In Which My Sleeping Bag Gets Clean.

My roof is done. It's very pretty. Also, I have a new nephew! Awesome.


I'm at the laundromat. I'm watching my sleeping bag spin around in the sudsy water, getting all the musty boat-smell out of it, so I can sleep in it for another two weeks at Wisconsin Christian Youth Camp. I'll be teaching crafts and leading discussions and making sure teenaged girls stay in their beds at night, and having a lot more fun than adults are generally allowed to have.

I'm also trying to decide what else to tell you about my sailing adventures before I go. I can't fit it all into this blog post, not with the amount of time I have left. But I can get a good chunk down, and take notes for when I get back. Sailing stories and camp stories! I'll have enough material to last me until October.

So, back to the boat:

My first hour aboard the Chieftain was pure bliss. I was enthusiastically greeted by a number of charming sailors, who seemed to be mostly male and mostly significantly younger than I am. I was assigned a bunk (or "rack") and then fed a fantastic dinner, enlivened by the conversation of my adorable new shipmates. "Do you always eat this well?" I asked them, and they answered, "Oh yes. Our cook went to culinary school."

If this were a Shakespeare play, that would be the bit where I turn to the audience and ask aside: "Have I died and gone to Heaven?" Only I guess I would ask in iambic pentameter, wouldn't I? "Am I deceased, and now in Heaven dine / With jovial sailors, doused in tar of pine?"

This dinner was also my first experience with muster, a twice-daily all-crew meeting. When the ship is in port for the night, evening muster takes place after the last sail of the day, once all sails have been furled and the deck set to rights. It is usually accompanied by dinner or a late snack, and on the Chieftain, it begins like this:

CAPTAIN: So!
CREW: So!
CAPTAIN: We went sailing today.
CREW: [various affirmative noises]
CAPTAIN: How did we do?

And then everyone reviews what happened that day, what went well and what could have gone better. It's a great way to end the day, whether that day was good or terrible. That first night, I had no idea what they were talking about, so I spent the time trying to get everyone's name, identity, and position fixed in my head. Some of this was futile, as there was to be a major crew changeover in the next couple of days.

In fact, as it turned out, this was the captain's last night. In honor of his departure, there was a huge party, involving the crews of both the Chieftain and the Lady Washington, an endless round of colorful songs, and a whole lot of booze. As I'm not much of a drinker, I can say it was a memorable introduction to life aboard ship. A number of my crewmates, on the other hand, couldn't remember much at all the next day.

The following several days were fairly rough for me, compared to the rest of my time aboard. The initial learning curve was brain-fillingly steep. Everything on a boat seemed to have a different name than its land counterpart, and then there were a whole lot of things I'd never encountered before, so that even forming coherent sentences about my surroundings was a challenge. Suddenly Vizzini's orders to "Pull... the thing! And... that other thing!" didn't seem so ridiculous anymore. It was painful to want so badly to be useful, and yet to be still trying to interpret an order while others were already accomplishing it. I remember reading a quote somewhere (probably Melville, possibly O'Brian) to the effect that there is no sorrier sight than a new sailor, because he will constantly be getting in the way, and all his efforts will be ineffective, ill-timed, and ridiculous. Fortunately, everyone else on the ship knows what that feels like.

In the defense of all beginning sailors, it's the contrast that makes us look bad. A good sailor in his/her element is a magnificent creature, moving with power, grace, efficiency and confidence through a complex and challenging environment. Sailing demands both your muscles and your brain, most of your senses, and all of your attention, and even at the end of my fourth week I was still only just beginning to get a handle on it. But the times I allowed myself to stop worrying about getting it right, to step back and really take in what was going on around me -- the complex interaction of natural forces and mechanisms that moved us through the space between water and sky -- those were moments of sheer awe and delight.

