On board the STV Asgard II, Day 0

The parent drove me down to Galway on Wednesday night, across a countryside I hardly recognise, having spent so much time in Dublin. Sheep and cows and green fields and more sheep and some horses and more cows. Very pretty countryside, actually. Got into Galway around eleven that night, and slept in the Harbour Hotel, right by the docks. A very pleasant hotel, all round.

I didn't have to be at the ship until 1400 Thursday, so there was time to walk around Galway. It's a small town, windswept but well-kempt, with a tidal harbour and a lock. Modern, but with its medieval bones showing through beneath. There's a museum, which gives you a reasonable précis of its history, and a helpful man in a camera shop who sold me a disposable camera with thirty-seven exposures.

Then it was time to go over to the docks to the Asgard, a gaff-rigged ketch about 60 foot by 12 foot (guesses by eye, since no one ever told me). Her tonnage is apparently 50 tons, and perhaps one day I'll find out what that means. Five permanent crew, master, mate, engineer, bosun, and cook, and a maximum 20 trainees on board.

There were a few trainees waiting at the gangway, and after we'd been there a few minutes, the bosun - a lad in his early twenties in the last year of his qualifying course in nautical science at Cork Institute of Technology called Donal, a long tall lanky handsome bloke with a bright grin, too - told us we could come on board and stow our stuff by our bunks.

Quarters down below are close, but by no means as close as they would have been in the golden age of sail. Our bunks, mess table and heads occupied the space that in a similar ship of the eighteenth century would've been reserved for cargo. Back then, I imagine, the crew would've been crammed into the space under the fo'c'sle that on the Asgard II is used for storage. And, of course, there would've been no inside heads.

I had one of the smaller ones up foreward, six foot long, two high, two deep. The bunks down by the mess table were slightly higher and deeper, but not by much. Some bunks had lockers in the hull adjacent to the bunk, but me and three others had lockers under our bunks. I swear by all things holy and unholy, there's scarcely room to turn around down there. Forget about privacy, personal space, anything like that. You're living in each others' armpits, squishing seventeen around a mess table that can barely accomodate fourteen, falling into other people's bunks, sitting on them, borrowing from them, getting your stuff mixed in with theirs, because when you're putting your socks on, what the hell are you going to do?

But I get ahead of myself. We went back on deck to meet the people we'd be spending the next week falling over. There was Graeme, the thirty-year-old archaeologist from Glasgow. Mike, Aoife and Pat from Galway. Dee from Cork. Cormac the gaelgóir from the Arann Islands, Ronan the poser from Dublin, three Andrews (one who turned out to be seriously weird), two teenage Kevins (one quiet, one loud), a green-haired surfer boy, Brian from Sligo, and Clare and Sean and Jonathan from Dublin. There were three men over fifty, maybe eight of us between nineteen and thirty, and the rest were sixteen-eighteen. Four girls, including me.

We signed on ship's articles, which made us crew, and met the permanent crew: Captain Ro McSweeney, John the mate, Shane the engineer from Cork, Kevin O'Leary the amazing cook, and Donal the bosun. Then they divided us into our three watches, Port, Middle, and Starboard (crews are divided into three watches both for working the sails - different watches are supposed to set different sails - for standing watches during the day and night, and for emergency drills). I was in the starboard watch. Emergency drills after that: how to abandon ship and what to take with you; fire; life-jackets; the emergency alarm; man overboard drills. Then we learned knots, and which ones are used where. Reef knots, for securing the staysails; clove-hitches; slipped clove hitches for securing the square sails; bowlines for putting a loop in a rope; figure of eights for stopping a line running through an eyelet or a block; two turns and a half-hitch for securing mooring lines and fenders. We usually did up the gaskets (any short length of loose rope is called a gasket) on the mainsail with two half hitches, I think.

The mainmast is aft. The mainsail is attached to the boom on the mainmast. The main staysail is amidships, above the small structure on the Asgard called the doghouse. Its boom is attached to the foremast, but it runs on a stay up to the mainmast. A stay is a piece of the standing rigging; that is, it's a line that doesn't move (unless it's a special piece of standing rigging called a running stay). The running rigging comprises sheets, tacks, halyards, buntlines, clewlines, topping lifts, and downhauls.

