Just over two months after the sail through a gale mentioned in the earlier entry, I find myself waking up on a crisp morning in a sleeping back on a bunk in the small square main hold of the brig Lady Washington. Nearby the cook bustles about in the adjoining galley.
I can clearly see my breath, every exhalation sending a plume into the cold air like a whale spout. We don't have reveille for another hour, but I have an urgent need to get up. A montage of memories of glass after glass of IPA with the captain and some others in the only bar down town provides the answer why I so urgently need to visit a head.
There's heads ("toilets" you might say) on the ship but when we're in fresh water their use is to be avoided because we need to pump out the tanks when they get full. So I quickly get dressed and head up the ladder, through the open hatch to deck. I nearly slip and as soon as I step out on deck -- the deck is covered in a thin layer of ice and frost! A quick trot along the frost covered gravel marina parking lot brings me to the shoreheads. I'm outside a small town on the Colombia River called Kalama.
Just over two months earlier I had nearly no experience on tallships, or sailing at all. I'd been called on to go aloft and help furl in the darkness and tossing seas of my first sail on the brig Pilgrim, and then experienced the gale of the prior entry. After this wild induction into the life of sailing, I naturally couldn't wait to dive right in for more. I'd been told about an organization which runs two ships constantly (the brig Lady Washington and ketch Hawaiian Chieftain), and which you can join full time as a volunteer with no prior experience (and if you're really lucky even get a paying job on!). The slow season in beekeeping was just beginning, so I went to the Middle East for a month and when I returned I promptly enlisted upon the Lady Washington.
Obligatory picture of me upon my initial arrival to join the Lady Washington.
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