The Night Log of the Barque Picton Castle
Sunday, April 16th, 2006
Bound from Jamestown, St. Helena Island to Fernando de Noronha Island, Brazil
Location: 11° 26.1′S / 011° 37.4′W
I may have misrepresented how wonderful it is to sail on a year-long round-the-world voyage. Well, it is wonderful, but there are occasional moments of discontent. I know people have been waiting for juicy tidbits of evidence of crew squabbles or evil Mates, or something of the sort. Well, I can’t help you there; our crew gets along quite extraordinarily well for cramming 50 adults from all walks of life into a 179-foot-long Barque, and our Captain and Mates treat us well. We learn a great deal from their examples. We have things pretty easy compared to crews on ships in the Age of Sail: roomy bunks, fresh food and water, lots of time to explore ports of call, etc. Is the food bad? Absolutely not! Joe works hard every day; we always have fresh bread and hot, balanced meals and he makes sure to stock up on all our favourite treats when provisioning. So what is it that pushes our buttons and can even trigger foul moods? Only the most significant event of the crew’s day: The Wake Up.
This morning was the straw that broke the Camel’s back. Even the most even-tempered and understanding of our crew were annoyed to the point of drawing the lead seaman’s attention to the terrible Watch wake-up we had received. Tonight it went like this, “ERIN! WAKE UP!” and then squeaky sandals and a red flashlight turned and went out the door, just like that! Each member of our Watch was rudely jostled awake, unfortunately including innocent shipmates, such as the six other girls sleeping in the Bat Cave, who do not rise at 0330 for Watch. It is not reasonable to expect to be cooed into consciousness, but when a person is sleeping on a ship, it is important they know what they are being waked for. Has something happened and it’s all hands on deck? Is it time for Watch and am I late for muster? Is it still raining outside and do I need to bring anything with me in case I will not have the opportunity to go below?
I blinked a few times in the dark and took a few deep breaths, but the damage had been done. A bad wake up = one cranky girl. You read the above and perhaps you think we are all over-reacting. Perhaps you are right, but there is a balance and courtesy we strive to maintain aboard so that we make one another comfortable. We have learned to give the wake-up that we would like to receive—as much information in as few hushed words as possible. A short conversation allows your brain the opportunity to adjust to reality. The typical script for a wake-up goes like this: “[insert name], it is 3:35 AM (they wait for your reply). This is your wake-up for Watch. They sky is clear and you may want to bring a sweater. See you on deck.” Then they leave only after they are assured that you are, in fact, awake (after all, their Watch cannot be stood down until the on-coming Watch is all present and accounted for).
This morning’s negative reaction was merely a snowball of frustration stemming from the less-than-stellar wake-up trend that has developed, shocking us into wakefulness the past three nights. For example, two nights ago, the person on wake-ups (who has lived aboard for a year) stumbled around our living compartment trying to find the correct bunks of the people he was responsible for waking. Using a large flashlight with a bright, white bulb, he directed the beam directly into each and every sleeping face, and then he directed the beam of light onto a highly reflective piece of plastic to review the bunk chart again. We were all awake at this point, and merely groaned with annoyance. After a half hour of being on deck, it was not given a second thought.
Last night a different person was responsible for wake-ups, and this person also wielded a bright flashlight. It’s dark, I understand, but it is also dark on deck, and our eyes hardly have to adjust. There is no furniture to rearrange and trip over in the living spaces, negating the necessity of using a flashlight in the dark. (As a rule, if one must use a flashlight, we cover the lens with our fingers, allowing out only small cracks of softened light, cast downward.) Then he proceeded to try and wake a crew member who has never lived in our cabin, visiting the bunk of someone else entirely. Then before reaching my bunk, he woke the on-coming galley person 2.5 hours earlier than they needed to rise. He spoke in a regular indoor voice, rather than in hushed tones or whispers that we typically engage so as not to disturb the other sleepers.
Maybe we are all just a bunch of babies, but we are mature enough that this morning’s annoyance stems from individual aggravation and not mob mentality. Every person on our Watch flopped on the hatch for muster with a sigh. Perhaps this is part rant, but also this is an historically accurate portrayal of how very small annoyances in a closed environment, such as that aboard a ship at sea, can be incredibly frustrating. The journals of apprentice deckhands during the Age of Sail write of the gruff and surly wake-ups barked by more experienced sailors, directing the slumbering men (seasick or otherwise) immediately onto deck for some unpleasant chore or another. There are accounts of entire crews demanding that a Captain make improvements to some aspect of their life aboard. Of course, the most serious demands being related to issues such as an end to corporal punishment, to rations of alcohol, to better food, etc., but it is well established that lesser issues can fester if not corrected over time.
A crew mate of ours, Ollie, tells a story about his four seasons aboard the Norwegian full-rigged training ship, the SØrlandet. Ollie is a very tall man and he could almost sit up in his rack on the Sørlandet, if it were not for a beam than ran horizontal across his overhead. He said that throughout the four seasons he volunteered aboard, there was one woman to whom the task of waking Ollie’s Watch always fell. He describes her as a hearty, abrupt (but kind) woman, and he claims that each and every time she would wake him, she would say it so loudly and abruptly that he would be shocked into an upright position, smashing his head against the beam. He claims this happened so frequently that he took pains to sleep in positions that would conceivably protect his head, but even if he slept with his head at the foot of his bunk, the wake-ups would still jar him out of slumber with such a start that he would inevitably bruise his brow. He laughs about it now and says that she remains his friend and one of his favourite crewmates to this day.
Two hours into Watch and we are beginning to relax again. At the beginning of Watch we reviewed how to give a proper wake-up, something one would assume we’d have down-pat by now, but obviously needed re-visiting.
All that aside, there are a lot of exciting things happening aboard the Picton Castle to look forward to! Today is Sunday, and with that brings the famous 2.5 hour all-you-can-eat, anything-you-want breakfast that we call “Chibley’s Café”! Hurrah and huzzah! Being a Sunday at sea, it also entails a lovely, light lunch and an afternoon Marlin Spike! As if all that were not treat enough, today is not just any Sunday; it’s Easter Sunday! This means a nice, big Easter dinner at 1800 (6 PM)! I caught Chief Mate Sam, and Becky sneaking around the deck at 0430 this morning, hiding chocolate eggs and other treats around common places on the ship (in coils, in the ship’s boats, etc). The crew are going to love this!
Sundays are certainly something worth getting excited about (and we do!), but another cause for celebration today is that we finally got our Force 4 sailing breeze! All of Pania’s whistling and sweeping at the masts has apparently pleased Neptune, and his Royal Saltiness has given our once-blessed barque (curse those reeking pollywogs!) her fair SE trade winds! We are now making around 6 knots of speed, which is a marked improvement from the 2.5–4 knots we had been making before. We have only taken in two or three sails (fore-and-aft, to help adjust steering) and the Picton Castle is in her glory!
As we cruise along through the South Atlantic, we have all of a sudden become privy to sunsets and sunrises (also the rising and setting of the moon) of such shocking beauty that we could not experience again after those of the Indian Ocean! The water trickling across the deck is becoming noticeably warmer and the crew is getting excited for our much-anticipated arrival at the beautiful island of Fernando de Noronha, Brazil. Only another 1400 nautical miles to go. Then on to Grenada in the Caribbean!