Masts have three sections, dating from the period when masts where literally constructed with three different pieces of wood. Hence mast, topmast, topgallant (t'gallant) mast. The Asgard carried thirteen different sails, of which in the best sailing weather she can set a maximum of eleven: the mainsail; the staysails (main staysail, main topmast staysail, main t'gallant staysail, fore staysail, jib); the squaresails (course, topmast, t'gallant); and two other sails whose names I never learned, as we never set them. She also carries a storm trysail for really severe weather, and the fore topmast staysail, which is only rigged when the weather requires the course to be struck, because otherwise it just gets in the way of the course.

I didn't learn all this on the first day, though. The first day, I learned how to make up (make fast) a line around a belaying pin, the difference between the fife rail (semicircular rail of belaying pins fore of a mast) and the pinrail (line of belaying pins along the sides of the ship), what a shroud is, and how it's different from ratlines. And how to go up and over the mast, you know, in order to get out onto the yards (course yard, topmast yard, t'gallant yard). That day, safely stationary in harbour, was the only time I managed it.

That was the first day. We had dinner on board (the cook is justly famous), learned the watch rotation (eight to midnight, midnight to four, four to eight, eight to half past twelve, half past twelve to four, four to six, six to eight). I volunteered for the four am watch, because we'd be sailing at half five, and I wanted to be awake already. Curfew was set at twelve, watches were organised and we were dismissed. All I did, really, was pop around to the shops, buy some water and some chocolate, and come back on board to write up some notes and try to remember how many guns Jack Rackham's Surprise had carried, and how many guns a ship the size of the Asgard might have been able to fit (I'm weird that way: I never remembered Rackham's cannon, and I eventually decided a brig like the Asgard could've carried about twelve guns, with two more smaller ones fore and aft. That is, if it didn't have a doghouse).

Nine o'clock I headed to my bunk. It was awkward and cramped, and I woke up when the others came in and the watch changed, and again at half past three when someone started snoring. I just got dressed and went above early, and stayed on deck to watch the sun rise.

This has gone on fairly long already, so I'll continue in a bit.

On board the STV Asgard II, Day 0

The parent drove me down to Galway on Wednesday night, across a countryside I hardly recognise, having spent so much time in Dublin. Sheep and cows and green fields and more sheep and some horses and more cows. Very pretty countryside, actually. Got into Galway around eleven that night, and slept in the Harbour Hotel, right by the docks. A very pleasant hotel, all round.

I didn't have to be at the ship until 1400 Thursday, so there was time to walk around Galway. It's a small town, windswept but well-kempt, with a tidal harbour and a lock. Modern, but with its medieval bones showing through beneath. There's a museum, which gives you a reasonable précis of its history, and a helpful man in a camera shop who sold me a disposable camera with thirty-seven exposures.

Then it was time to go over to the docks to the Asgard, a gaff-rigged ketch about 60 foot by 12 foot (guesses by eye, since no one ever told me). Her tonnage is apparently 50 tons, and perhaps one day I'll find out what that means. Five permanent crew, master, mate, engineer, bosun, and cook, and a maximum 20 trainees on board.

There were a few trainees waiting at the gangway, and after we'd been there a few minutes, the bosun - a lad in his early twenties in the last year of his qualifying course in nautical science at Cork Institute of Technology called Donal, a long tall lanky handsome bloke with a bright grin, too - told us we could come on board and stow our stuff by our bunks.

Quarters down below are close, but by no means as close as they would have been in the golden age of sail. Our bunks, mess table and heads occupied the space that in a similar ship of the eighteenth century would've been reserved for cargo. Back then, I imagine, the crew would've been crammed into the space under the fo'c'sle that on the Asgard II is used for storage. And, of course, there would've been no inside heads.

I had one of the smaller ones up foreward, six foot long, two high, two deep. The bunks down by the mess table were slightly higher and deeper, but not by much. Some bunks had lockers in the hull adjacent to the bunk, but me and three others had lockers under our bunks. I swear by all things holy and unholy, there's scarcely room to turn around down there. Forget about privacy, personal space, anything like that. You're living in each others' armpits, squishing seventeen around a mess table that can barely accomodate fourteen, falling into other people's bunks, sitting on them, borrowing from them, getting your stuff mixed in with theirs, because when you're putting your socks on, what the hell are you going to do?

