Another "Life Lesson" Along With Your Tour of the Galeon

  Our passage from England to the festival in Netherlands was very rough. About half our watch was seasick, including most of the new people (what an introduction!) The other half, who had their sea legs, were hopping around with the motion of the deck — my own was a cross between a drunkard’s stumble and a toddler’s wobble. But as long as we were moving weirdly anyway, we made the most of it and started dancing the macarena. (Except me, I was holding the wheel half to keep the ship on course and half to keep from falling.) Later a local newspaper interviewed several of us about the ship and the trip, including one whose memories of the passage were a rotation of sleep, barf, work, and repeat. But my memories of the same trip were laughing with my shipmates at midnight. Same ship, same passage, very different memories. It’s all personal. Sure, bodies don’t always cooperate and my sick crew mates had little choice in the matter. But the rest of us could have grumbled, or we could have laughed and danced in the rain. It’s how you frame it.

(Life lessons along with your tour of El Galeon, no extra charge.) 
 

Dancing on the quarterdeck, during this passage which was calmer than the outbound one.

Laughing at the helm, despite the rain.

Recapping the macarena during the crew party in Delfzijl.

An oldie but goodie -- going around the top of Nova Scotia in 2017. This was my longest passage on the Galeon (12 days) and the coldest I've ever been in summertime -- during one night watch it was 35 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind was 35 knots on the nose. 

The newspaper article mentioned. I don't read Dutch but I could make out the "pirate ship" and "Delfzijl" in the headline. One of our Dutch crew translated for us as we sat around the galley table.

Tidbits: "Learning the Ropes"

 

Our ship has 10 km/6 miles of rope rigging of various sizes, and a new crew member’s first task when coming aboard is to learn the name of each one and what it does (in Spanish of course, although “brioles” to me sounds more like a pastry one would order along with fancy coffee at Starbucks than the name of the small lines that hold the sail to the spar.) And where do you think the expression, “oh that new guy on the job? He’s still learning the ropes” comes from? Anyway a former captain gave Jaye the responsibility of making sure all the lines were correctly coiled and stored after each evolution. Only between former captain’s imperfect English and Jaye’s imperfect Spanish, the new job title came out “Mistress of the Ropes,” which is definitely a good porn star name, but perhaps not so much a good job title! 

Delfzijl, The Netherlands

 Our third crossing of the North Sea was an insanely rough passage, followed by an intense weekend festival and then an immediate return to England. 

It has been a really rough passage across from Great Yarmouth. Now skimming the north coast of the Netherlands. Not many pix; I was mostly focused on keeping my footing! OTOH, I became a better heavy weather helmsman, so that counts. Here’s a tall ship sunset for you, from one of our quieter moments.

One thing about the sailing community: we are actually a very small tight group, very spread out geographically. It was beyond spectacular to get a visit from an old USNA Sailing colleague and his family! 

This was our colleague's photo, his first view of the ship.

Shades of Jaye's former life as a scientist involved with environmental regulations: We hosted a private event for the EU’s regulators and shipping industry about new greenhouse gas emissions limits. Here’s a presentation on use of wind power on cargo ships. Deliciously ironic, on a replica of a wind powered cargo ship from 350 years ago! (Zoom in on the slide to see some of those newer technologies.) Texting with former environmental boss about this event, we noted that both the newer technologies and the trade offs they discussed (for example if time is money and sail is slower how do you quantify the balance with the unquantifiable ecological advantages?) reflected problems that we'd faced 15 years earlier on the other side of the Atlantic. But it really was a fun venue for the regulators! I guess if you've got to host a meeting, this would be an excellent way to guarantee attendance.  

An example of one of those newer technology wind cargo ships was docked at the festival.

Like many festivals, it included a crew parade and an outrageously fun party for all the ships' crews to meet each other. And unique to Holland, a snack tent where they made stroopwafels (delightful Dutch cookies) while you watched, and could eat them still warm (which we did every day while we were there!)

Fireworks every night, and we had a perfect front-row-viewing-platform right on the ship!

 

Looking back toward shore during the fireworks. Quite crowded!

We got our requisite visit from a "Jack Sparrow" ...

...as well as some other local pirates.

We didn't have a lot of time off to explore the town, but did make a somewhat hurried visit one morning to buy European-style chargers for our phones since the ones we had brought broke, and passed this stall of Moroccan pottery. Good thing we were so limited on space or I would have bought half the stall! We still had to buy an extra suitcase to get home, but more on that later.

All too soon it was time to move on. Fortunately our return passage was a lot calmer than the trip out. On June 18, my kid brother's birthday and almost the summer solstice, I posted that this far north (we’re at 54 degrees latitude, closer to the North Pole than the equator) it doesn’t get all the way dark. Here’s a hint of what the sky looked like when we got off watch at local midnight. This morning, hello England!