Once the officers had settled into their new positions, volunteer training became a little more methodical, and I began to gain confidence in the knowledge and abilities I was acquiring. The day's routine became familiar: mornings doing chores, maintenance, and dockside tours; daily afternoon sails, 2-5; and sometimes, especially on weekends, evening sails from 6-9. The latter made for long days and dreamless nights. For my first couple of weeks, the Lady Washington was in Westport as well, and most of our expeditions were "Battle Sails", where we executed combat maneuvers and fired cannons against one another. (Here's a nice shot of the Chieftain during one of those sails, before my arrival.) After the Lady left, we took passengers on "Adventure Sails," which weren't nearly as exciting, but which allowed more opportunity for teaching both passengers and volunteers.

It was at the end of the first week that I realized, There's just too much to learn here; I'm not going to know nearly enough by the end of two weeks. And also, I can't bear to be at the halfway mark already! That was when I asked to stay a third week. At the end of the second week, I drove back to Portland for a day to take care of some business, and at that time I cleared my calendar for a fourth week. Even during that fourth week, as exhausted as I was, every time I remembered the rapidly dwindling number of days I had left, a little voice in my head screamed "Nooooo!"

I could write more, but I'm not at the laundromat anymore, and now I'm just procrastinating on the packing. So I'll see you in two weeks.

In Which There May Be Elephants On My Roof.

Yes, you have to use word verification to comment now. I'm sorry about that. The comment spambots finally found me, and this is the least invasive way to keep them at bay.

I began this post sort of early in the morning, not because I have to work, nor because I went to bed at any kind of decent hour last night, but because the Roof Men are here. After several delays, they are here and they are rumbling, clomping, and thudding around my roof. I'm glad they're here. But all the racket sort of eliminates the option of going back to sleep.

The Roof Men speak Spanish quickly and English slowly. They are very polite, a little shy even. I'm glad for their sake that the weather is cooler today. They are only doing half of my roof, but it still might take them more than a day because my roof has four layers to be removed: three of shingle, and one of wood shakes underneath all the rest. (Yeah, that's totally illegal. I don't know how it even happened in the first place.)

So since I am awake, and yet not really very awake, it seems like a good time to tell you a little more about how I ended up aboard the Hawaiian Chieftain. I have talked about it a lot, but written very little as yet. But the talking helps me sort out how to write it, because the questions people ask show me what parts most need telling. So here is the beginning of the story.

I first heard about sailing tall ships when I was in high school, I think. There was an article in the Eugene Register-Guard which interviewed some gal who volunteered on the Lady Washington, and I cut it out and saved it, as much for the pictures as anything else. At the time I was reading a lot of high seas adventures, Treasure Island and The Dark Frigate and the like, and I spent a lot of time with my piratey Legos and computer games. So of course I thought, "That's really cool. I'd like to try that someday."

I eventually threw away the article in an overly thorough file-weeding session, but not before noting "Sail in an old-fashioned vessel" on a list of Things I Want To Do Someday in my diary. And a couple years ago, upon certain realizations regarding my own mortality, I sought out that list to see what still needed checking off. Some things no longer seemed so important -- I no longer want a pet iguana, for example -- but others struck me as being A Very Good Idea. So I took up archery, and assembled a harp, and wondered idly about the whole tall ship thing.

Then there was this movie that came out a couple years ago that had some pirates and ships in it and stuff. Maybe you heard of it. After watching it, I decided it was really time to search the internet for that ship I'd read about all those years ago, and see if she was still taking volunteer crew.

Google landed me at ladywashington.org, where I discovered much to my astonishment that one of the ships I'd just been watching on the big screen, the Interceptor, was in fact "played" by the Lady Washington herself. So then of course I had to watch the movie all over again so I could pay more attention to the ship instead of to Certain Actors. After all, the world is full of beautiful men, but a ship as gorgeous as the Lady is a rare and wondrous thing.

I applied to crew the following summer, but the volunteer coordinator ended up in the hospital for a couple months, and in the meantime my application got lost. So I applied again the next summer, but not until too late. Then I applied a third time, well in advance ("...and it burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp."), and finally I was accepted -- to crew for the Hawaiian Chieftain, a new acquisition for the organization that owns the Lady Washington. (I admit I was a little disappointed by this at first, but I figured there were probably reasons to be glad I was on the Chieftain instead, and sure enough, there were.)