But I get ahead of myself. We went back on deck to meet the people we'd be spending the next week falling over. There was Graeme, the thirty-year-old archaeologist from Glasgow. Mike, Aoife and Pat from Galway. Dee from Cork. Cormac the gaelgóir from the Arann Islands, Ronan the poser from Dublin, three Andrews (one who turned out to be seriously weird), two teenage Kevins (one quiet, one loud), a green-haired surfer boy, Brian from Sligo, and Clare and Sean and Jonathan from Dublin. There were three men over fifty, maybe eight of us between nineteen and thirty, and the rest were sixteen-eighteen. Four girls, including me.

We signed on ship's articles, which made us crew, and met the permanent crew: Captain Ro McSweeney, John the mate, Shane the engineer from Cork, Kevin O'Leary the amazing cook, and Donal the bosun. Then they divided us into our three watches, Port, Middle, and Starboard (crews are divided into three watches both for working the sails - different watches are supposed to set different sails - for standing watches during the day and night, and for emergency drills). I was in the starboard watch. Emergency drills after that: how to abandon ship and what to take with you; fire; life-jackets; the emergency alarm; man overboard drills. Then we learned knots, and which ones are used where. Reef knots, for securing the staysails; clove-hitches; slipped clove hitches for securing the square sails; bowlines for putting a loop in a rope; figure of eights for stopping a line running through an eyelet or a block; two turns and a half-hitch for securing mooring lines and fenders. We usually did up the gaskets (any short length of loose rope is called a gasket) on the mainsail with two half hitches, I think.

The mainmast is aft. The mainsail is attached to the boom on the mainmast. The main staysail is amidships, above the small structure on the Asgard called the doghouse. Its boom is attached to the foremast, but it runs on a stay up to the mainmast. A stay is a piece of the standing rigging; that is, it's a line that doesn't move (unless it's a special piece of standing rigging called a running stay). The running rigging comprises sheets, tacks, halyards, buntlines, clewlines, topping lifts, and downhauls.

Masts have three sections, dating from the period when masts where literally constructed with three different pieces of wood. Hence mast, topmast, topgallant (t'gallant) mast. The Asgard carried thirteen different sails, of which in the best sailing weather she can set a maximum of eleven: the mainsail; the staysails (main staysail, main topmast staysail, main t'gallant staysail, fore staysail, jib); the squaresails (course, topmast, t'gallant); and two other sails whose names I never learned, as we never set them. She also carries a storm trysail for really severe weather, and the fore topmast staysail, which is only rigged when the weather requires the course to be struck, because otherwise it just gets in the way of the course.

I didn't learn all this on the first day, though. The first day, I learned how to make up (make fast) a line around a belaying pin, the difference between the fife rail (semicircular rail of belaying pins fore of a mast) and the pinrail (line of belaying pins along the sides of the ship), what a shroud is, and how it's different from ratlines. And how to go up and over the mast, you know, in order to get out onto the yards (course yard, topmast yard, t'gallant yard). That day, safely stationary in harbour, was the only time I managed it.

That was the first day. We had dinner on board (the cook is justly famous), learned the watch rotation (eight to midnight, midnight to four, four to eight, eight to half past twelve, half past twelve to four, four to six, six to eight). I volunteered for the four am watch, because we'd be sailing at half five, and I wanted to be awake already. Curfew was set at twelve, watches were organised and we were dismissed. All I did, really, was pop around to the shops, buy some water and some chocolate, and come back on board to write up some notes and try to remember how many guns Jack Rackham's Surprise had carried, and how many guns a ship the size of the Asgard might have been able to fit (I'm weird that way: I never remembered Rackham's cannon, and I eventually decided a brig like the Asgard could've carried about twelve guns, with two more smaller ones fore and aft. That is, if it didn't have a doghouse).

Nine o'clock I headed to my bunk. It was awkward and cramped, and I woke up when the others came in and the watch changed, and again at half past three when someone started snoring. I just got dressed and went above early, and stayed on deck to watch the sun rise.

This has gone on fairly long already, so I'll continue in a bit.

On board STV Asgard II, day 1(Galway Harbour to Inisboffin)

Before I start, pictures from Day 0:

Ratlines, lines and shrouds at night; Foremast by night. Day 0 write-up here.

Galway docks have a lock, which only opens for four hours at high tide. All hands call was just before six, and we got talked through casting off fore and aft and taking in fenders. Then we motored out through the lock and into Galway Bay.

