Sunday, September 3, 2017

One Crazy Day in Boston


Boston was the first stop on the boat show festival circuit for the summer.  I counted 51 participating ships on the official website (which also has some lovely photos of the event in their banner); even if not all of the ships made it there were still plenty of ships and crowded docks.  Our ship was so popular that our jobs were more traffic control than tourguide; we never really had opportunities to chat with the visitors so no good stories there. 

The crowds were intense and we were busy on our working days, so when we had our day off we made the most of it.  FOMO (jokingly referred to as "fear of missing out" inspired by social media pressure) is real, and I'm quite susceptible to it. We ended up having a day off so active, we couldn't wait to get back to work to "rest!" 


The old, lovely tradition of ships displaying their crews on the yardarms coming in to port is one that we almost never do on the Galeon -- we simply don't have enough crew to pull it off well. Some of the military sail training craft, however, have crews as many as 200-300 people, so they put on the show.

Our unique profile on the dock. Most other tall ships represent a period in history that came much later than ours, by a couple hundred years. 

Watching from the foredeck as the dusk settles and the city lights come on is a wonderful way to wind down at the end of a long day.

One of the best crew perks is the ability for more in-depth conversations and visits with other crews. (Not having to stand in lines helps as well.) Here, getting a sense of scale from the Chilean training ship Esmeralda. 

The daughter of an old colleague, now friend, came to volunteer while we were in Boston, and posed with the captain and two of the crew members. 

We heard the sounds of the parade coincidentally just after our visit, so we stopped to watch.


Zany crew from one of the ships.

When the El Galeon delegation passed us ...

... Alvaro our watch leader encouraged us to join in ...

... so we did! Here's V. holding one side of the flag. 

We walked a long circuitous route through the streets of Boston...

... but by the time we got to the end, we were thoroughly lost and wouldn't have made it back to the ship without the help of our phones' GPSs.

On the other hand, there was a lovely lunch celebration at the end.  My first sample of Boston Creme Pie.

Yeison hamming it up playing air guitar with our sign.

That evening there was a crew party aboard one of the other ships.  The theme was "anything but clothes." Apparently this is a thing in England. Old sails, trash bags, bedsheets all qualified. People also wore cardboard boxes, duct tape -- literally anything except clothing!

2 comments:

  1. "Anything but clothes" - that must have made for some very interesting outfits :-)

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  2. Indeed, the creativity was remarkable!

    ReplyDelete