Great Yarmouth, England

 We spent a lot of time in northeastern England on this tour. Great Yarmouth (literally, the mouth of the River Yare) was the first of many cities. This town had a huge herring fishing industry until the fish population crashed in the 1950s; now it’s somewhat struggling to reinvent itself. But like many such towns we’ve visited, its maritime focus meant we received a warm welcome.

 We always visit local museums when available; I love the stories small towns tell about themselves. This one was all about the herring fishery. Here, an immersive opportunity to experience a recreation of a “row” in the 1950s. There was a chandlery, grocer, tailor, etc -- everyday life 75 years ago.

Diorama of the fishing industry of the time.

The pier on the seafront: like a 1950s time capsule with boardwalk and arcade across the street. 

The flamingoes are obviously not local to England (reminded me of Florida) but the entire street was alternating arcades and fish-and-chips shops and ice cream. 

The walk to our favourite pub went along, then through, this medieval wall surrounding the city.

Another bit of the wall; just casually accepted and interspersed with more modern buildings.

We were visited by a guy with this gorgeous macaw on his shoulder. He posed the bird at several places on the ship, and allowed me this photo op.

We’ve had a “Jack Sparrow” in every port. I have a running bet with myself on the Jack Sparrow thing — almost broke my streak until finally this guy came on our next-to-last day here. By the end of the tour I had a file of "Jack Sparrows" on my phone and the bet became a bit more public, going double-or-nothing at each port. 

On one of our days off we took a train to Norwich ("Norritch" is how it sounded to me when one of our visitors suggested we go.) Gorgeous medieval architecture; this is a guild hall from the 1400s.

This was the gate to the cathedral area.

Part of the cloisters.

This tall quiet place

Was a cathedral,

'Ere they cut the trees

To build a chapel.

According to my friend Moni, indeed the architecture in some parts of the church is designed to echo a walk in the forest.

With the lighting, this corridor does feel like a forest.

Here's a random photo of an aspen forest that came across my feed. It claims to be from Colorado but it's just a bit too regular; I think it could be a plantation, or it could be AI.

OTOH, I'm pretty sure this one is legit, from Arizona.

June 6 at exactly noon this reenactor read a proclamation about D-day eighty years prior. As we would learn on our tour, the memory of the two World Wars was very prominent all over Europe.

Pasties were tasty and convenient hand-meals for the miners back in the old days, but I prefer to eat mine with a fork; I'm messy!

My photo of a photo of our ship docked at the South Quay, a gift from a local photographer.

"Monday Morning Not-At-All Blues"

 

I once lived a life where “Monday morning” meant wearing business attire and spending most of my waking hours staring at a computer screen in a gray-walled cubicle. Here’s my “work clothing” and “office” for 3 June 2024. I didn’t leave the ship at all yesterday and still managed to walk 2.3 kilometres and climb 24 flights of stairs according to my fitness tracker. (I love my life!)

Honestly I wonder if that's the reason "pirates" are such a popular theme right now; if you spend your days in the aforementioned gray cubicle, it's nice to dream of being a rebel and the freedom of the open seas.

Tidbits: "I Never Thought of it Like That!"

 

View of the main mast looking up from the deck

The mast! 120 feet/36 meters tall, it goes clear through all the decks and sits in a massive collar on the base. (I have a photo of it which I'll add to this post when I find it.) In the past it was made of laminated wood wedges; in the refit it was switched to metal. Same strength for half the weight, less maintenance and as long as we can effectively tell the historical story, every dollar not spent on ship’s maintenance is a dollar we can spend on education. But a surprisingly frequent question we gat is whether the original masts were also made of steel (I’m not even sure that existed in the 17th century?). “Sir/ma’am, if there really was a perfectly straight, 37-metre tall tree in Spain…the government likely wouldn’t let us cut it down for this project.” Much of Europe had used up easily accessible resources by this time, deforested and mined out. If they hadn’t accessed the resources of the western hemisphere, I’m not sure what history would have looked like but it wouldn’t have been what we now know. On of my visitors yesterday also pointed out that over the centuries we’ve done reverse genetic selection—cutting down the best strongest trees and leaving the less desirable ones to reproduce.

"Life Lesson" Along With Your Tour of the Galeon

 

The barrel doesn't serve any function on the modern ship but provides "atmosphere."

One of our maintenance tasks while underway or otherwise not open to the public, has been stripping many layers of dark brown paint off this column and its mate at the entry to the galley. We had to untie the barrel tied to it to do the work, then retie it securely before we set sail. I was trying to remember exactly how it was tied before; working with my delightful crew mate Luki. He said, “You know, I’ve never been a fan of necessarily recreating exactly what was done before. Just, solve the problem [as you see it in front of you] now.” (Life lessons along with your tour of the Galeon, no extra charge.) 

Luki's job during this maintenance day was polishing the ship's bell; the giant cleat he's sitting on is just above Dan's head! He's Austrian but had extremely good English so it was easy for us to get to know each other.

Scraping the column; note we use modern tools. I tell visitors we're 21st century people living on a 17th century ship.