Once through the lock, Donal talked us through setting the mainsail. On any ship, the bosun's main responsibility is the rigging (both maintaining it and the cleanliness of the ship, and seeing that it's set to the captain's and the mate's orders) and the training of the hands, apparently. So we divided by watches, Starboard Watch to the starboard side of the poop deck, Middle Watch to the aft of the poop, and Port Watch on (you guessed it) the port side. I will now abbreviate the watches to their first letters, since I'm going to talk about setting the mainsail.

First, two or three (can be as few as one) get on the roof of the pilot house (also called the chart house) to undo the gaskets holding the mainsail to its spar (gaff). S stays starboard on the peak, M is aft on the sheets, and P is port on the throat.

You undo the peak and throat halyards from their belaying pins. The halyards run through blocks on the deck already, but now the ends of the halyards are then run out through blocks on the edge of the poop deck near the rail, and back aft by the rail, where two or three people hold onto the line, ready to take up slack as it comes through. This is called tailing the line. Two people grab the line above the first block, ready to haul straight down into the block. You do this by holding the line and taking all your weight off your knees, so your entire body pulls down the line.

The bosun calls, "Ready on the peak, ready on the throat," and you're supposed to call back, variously, "Ready on the peak" or "Ready on the throat". Then he calls, "Haul away together, two six*!" You shout back together, "Heave!" and haul, and the tailing guys take up the slack. Two six! and Heave! alternate until the bosun calls, "Hold the peak, hold the throat" (depending on how much has been hauled by one side or another, it can be either or both, and some more hauling on one side might go on for a little bit). You don't raise the gaff very far at the moment.

So then someone (it was usually Donal, since he was the one who knew what he was doing) makes a stopper knot around the halyard, just above the block, and calls, "Ease to the stopper one step forward!" This is the signal for the line of tailers to take one step forward to see if the stopper knot holds. If it does, the first tailer takes hold of the line between the blocks and shouts, "Ready to come up? Come up!" which is the signal for the tailers to drop the line and the first tailer to rush forward and make up the line around its belaying pin while the one behind him or her pulls slack through the block.

This is only the beginning. Next you go to the topping lifts, which on the Asgard were on the first pin on the rail on the poop deck. You undo the line until there is one turn left on the underside of the pin and the same division applies. Two people grab the line above the pin, and the others take up the tail. Since this lifts the boom, S and P need to haul away together, or nothing will move. And because the boom is fucking heavy, you have to sweat this line, which means you have to throw your weight backwards - aft - and then swing in towards the pin.

(Basically what ends up happening is you're crotch to arse with the other person hauling the line, pressed along the line of their body, sweating down together. No time to be shy.)

So the bosun calls out "Two six!" and you shout back "Heave!" and haul (I was mostly hauling and sweating, because it might be more effort, but it's less boring than tailing). We fucked it up most of the time, at least until the fourth day, and he kept saying (very patient lad, Donal), "Haul together".

So when your hands are sore from hauling and your arms hurt, the bosun calls out, "Hold," and "Make it up". So the first tailer shouts, "Ready to come up? Come up!" and makes up the line around the pin.

I don't know what M were doing during this. Something to do with sheets and downhauls, presumably. Next time I do this sail training thing, I want to be in Middle Watch so I find out.

Then S and P go back to peak and throat, and do some more hauling until the mainsail is mostly set. Same drill. Then you go back to the topping lifts and slack them off a little, so that the boom is pulling down the sail fully. Then make them up again.

And that's the mainsail set. Middle Watch had responsibility for the main staysail, so I never learned properly how that was set (I know how it's tacked, though, but that's another day's learning). After the mainsail, you set the main staysail. Then the jib (Port Watch) and the fore staysail (Starboard Watch). You really only need a couple of people to set these sails though; you could probably do it with three or four, rather than the eight or ten that the mainsail needs.

The jib and the fore staysail are basically the same, just the halyards and the sheets are on different sides of the ship. Someone steps out onto the bowsprit (we had harnesses with ropes to clip on to a metal bar, so safety rules) and undoes the reef knots holding the sails stowed. Then you pull the ropes with the eyelets for the sheet one on each side of the stay, run one end of each of the sheets through an eyelet and make a figure of eight knot to keep it there. Then you slack the downhauls and haul the sheets (hand over hand at first, sweating them down into the pin when it becomes necessary).

I'm forgetting stuff, I know I am. I tried to learn as much as possible about that ship in the eight days I had, and I didn't learn enough. You'd need at least a month to learn your stuff properly.

