![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbI woke up at 0311 Thursday morning, when four people were having what sounded like a snore-off. Had the news from the people on watch that there'd been ructions about the curfew, with some people not in until nearly an hour late, and people signed in who weren't back and all sorts. Apparently they got a right bollocking, and I slept through it.
(There'd been showers in Bangor, but I was too tired to take advantage. I regretted that, when we got into Belfast, because although I couldn't smell myself I felt so greasy.)
Graeme and I on watch: about five thirty, we had to wake the duty officer (Shane the engineer) because the boat had slipped from the fenders and her hull was rubbing against the pier. So fifteen minutes spent getting that sorted, and then it was nearly time to wake F. and quiet Kev (neither of whom wanted to wake up) for their watch. Graeme went back to his wide deep bunk, and rather than go back to the snores and stink of feet below, I curled up in the doghouse and got about another hour's solid kip, waking only at breakfast.
We had cleaning stations in Bangor, and left the pier around ten. Had about four seasons in the one day, sailing around Lough Lagan: sunshine, squalls, fierce rain, sunshine. We had to be in Belfast by four to get the berth, so while there was more tacking and hauling on ropes than I'd experienced yet - the mainsail got a crease in it while they were trying to reef it, and there was a lot of heaving and slacking at peak, throat and topping lifts while Donal and John and the captain tried to fix the problem. (Crease in the sail, apparently, can result in the sail ripping if the wind hits it wrong.) - we weren't out for more than four or five hours.
Hard work, though.
Belfast is a shitty little city surrounded by pleasant green hilly countryside and nice small towns. It's all dock and industrial shite, with a few awkward-to-get-to places of historical interest, and I wasn't impressed with the people, or the berth. (Neither were the permanent crew, for that matter.)
Belfast was going to have a maritime festival that weekend. The Jeanie Johnston came in after us and moored foreward - a big ship compared to the Asgard, if not compared to the ferries we passed on the way up the docks - and there were a few other tallships on the far side of where we were moored. Apparently the Jeanie doesn't sail that well, and Donal wasn't impressed with the upkeep of her rig - but they use the traditional 19th century rig and tar the shrouds and ratlines, unlike the slightly more modern Asgard which uses wooden ratlines and rope-wrapped wire for the shrouds.
We had dinner and I begged off watch, having been on-watch every night we had watches apart from my night off due to galley duty. Many peoples repaired to the pub thirty seconds away, the Rotterdam. I went for about half an hour, sat swaying with tiredness as well as too much seatime, and came back to the ship, where I wrote up notes. Apparently the others went on to a music session in a pub called the Duke of York later.
Slept until one am, when peoples tripped in from the pub. Kev comes in, staggering, "Jesus Christ the boat's moving!" and I stick my (annoyed and sleepy) head out of my bunk to say, "No, Kev. Just you."
"Oh," he says, and collapses into his bunk, while Cormac, coming in behind him and now down to his boxers, stumbles so I'm staring right at his arse and manky underwear. (Close quarters. What the fuck can you say?)
"Nice arse, Cormac, but I really don't need to see it!"
"Sorry," says he, and clambers up into his own bunk. "Oich' mhaith."
And then silence, save for snoring, and the ship is disconcertingly still.
Breakfast call is 0800. I'm up at 0730, but no one else wants to wake up. It's a slow breakfast and a slow start to the day, but we're at cleaning stations by nine fifteen, with our gear packed and out of the way on top of the doghouse. Clean below, scrub decks, polish brasses - freaking hard work after seven days - and then we're done. We have a whip-round for the crew by way of thanks (enough for three rounds each, at least, and quite possible five), signed off ship's articles, and crammed into the mess for the captain and permanent crew to give us a brief post-mortem of the trip: roughly four hundred nautical miles, three hundred mostly under engines, and Wednesday, one hundred under sail. Captain said more things had gone against him that trip than any other trip in the last five years (high winds, engine prop, anchor, no wind, more high winds, a freezer melt-down) but hey, we're all alive and uninjured, and unlike some trips, all welcome to come back.
And then I walked off through ugly Belfast to find the train station, an ATM, and lunch: made the train station at 1130, waited for the 1230 train to Dublin, which some of the others were also catching - we were so loud, all of us, having spent the week practically shouting to be heard over the sound of the ship, the wind, the sails, each other, that we'd forgotten how to speak normally.
I got off the train at my stop, and the rest you know.
I'll definitely go back and do that again sometime, though. I think a leg of the 2010 tallships race runs from Istanbul to Greece: I have my eye on that one, but yeah, definitely go back. Despite the smell, the damp, the chill, the heat, and the close quarters, and the icky itchy grimy feel of going more than three days without a shower, it was fun. It was a good crew, even if a couple of people were mysteriously absent when work was to be done, quiet Kev was painfully shy, and the weird Andrew from Louth turned out disturbingly, annoyingly weird.
It was fun.
