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.