Then we have cleaning stations. Cleaning stations are organised by watches: the deck watch on the eight to twelve-thirty watch cleans the deck: scrubs it down, polishes brasses. The watch who has the next watch cleans the trainee mess and the heads. The watch who had the four to eight watch cleans the saloon and the passageway outside permanent crew quarters (which means polishing the woodwork, hoovering, and sweeping. The captain's saloon is kind of really nice) and then, because that's the easy job, ends up on deck helping with the brass work. (You can only clean the brasswork when it's dry, so we didn't get to clean it again until Belfast.) Hard work, and dirty, man.

At this point we'd hit some Atlantic chop and I was feeling slightly queasy. Bright sunshine, but a chilly breeze, and some people starting to get sick over the lee rail. Not yet ten o'clock, though.

They set the main topmast staysail, and Donal asks who wants to get up and loose the square sails (square sails viewed from the fo'c'sle, after they'd been set and then struck again and ruck-stowed, my favorite picture from the trip). So I volunteer. Four people go up to the starboard side of the course yard, and three people and me to the port side of the course yard. And I get up there, last on the line, closest to the mast, and you have to step across a foot and a half's worth of gap from the ratlines to the footrope beneath the course yard, and I get one foot and one hand on the course yard and then I look down.

Oh god oh fuck oh god. That's a long way down, and you can't clip on to the safety rail until after you step onto the course yard completely. That gap's a fucking leap of faith; faith in your arms and legs and balance, and (oh fuck oh shit) I can't do it.

So I come back down, and they loose the course, topsail, and t'gallant without me.** (This is only time we set the t'gallant on the whole cruise.) It's not set yet: before we set it, Donal has to talk us through bracing the yards. So everyone goes back aft to the poop, which is where bracing stations are.

So we braced to starboard, which meant S had to haul, while P got to slack (we still hardly knew each other at this point, but all the work meant we were starting to shake down as a team, and nearly everyone felt queasy, even those who didn't get sick). You take the lines off the pins, leaving one turn underneath the pin (t'gallant brace, topsail brace, and furthest aft, course brace), one or two people haul, and someone has to tail. It would, I assume, be perfectly possible to do this with only six or seven people, if you didn't actually have people at the port rail slacking the ropes by hand, just left them off the pins. The bosun shouts, "Two six!" and we shout, "Heave!", and look up and haul together, and when the yard reaches the mark, shout, "T'gallant at the mark!" or "Course at the mark!" or "Topsail at the mark!" and then make up the lines.

Then you go amidships, haul on sheets, slack bunts and clews, raise and lower the t'gallant and topsail yards by halyards, and when captain and bosun are happy, you have the square sails set.

At this point, we were working in our watches. Two people on the poop, one each port and starboard, on lookout for other ships, lobster pots, etc. One on the steering wheel (supervised a lot of the time by either Donal or John the mate) when we weren't either maneuvering or sailing in dangerous winds - mate, bosun or captain steered then.

Shortly thereafter, the wind died, so we struck the square sails and the jib. Picture. And spent the rest of the time when not on watch lying on deck trying not to vomit. (Went below for lunch, which was pizza, and the roll of the ship down there with no reference points on the horizon sent me right back up again. Only about five people actually ate anything, I think.) Or sitting on the bowsprit enjoying the breeze.

I gave myself the worst sunburn ever lying on the deck too queasy to want to move for hours, staring up at the sun. I was already sore and red that evening.

We were under motor. Later that afternoon, on watch, I got to steer. As it was explained to me, the compass stays still. The ship moves around the compass. The captain or the mate gives you a heading, say 060 (zero six zero, sixty degrees off north) and you have to keep that line on the compass in the general location of the leadline on the ship. When under motor, she likes to bounce, but you don't need to use more than five degrees of rudder either way (port or starboard). In wind, she carries weather helm, which can be anything up to twenty degrees either way. You still don't really use more than five degrees of rudder around that point, though, to keep her on course.

(We also raised and lowered the RIB that day, which is hard work, but I'll only tell you about that if you ask.)

We had dinner on board (fabulous, now that the chop had calmed enough to eat) and that evening we made harbour in Inisboffin, after about seventy nautical miles (according to the captain). As we were at anchor, rather than at harbour, only three people were required to be on watch that night, one for each watch.