Previous entries in this series, which has now topped out around ten thousand words' worth of talking:
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Days 4 and 5
Day 6
more general thoughts
And, you know. I'm perfectly happy to talk some more about this if anyone wants me to. :)
(There'd been showers in Bangor, but I was too tired to take advantage. I regretted that, when we got into Belfast, because although I couldn't smell myself I felt so greasy.)
Graeme and I on watch: about five thirty, we had to wake the duty officer (Shane the engineer) because the boat had slipped from the fenders and her hull was rubbing against the pier. So fifteen minutes spent getting that sorted, and then it was nearly time to wake F. and quiet Kev (neither of whom wanted to wake up) for their watch. Graeme went back to his wide deep bunk, and rather than go back to the snores and stink of feet below, I curled up in the doghouse and got about another hour's solid kip, waking only at breakfast.
We had cleaning stations in Bangor, and left the pier around ten. Had about four seasons in the one day, sailing around Lough Lagan: sunshine, squalls, fierce rain, sunshine. We had to be in Belfast by four to get the berth, so while there was more tacking and hauling on ropes than I'd experienced yet - the mainsail got a crease in it while they were trying to reef it, and there was a lot of heaving and slacking at peak, throat and topping lifts while Donal and John and the captain tried to fix the problem. (Crease in the sail, apparently, can result in the sail ripping if the wind hits it wrong.) - we weren't out for more than four or five hours.
Hard work, though.
Belfast is a shitty little city surrounded by pleasant green hilly countryside and nice small towns. It's all dock and industrial shite, with a few awkward-to-get-to places of historical interest, and I wasn't impressed with the people, or the berth. (Neither were the permanent crew, for that matter.)
Belfast was going to have a maritime festival that weekend. The Jeanie Johnston came in after us and moored foreward - a big ship compared to the Asgard, if not compared to the ferries we passed on the way up the docks - and there were a few other tallships on the far side of where we were moored. Apparently the Jeanie doesn't sail that well, and Donal wasn't impressed with the upkeep of her rig - but they use the traditional 19th century rig and tar the shrouds and ratlines, unlike the slightly more modern Asgard which uses wooden ratlines and rope-wrapped wire for the shrouds.
We had dinner and I begged off watch, having been on-watch every night we had watches apart from my night off due to galley duty. Many peoples repaired to the pub thirty seconds away, the Rotterdam. I went for about half an hour, sat swaying with tiredness as well as too much seatime, and came back to the ship, where I wrote up notes. Apparently the others went on to a music session in a pub called the Duke of York later.
Slept until one am, when peoples tripped in from the pub. Kev comes in, staggering, "Jesus Christ the boat's moving!" and I stick my (annoyed and sleepy) head out of my bunk to say, "No, Kev. Just you."
"Oh," he says, and collapses into his bunk, while Cormac, coming in behind him and now down to his boxers, stumbles so I'm staring right at his arse and manky underwear. (Close quarters. What the fuck can you say?)
"Nice arse, Cormac, but I really don't need to see it!"
"Sorry," says he, and clambers up into his own bunk. "Oich' mhaith."
And then silence, save for snoring, and the ship is disconcertingly still.
Breakfast call is 0800. I'm up at 0730, but no one else wants to wake up. It's a slow breakfast and a slow start to the day, but we're at cleaning stations by nine fifteen, with our gear packed and out of the way on top of the doghouse. Clean below, scrub decks, polish brasses - freaking hard work after seven days - and then we're done. We have a whip-round for the crew by way of thanks (enough for three rounds each, at least, and quite possible five), signed off ship's articles, and crammed into the mess for the captain and permanent crew to give us a brief post-mortem of the trip: roughly four hundred nautical miles, three hundred mostly under engines, and Wednesday, one hundred under sail. Captain said more things had gone against him that trip than any other trip in the last five years (high winds, engine prop, anchor, no wind, more high winds, a freezer melt-down) but hey, we're all alive and uninjured, and unlike some trips, all welcome to come back.
And then I walked off through ugly Belfast to find the train station, an ATM, and lunch: made the train station at 1130, waited for the 1230 train to Dublin, which some of the others were also catching - we were so loud, all of us, having spent the week practically shouting to be heard over the sound of the ship, the wind, the sails, each other, that we'd forgotten how to speak normally.
I got off the train at my stop, and the rest you know.
I'll definitely go back and do that again sometime, though. I think a leg of the 2010 tallships race runs from Istanbul to Greece: I have my eye on that one, but yeah, definitely go back. Despite the smell, the damp, the chill, the heat, and the close quarters, and the icky itchy grimy feel of going more than three days without a shower, it was fun. It was a good crew, even if a couple of people were mysteriously absent when work was to be done, quiet Kev was painfully shy, and the weird Andrew from Louth turned out disturbingly, annoyingly weird.
It was fun.
Previous entries in this series, which has now topped out around ten thousand words' worth of talking:
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Days 4 and 5
Day 6
more general thoughts
And, you know. I'm perfectly happy to talk some more about this if anyone wants me to. :)
