South Atlantic Sunsets–Crew’s Eyeview
Saturday, April 15th, 2006
Location: 13° 14.5′S / 010° 21.2′W
This evening just before dinner, Greg the Second Mate sang out the orders to set all sail, to pass the sheets and set the fore and aft sail, and to rig and set the stuns’ls. The 4–8 Watch and any other hands who were on deck relaxing sprang into action and in minutes the Picton Castle was sailing along, powered by 22 sails gently filling in the Force 3 breeze. Twenty-two sails and more than 175 lines of running rigging (halyards, sheets, bunt-lines, clew-lines, leach-lines, braces, down-hauls, tacks, clews, brails, out-hauls, in-hauls, lifts–not sure if that includes the stuns’l gear, fish and stay tackles or gantlin’s). After ten months at sea (it is now twelve months aboard for those of us who arrived early for the month of preparation in Lunenburg before we set off on her Fourth World Voyage), the “old hands” are quite quick at setting several sails at once, and while the green hands are learning quickly, it’s easy to see they are caught up in the excitement and get overwhelmed still. We can relate; when we were the new hands, the orders sounded like a foreign language and there was a lot of confusion when you have to take clews, bunts, leeches, tacks and sheets into account (plus the chaos of 20 hands running about the deck casting off and hauling on lines).
After all sails were set and all the lines were coiled and hung, there was just enough time to go aloft and nip bunts before the dinner bell rang. I went aloft on the Main and Jeff B. went aloft on the Fore. With the gentle breeze and the crests of the slight wind waves hardly breaking, it was impossible to make myself hurry through the task. The sun was low and fiery in the sky, and it would sink behind the horizon in about 45 minutes. When I was aloft, the dinner bell rang and Greg told me to come down and fill my plate and then finish up nipping the bunts. I had only one bunt-line left to nip and I made sure to take my time doing it so that I could steal a million more glances at the ship with all her sails set, sailing into the setting sun.
It’s moments like these that all superfluous brain functions stop so that every one of your senses can function at its peak performance. My brain geared down to process the yellow fireball backlit by a pink sky and fuchsia and purple clouds; the feeling of being dwarfed while perched amidst more than 12,500 square feet of canvas coloured by the rain and sun and streaked by the grease on the masts; the subtle sound of the breeze in the rigging and the sloshing of the ocean all around us. The jackstay and thick canvas under my fingertips were still warm from the sun. The pressure of the narrow footrope nestled on my arches to just alongside the balls of my bare feet; and the weight of my body as it pressed into and eased away from the yard on the low, gentle swells; and finally, the smell of the salt in the air and of the musty smell of my sea chest that had permeated my cotton t-shirt.
After I climbed down the shrouds and was safely back on deck, Greg talked to me in “that tone” to let me know I’d been caught climbing up the lee shrouds. I admitted my shame because I knew the difference and don’t want the new trainees to get bad habits, and with his message still ringing in my ears, I skipped down the ladder and onto deck to coil the buntlines that I had cast off. I wasn’t a bit hungry and my mind was still trying to process what I had just experienced in less than a five-minute span of time. “That was beautiful,” was all I could say, half to myself and half to Andrea, who was sitting on the spar watching me coil. She nodded her head as she ate a forkful of peas, but we both knew she didn’t see it they way I had seen it.