Inisboffin has a slightly amazing natural harbour (Views from a hill on the island, which I walked up for mobile phone reception, here and here. Inisboffin has also many sheep.), with a natural breakwater of rocks across the harbour mouth. It's tidal, so a ship like the Asgard can only get in and out during the two hours at high tide (around seven o'clock Friday night and six Saturday morning). There's an interesting-looking fortification on the headland, and a couple of interesting natural features inside the harbour. It looks like it would be a good place for diving, and indeed I saw scuba gear at the quay.

Shore leave was eight thirty to eleven. One of the islanders came out to us in a giant RIB (very nice people, islanders) and took fifteen of us to shore, and the ship's RIB took another few. The giant RIB was really cool and really fast: apparently it can make about forty-five knots.

The sunset was fantastic. If I hear back from the other people who actually took pictures of it, I'll post links here.

I stayed outside the pub, mostly, being queasy because the land wasn't moving. (Graeme said later he thought he was going to be the first person ever to be landsick.) There was plenty of drink going on, and a couple of pool games, and craic and camaraderie getting going. No sodomy jokes yet: those only really started Saturday.

At half ten, the ship's RIB started running us back, and we turned in. All hands call was going to be five o'clock in the morning, and we were all tired.

Inisboffin - the islands entire, in fact - are the kind of places I'd like to go back to, if I had a yacht and could take my time hopping from one to another. They're pretty cool people, too.

And that was the second day. Saturday we had a small craft warning and a gale force warning in force, and winds of Force 6, Force 7. So I'll write that up probably tomorrow.

Last picture of day one: me on deck, one of the rare occasions I was without my crazy floppy-brimmed tan-coloured hat.

*'Two six' apparently goes back to the days when ships had cannons, and number two and number six on the cannon crew were the hands who did the hauling, so Donal said. At least, he thought that was it.

**I am going back. I'm not going to let that mast beat me. I figure next time, I'll know what it's like, and not to look down (looking down fucked me up every time).

On board STV Asgard II, day 1(Galway Harbour to Inisboffin)

Before I start, pictures from Day 0:

Ratlines, lines and shrouds at night; Foremast by night. Day 0 write-up here.

Galway docks have a lock, which only opens for four hours at high tide. All hands call was just before six, and we got talked through casting off fore and aft and taking in fenders. Then we motored out through the lock and into Galway Bay.

Once through the lock, Donal talked us through setting the mainsail. On any ship, the bosun's main responsibility is the rigging (both maintaining it and the cleanliness of the ship, and seeing that it's set to the captain's and the mate's orders) and the training of the hands, apparently. So we divided by watches, Starboard Watch to the starboard side of the poop deck, Middle Watch to the aft of the poop, and Port Watch on (you guessed it) the port side. I will now abbreviate the watches to their first letters, since I'm going to talk about setting the mainsail.

First, two or three (can be as few as one) get on the roof of the pilot house (also called the chart house) to undo the gaskets holding the mainsail to its spar (gaff). S stays starboard on the peak, M is aft on the sheets, and P is port on the throat.

You undo the peak and throat halyards from their belaying pins. The halyards run through blocks on the deck already, but now the ends of the halyards are then run out through blocks on the edge of the poop deck near the rail, and back aft by the rail, where two or three people hold onto the line, ready to take up slack as it comes through. This is called tailing the line. Two people grab the line above the first block, ready to haul straight down into the block. You do this by holding the line and taking all your weight off your knees, so your entire body pulls down the line.

The bosun calls, "Ready on the peak, ready on the throat," and you're supposed to call back, variously, "Ready on the peak" or "Ready on the throat". Then he calls, "Haul away together, two six*!" You shout back together, "Heave!" and haul, and the tailing guys take up the slack. Two six! and Heave! alternate until the bosun calls, "Hold the peak, hold the throat" (depending on how much has been hauled by one side or another, it can be either or both, and some more hauling on one side might go on for a little bit). You don't raise the gaff very far at the moment.

So then someone (it was usually Donal, since he was the one who knew what he was doing) makes a stopper knot around the halyard, just above the block, and calls, "Ease to the stopper one step forward!" This is the signal for the line of tailers to take one step forward to see if the stopper knot holds. If it does, the first tailer takes hold of the line between the blocks and shouts, "Ready to come up? Come up!" which is the signal for the tailers to drop the line and the first tailer to rush forward and make up the line around its belaying pin while the one behind him or her pulls slack through the block.