So all of this hope and fear and expectation and dread was just boiling in me as I tried to stroll nonchalantly down the dock toward the Hawaiian Chieftain for the first time. I actually had to stop walking for a second, stilled by a wave of emotion at the thing I was about to embark upon. And I took a deep breath, and noted: This is what it feels like when a dream comes true.

In Which It's Too Hot To Hoot.

It's so hot. Seriously. Hot hot hot.

Yesterday a Target employee told me that they're sold out of air conditioners throughout all of Oregon and Washington. Today someone told me that transformers are melting down in some areas because everyone's using their air conditioners. I had mine on all day yesterday, and invited friends over to share the cool. It's ancient, inefficient, and an eyesore, this big ol' box built right into my living room wall, but I sure was glad I had it.

Today I've mostly been at work, which is in some areas (like my office) even hotter than my house, so I haven't turned on the AC here. It seems kind of wasteful to run it just for myself, just for a couple hours, since I am leaving pretty soon here anyway.

I think I would have been better prepared for this heat wave if I hadn't spent the last four weeks in Westport on a boat. I know this because I went to see Gjallarhorn at the Aladdin last week. The Aladdin is a wonderful venue, really, but their air conditioner is always on waaay too high. (I once spoke to a manager there about this, and he explained that it's so old that it doesn't have any settings other than Very Cold and Off. And once you turn it Off, it doesn't readily turn back on.) So I always take a jacket to the Aladdin. But Spider did not take a jacket to the Aladdin, and was complaining of the cold within the first five minutes. So I let him wear my jacket, because I wasn't actually all that cold. See, the Aladdin's air conditioning was merely a balmy breeze compared to the wind in Gray's Harbor.

It was cool there; the temp rarely got as high as 70 on land, and it was much colder on the water. I didn't really like it. I wore long underwear almost every day. But apparently I got used to it after four weeks.

And now I'm too hot.

In Which Home is the Sailor.

The last time I posted, I was at the eve of a two-week stint as volunteer crew aboard the tall ship Hawaiian Chieftain, in Gray's Harbor, Washington. Somewhere in there, two weeks turned into four, and when I cast off mooring lines last Saturday afternoon and watched my ship sail away without me, I knew that even four weeks was really not enough.

I've been dreading the writing of this blog post, because I feel both the urgent need and the utter inability to explain how and why this sailing thing has captured my heart. I want to record every moment, bright and dark, before it slips away. But how can I describe the deluge of new information, the tide of challenges, the all-consuming submersion into this new life, how it battered and buoyed me? How can I explain how much it changed everything, how much it changed me?

There's so much. Sail stories will be leaking out of me for the rest of my life, but today I don't even know where to begin. So I'll just tell you this:

You know how sometimes your subconscious plays this trick on you where you hear someone's voice so clearly that it wakes you out of sleep, even though no one is there? This happens to me a lot. Yesterday I took a nap after lunch (oh naps, how I missed you!). I was awakened by the voice of my captain, calling out the command to cast off mooring lines: "Take one! Take two!" and, fainter, the subsequent cry: "Haul away one! Haul away two!"

I rubbed my eyes: I was home, in my own bed, very far away from the Chieftain. I rolled over and looked at the clock: 2 p.m -- the exact time the Chieftain leaves the dock daily for her afternoon sail, the exact time those commands were being given in Westport's harbor, and exactly 24 hours from when I heard them last.

* * *

At least I have pictures to make up for my lack of words. Here are some great photos taken by my crewmate Ian's dad, and captioned by Ian himself. His feelings at parting with the Chieftain were markedly similar to my own. And here are some crappy pictures taken by a radio station that chartered the ship for a movie-related contest. Definitely not as highly recommended, but they do show me at the helm, as well as some off-kilter shots of the drawbridge I got to pilot us through in Aberdeen.