Passage: Penzance to Isle of Man

El Galeon is a lot of work, and a lot of fun, in the same package. Here's some pix from our passage: a sunset at sea and a dolphin escort. Surprisingly chilly, which was delightful after days in the 90sF/mid-30sC before we left. Long passages are in some ways easier than short ones, in that you can really get into the rhythm of whatever watch you're on. All the passages on this summer tour were only a couple of days at most, though.

"What visitors think I do"

"What I really do." Yes, in real life I'm the helmsman on a pirate ship. Pretty unique item to have on a resume!

"What I really really do." There's no comfy indoor nav station. Just like in the old days, the helmsman and most of the watch are out on the quarterdeck whatever the weather.

Penzance, England -- Tides! (Part 2 of 2)

 Penzance -- well, much of England, actually --  has a big tidal range; about 7 meters/20 feet. Our ship is docked in a small enclosed basin with a sill across the entry; at low tide the sill keeps a minimum pool of water in (otherwise it would dry out completely.) It keeps the water level comfortably nearly constant and extremely calm. But the downside is boats in this inner basin can only come or go in the hour or two around high tide.

Here's a view of the gate open at high tide.

The gate is still closed here, and this vessel is waiting to exit.

The outer basin, which is allowed to dry out at low tide. Note that to accommodate these conditions the English boats have two keels so they can remain flat as the water recedes. Cinderella, having only one, traditional keel, would potentially fall over on her side.

Here's a zoomed-in version so you can better see the twin keels 

In olden times, they used the tides to their advantage. Here's a tower on an island called St Michael's Mount. As we were arriving (at high tide, obvs) the tower is completely isolated. At low tide, there's a stone walkway that visitors can us to explore the island and the tower. One one of the locals told me it was associated with a female pirate in its history but I haven’t found that on google ... yet. (not my photos)

Penzance, England (Part 1 of 2)

 

We slept hard after our travels, then packed up to head to the ship. I had never heard of this smallish town in southwestern England other than the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, but was willing to do a little exploring during our time off, which turned out to be on the day of our arrival. (The managers try to give everyone at least one day off to explore each of the towns we dock at, although the rest of the time we work, hard.) So, after hugs all around to friends from previous years and handshakes to new-to-us crew, we stowed our gear in our newly-assigned bunks and headed out. 

 

We just had to be pirates in Penzance!

The ironic juxtaposition of our ship docked by a building that had a mural of a "pirate ship" painted on the side of it.

Close up of the "pirate" mural. Sadly the pub was closed when we were there; it might have been fun to try.

We wandered the streets of town a bit; found a pleasant pub to sit outdoors. We held one half of a larger table and a succession of people asked to share the other half. We were more than willing, got lots of local insights and in return told ship stories. People were generally impressed and we were reminded of how much we enjoyed our celebrity status as ship's crew. Continuing around town we saw relatively few detached houses compared to the row houses. To my delight they weren't painted in uniform "subdued earth tones" like so many townhouse developments in the U.S. These had tons of personality and individuality. We would find it a common theme in many, though not all, parts of England.

Our visit coordinated with a local midsummer festival called Golowan. It had Druid roots, was coopted into a Christian celebration of Saint John, and then into its modern form. It included fireworks and crowds, market stalls, roaming bands, and a slightly odd parade weaving through the center of town that included large fanciful wicker (?) figures.

I didn't really understand what the figure in red represented as it "danced" and the girl with the clacking sticks moved in front of it, but it definitely had a pagan feel. There were several similar performances, too crowded for us to get close enough for a good view. (I grabbed this view from the quarterdeck, in between explaining the ship to the visitors.)

The first “quiet” fireworks show I’ve seen — more snap-crackle-pop than boom, which didn't detract a bit from the beauty of the show and helped to eliminate traumatized birds or PTSD surviving soldiers. 

The festival brought the biggest crowds of the year to the town, we were told, and also the perfect amount of visitors to the ship: enough to keep the budget back in Spain happy,  but few enough that we could spend the time to have real conversations with everyone who wanted to. Frustratingly, some towns we are victims of our own success, and the ship is so crowded we can do little more than traffic flow, no real education opportunities. But this was lovely, and a great kickoff to our summer. Lots of questions about the Spanish Armada -- and my mental shift that we were the enemy, to some of their ancestors. The Armada was in 1588, so about 100 years before the period represented by the ship, I'd tell them. "Besides, this time you English gave us your money quite willingly, to come aboard." My retort rarely failed to elicit a chuckle. 