This is only the beginning. Next you go to the topping lifts, which on the Asgard were on the first pin on the rail on the poop deck. You undo the line until there is one turn left on the underside of the pin and the same division applies. Two people grab the line above the pin, and the others take up the tail. Since this lifts the boom, S and P need to haul away together, or nothing will move. And because the boom is fucking heavy, you have to sweat this line, which means you have to throw your weight backwards - aft - and then swing in towards the pin.

(Basically what ends up happening is you're crotch to arse with the other person hauling the line, pressed along the line of their body, sweating down together. No time to be shy.)

So the bosun calls out "Two six!" and you shout back "Heave!" and haul (I was mostly hauling and sweating, because it might be more effort, but it's less boring than tailing). We fucked it up most of the time, at least until the fourth day, and he kept saying (very patient lad, Donal), "Haul together".

So when your hands are sore from hauling and your arms hurt, the bosun calls out, "Hold," and "Make it up". So the first tailer shouts, "Ready to come up? Come up!" and makes up the line around the pin.

I don't know what M were doing during this. Something to do with sheets and downhauls, presumably. Next time I do this sail training thing, I want to be in Middle Watch so I find out.

Then S and P go back to peak and throat, and do some more hauling until the mainsail is mostly set. Same drill. Then you go back to the topping lifts and slack them off a little, so that the boom is pulling down the sail fully. Then make them up again.

And that's the mainsail set. Middle Watch had responsibility for the main staysail, so I never learned properly how that was set (I know how it's tacked, though, but that's another day's learning). After the mainsail, you set the main staysail. Then the jib (Port Watch) and the fore staysail (Starboard Watch). You really only need a couple of people to set these sails though; you could probably do it with three or four, rather than the eight or ten that the mainsail needs.

The jib and the fore staysail are basically the same, just the halyards and the sheets are on different sides of the ship. Someone steps out onto the bowsprit (we had harnesses with ropes to clip on to a metal bar, so safety rules) and undoes the reef knots holding the sails stowed. Then you pull the ropes with the eyelets for the sheet one on each side of the stay, run one end of each of the sheets through an eyelet and make a figure of eight knot to keep it there. Then you slack the downhauls and haul the sheets (hand over hand at first, sweating them down into the pin when it becomes necessary).

I'm forgetting stuff, I know I am. I tried to learn as much as possible about that ship in the eight days I had, and I didn't learn enough. You'd need at least a month to learn your stuff properly.

Then we have cleaning stations. Cleaning stations are organised by watches: the deck watch on the eight to twelve-thirty watch cleans the deck: scrubs it down, polishes brasses. The watch who has the next watch cleans the trainee mess and the heads. The watch who had the four to eight watch cleans the saloon and the passageway outside permanent crew quarters (which means polishing the woodwork, hoovering, and sweeping. The captain's saloon is kind of really nice) and then, because that's the easy job, ends up on deck helping with the brass work. (You can only clean the brasswork when it's dry, so we didn't get to clean it again until Belfast.) Hard work, and dirty, man.

At this point we'd hit some Atlantic chop and I was feeling slightly queasy. Bright sunshine, but a chilly breeze, and some people starting to get sick over the lee rail. Not yet ten o'clock, though.

They set the main topmast staysail, and Donal asks who wants to get up and loose the square sails (square sails viewed from the fo'c'sle, after they'd been set and then struck again and ruck-stowed, my favorite picture from the trip). So I volunteer. Four people go up to the starboard side of the course yard, and three people and me to the port side of the course yard. And I get up there, last on the line, closest to the mast, and you have to step across a foot and a half's worth of gap from the ratlines to the footrope beneath the course yard, and I get one foot and one hand on the course yard and then I look down.

Oh god oh fuck oh god. That's a long way down, and you can't clip on to the safety rail until after you step onto the course yard completely. That gap's a fucking leap of faith; faith in your arms and legs and balance, and (oh fuck oh shit) I can't do it.

So I come back down, and they loose the course, topsail, and t'gallant without me.** (This is only time we set the t'gallant on the whole cruise.) It's not set yet: before we set it, Donal has to talk us through bracing the yards. So everyone goes back aft to the poop, which is where bracing stations are.

