to get to the contents inside. I just wanted to read my mother’s handwriting again. With her swooping and dipping cursive, she always manages to summarize a few months’ worth of activities and events into a few lines and still make me feel like I was part of it. I wanted to read my best friend’s letter because she is the only person I know who writes just like she speaks, and coming from Cape Breton, it’s always colourful!
The big bubble envelope was from my parents, and using my sheath knife, I made short work of getting into it. I felt something soft and pulled it out. Long underwear? I reached in again: sure enough, it was a matching long-sleeved shirt and pant long underwear set. It is 27°C in Suva and they sent me long johns? I laughed out loud. What were they thinking? A little note inside answered my question. It read, “Because you said you were cold.” It’s true. I had told them I was cold when we were sailing between Galapagos and Mangareva, but that was winter in the South Pacific. It was now spring and we had just sailed into Melanesia; the sun was out and those familiar beads of sweat were back!
As we sat around the Bat Cave, we took turns opening our mail and showing one another the contents inside. Maggie (trainee, Canada) gets the most hysterical gifts from home, and we were not disappointed this time: she pulled out two dozen hair combs of difference colours, shapes, and sizes. I got new Cape Breton and Canadian flag patches for my backpacks from my grandmother. She knows me so well. When I came back on deck, I learned that Mike’s (trainee, Canada) mother mailed him heaps of peanut brittle, fudge and toffee, and she made a lot of sons and daughters happy for several days!
I guess our message to home is this: We take great care of one another, but the minute there is a glimmer of hope that there might be a special note or package for us from someone who loved us before this all began, the salty exterior and calluses threaten to melt away and reduce us to a puddle of raving derelicts. We may be very good at making our own adventures on exotic South Pacific Islands, but there is no place like home.