Queen Elizabeth I

Our visitors here,  included a costumed Queen Elizabeth I and Water Raleigh. I was delighted by the creativity and her dress made of gold sequins. I had them pose at the wheel so I could photograph them beneath the Spanish flag, but neglected to get a picture for myself.  We had the the usual families and festivalgoers and costumed pirates, (thankfully no "Jack Sparrow" at this port) and a few memorable and smart wide-eyed kids. I spent some time with a youngish woman who was doing research for her novel; the relevant part to our ship was that one of her characters was a young prince who had just inherited a merchant fleet and needed to learn about it. So we talked about trade winds, scurvy, and pirates, primitive navigation and storms, starvation and shipwrecks, etc. No matter how many books you read or movies you watch, I told her, you don't really understand the scale until you've walked these decks. 

The festival had the town absolutely heaving with people, so the competing attractions kept most visitors from overstaying. One band the first afternoon was so loud I had trouble talking -- and they were two blocks away! People asked how we liked their town out of hospitality, and, I assume, they knew we had visited a lot of places, and they wondered if they'd stand out. Of course we were seeing them in far from their usual conditions!

The town was quite proud of their nature gardens, just a few blocks away but very far from the bustle of the festival crowds.

Water feature with so many flowers and textures.

The backlighting made this fuzzy tree glow.

Dan pointing out a very hairy tree trunk (closeup in the next photo),

Hairy tree

A nice nature path

Getting to the Beginning: Baltimore to London to Penzance

 

We were "only" going to be gone for 3 months this season, rather than almost 6 months last year, so we didn't plan to rent out our apartment. We still had to put everything away because friends were going to be staying there for a couple of weeks while their boat was being worked on. We also wanted to take everything off our boat so nothing could spoil or explode in the summer heat. We'd use it as an opportunity to do a deep clean and clutter reset when we got back in the autumn. Our own choice, but it was still a lot of scramble in the couple of weeks we had available after our stint with Adventurer before we left for El Galeon.

This chaotic wreck looks like a food-hoarder home! But it’s just our Eastport apartment, now that we’ve moved everything off the boat to put it to bed for the summer heat while we’re gone adventuring on El Galeon.

We had an overnight flight on lovely British Airways nonstop from Baltimore. The route was so far north that it was only dark for a couple of hours. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trusting Siri to populate our calendar with the flight information. The app didn't account for the change in time zones, so we scheduled a driver to meet us at the airport at 05:00 AM when we arrived. Fortunately our wonderful agent Sydney figured out that our arrival time was 05:00 Eastern time, which corresponded to a much more civilized 10:00 AM London time before we paid the night hours premium or lost the ride completely when the driver had to wait for us for 5 hours!

Our Uber driver thought we had very little luggage for 3 months; I thought it was a lot! We had our pirate garb, and El Galeon uniform t and polo shirts, and full sailing foul weather gear in addition to what we would carry if it was just regular travel. This trip was literally "planes, trains, and automobiles" to get to the ship, and lugging the luggage was awkward! The large wheeled duffles were just under the airlines weight limits of 23 kg, and only that because we carefully moved the heaviest items into our backpacks.

We had about 4 hours to wait between the time our plane landed at Heathrow, and our train to Penzance left from Reading. We wandered the streets of the town.

More of Reading -- Industrial Era facades.

And even more of Reading.

My first read on this was “doorstops” and I wondered if it was loaves of bread that didn’t bake properly and could only be used as bricks. Didn’t have time to find out what they really were, at the time. Later learned they are thick slices of bread used for making sandwiches.

Surprisingly tasty outdoor restaurant next to the train station where we found excellent veggie curry burgers after our 6 hour flight and before our 5 hour train ride. In general it would prove to be quite easy to find vegetarian options in English restaurants.

Once we struggled to stow the luggage, the train trip was quite pleasant. I got a short nap so missed some of the voyage, (not by choice; I love looking out the window normally but after the overnight flight the motion of the train was so relaxing that I just could not keep my eyes open) but woke up in time for this view of a typical field with hedgerows.

View from the train window of St Austell

Could be anywhere in the Cornwall countryside, in this case it was Truro

The walk from the train station to the hotel was short, but very steep, especially dragging those suitcases. The hydrangea-lined alley was a cheerful treat toward the end.

Dan coincidentally wore a shirt that matched the hotel room. Our travel agent Sydney's superpower is finding these wonderful boutique hotels everywhere we need to be. Looking forward to a good night's sleep before we got to the ship to begin work in the morning.

View from our hotel window. Live music from somewhere, and our favourite Spanish tall ship! It was so tempting to explore the town, but we were way too exhausted from travel.