So we braced to starboard, which meant S had to haul, while P got to slack (we still hardly knew each other at this point, but all the work meant we were starting to shake down as a team, and nearly everyone felt queasy, even those who didn't get sick). You take the lines off the pins, leaving one turn underneath the pin (t'gallant brace, topsail brace, and furthest aft, course brace), one or two people haul, and someone has to tail. It would, I assume, be perfectly possible to do this with only six or seven people, if you didn't actually have people at the port rail slacking the ropes by hand, just left them off the pins. The bosun shouts, "Two six!" and we shout, "Heave!", and look up and haul together, and when the yard reaches the mark, shout, "T'gallant at the mark!" or "Course at the mark!" or "Topsail at the mark!" and then make up the lines.

Then you go amidships, haul on sheets, slack bunts and clews, raise and lower the t'gallant and topsail yards by halyards, and when captain and bosun are happy, you have the square sails set.

At this point, we were working in our watches. Two people on the poop, one each port and starboard, on lookout for other ships, lobster pots, etc. One on the steering wheel (supervised a lot of the time by either Donal or John the mate) when we weren't either maneuvering or sailing in dangerous winds - mate, bosun or captain steered then.

Shortly thereafter, the wind died, so we struck the square sails and the jib. Picture. And spent the rest of the time when not on watch lying on deck trying not to vomit. (Went below for lunch, which was pizza, and the roll of the ship down there with no reference points on the horizon sent me right back up again. Only about five people actually ate anything, I think.) Or sitting on the bowsprit enjoying the breeze.

I gave myself the worst sunburn ever lying on the deck too queasy to want to move for hours, staring up at the sun. I was already sore and red that evening.

We were under motor. Later that afternoon, on watch, I got to steer. As it was explained to me, the compass stays still. The ship moves around the compass. The captain or the mate gives you a heading, say 060 (zero six zero, sixty degrees off north) and you have to keep that line on the compass in the general location of the leadline on the ship. When under motor, she likes to bounce, but you don't need to use more than five degrees of rudder either way (port or starboard). In wind, she carries weather helm, which can be anything up to twenty degrees either way. You still don't really use more than five degrees of rudder around that point, though, to keep her on course.

(We also raised and lowered the RIB that day, which is hard work, but I'll only tell you about that if you ask.)

We had dinner on board (fabulous, now that the chop had calmed enough to eat) and that evening we made harbour in Inisboffin, after about seventy nautical miles (according to the captain). As we were at anchor, rather than at harbour, only three people were required to be on watch that night, one for each watch.

Inisboffin has a slightly amazing natural harbour (Views from a hill on the island, which I walked up for mobile phone reception, here and here. Inisboffin has also many sheep.), with a natural breakwater of rocks across the harbour mouth. It's tidal, so a ship like the Asgard can only get in and out during the two hours at high tide (around seven o'clock Friday night and six Saturday morning). There's an interesting-looking fortification on the headland, and a couple of interesting natural features inside the harbour. It looks like it would be a good place for diving, and indeed I saw scuba gear at the quay.

Shore leave was eight thirty to eleven. One of the islanders came out to us in a giant RIB (very nice people, islanders) and took fifteen of us to shore, and the ship's RIB took another few. The giant RIB was really cool and really fast: apparently it can make about forty-five knots.

The sunset was fantastic. If I hear back from the other people who actually took pictures of it, I'll post links here.

I stayed outside the pub, mostly, being queasy because the land wasn't moving. (Graeme said later he thought he was going to be the first person ever to be landsick.) There was plenty of drink going on, and a couple of pool games, and craic and camaraderie getting going. No sodomy jokes yet: those only really started Saturday.

At half ten, the ship's RIB started running us back, and we turned in. All hands call was going to be five o'clock in the morning, and we were all tired.

Inisboffin - the islands entire, in fact - are the kind of places I'd like to go back to, if I had a yacht and could take my time hopping from one to another. They're pretty cool people, too.

And that was the second day. Saturday we had a small craft warning and a gale force warning in force, and winds of Force 6, Force 7. So I'll write that up probably tomorrow.

Last picture of day one: me on deck, one of the rare occasions I was without my crazy floppy-brimmed tan-coloured hat.

*'Two six' apparently goes back to the days when ships had cannons, and number two and number six on the cannon crew were the hands who did the hauling, so Donal said. At least, he thought that was it.

**I am going back. I'm not going to let that mast beat me. I figure next time, I'll know what it's like, and not to look down (looking down fucked me up every time).