The Adventure(r) Before the Adventure

 

En route to the festival, on an absolutely perfect June day.

I've always had a soft spot for this boat, s/v Adventurer, that belongs to our dock-neighbor Duncan. As the world was just starting to open up after Covid, he had agreed to show his boat at a festival in Annapolis and asked us if we'd like to assist. (Of course!) 

It was a fairly small festival, by the standards we'd come to expect after years of touring with El Galeon and Nao Santa Maria, but it was pretty darn fun, and local so very easy. Best of all, after a day of chatting with visitors and explaining various things about the boat, I was convinced that I still had my tourguide mojo and Covid hadn't caused it to atrophy. Which was useful because it gave us the confidence to say an enthusiastic "yes" when the Fundacion reached out by email in the autumn of 2023 to ask if we'd be willing to work on the Nao Trinidad for a few weeks, and that in turn led to our amazing opportunity on El Galeon in Europe for summer 2024. Talk about putting yourself in luck's way!

So when Duncan caught us on the dock one spring morning and asked if we'd again be interested in representing his boat again this year, this time for several days and including a pleasant sail to St Michaels and back, we were most definitely willing. 

It was three fun days as part of a classic-boat festival in a popular small town (amusingly, the very same one where we started with the Nao Trinidad as our first reentry into the tall ship world after Covid). Of course, since we were working we didn't see a lot of the festival, but we saw enough, and made some great memories. Here's a little captioned photo tour.

From the boat's promotional literature. I had to memorize all the boat specs and details; and felt a little awkward having to ask our friend how much the boat cost and how much he'd spent on the refit. Because we knew people are curious and they'd ask (they did!) but it certainly felt intrusive in a way that quoting those numbers for El Galeon did not. This boat was someone's personal boat, not owned by an institution.  

Crew lanyards always get you awesome VIP treatment at boat shows. (I'd forgotten just how much, but quickly grew to appreciate it.) The way this one was laid out, though, could have been a business card with an extremely cool job title!

Many of the boats were "deck tours only." But so much of Adventurer's detail was below, and well worth showing off.

The main salon was gorgeous. The tabletop has a custom wood decorative inlay, and is on a mechanized pedestal. It can be countertop height, dining height, fold out, or slide over and make out as a support to become part of a double bed, that we slept on after the festival closed every night.

The galley was bigger and nicer than the kitchen in my first apartment!

On the opposite side, pull-out fridge and freezer drawers. Scary how many visitors thought these were pizza ovens!

Many boats have teak-and-holly flooring with decorative light and dark stripes. On this boat, though, it's the real deal, in the traditional way. Each strip of wood is individually laid, and the light strips are a couple of millimeters thicker than the dark ones, making the surface nonskid.

We did get a few hours to wander the festival; here's one of the classics, immaculately restored in true 1950s style (not the fuzzy dice!) except it was converted from gasoline to lithium battery.

The on site museum had a nice little exhibit about the Underground Railroad that ran through Maryland.

Another vintage classic, this one using airplane construction techniques.

Crew passes get you VIP treatment and entre to many parts of the festivals, but it was these novel crew t-shirts that started lots of conversations for us!

On the first full afternoon, we were supposed to do 1-hour boat rides. Now, an hour is fine for a small powerboat to zip around the harbour with guests, but it's quite a different experience on a large sailboat. Basically we left the dock, raised the sails, sailed for 10 minutes, turned around, sailed another 10 minutes, lowered the sails, and returned to the dock; then did it again! Very thankful for electric winches on this schedule. Every one of the guests who wanted to had a (brief) chance at the helm. For those who didn't have smartphones with them, I took pictures and emailed to them. I had lots of pictures of strangers on my phone by the end of the event.

 

Not quite sure what to make of this quirky vessel that was also (apparently) offering boat rides that afternoon.

 

At dusk on the last day of the festival, we witnessed a surprise wedding proposal. A few young people were loitering on the lawn directly across from where we were docked as the crowds left for the night. I thought it odd but not particularly concerning until the woman screamed. Tired as we were, we invited them aboard, we had no champagne but we toasted their engagement with box wine in plastic cups, and the friend of the soon-to-be-groom who had photoed the proposal, took engagement pictures of them all over Adventurer. 

The trip back to Annapolis was less glorious than the trip out, gray and misty and motor rather than sail. It was still pleasant being out on a boat after a weekend like that. And it was going to be our last weekend before the real work began. We had to kick it into gear though; we had only two weeks left to pack for 3 months on El Galeon in Europe, get Cinderella safely put to bed for the summer and our apartment ready for someone else to live there while we were gone.