Good afternoon,

I feel like I am stuck in an old black and white movie where they show the passage of time by ripping pages from a calendar. Here we are about to start the fourth week of refit and I am certainly beginning to feel the pressure of time and schedule. “Time and tide wait for no man,” as Chaucer once wrote. I’m sure the feeling of this proverb is spread across the cultures of the globe, this version seems apt for rigging a schooner in the east coast spring.

We are about to start our third week here on the ship and there is blessedly little to write about. I can remember as a deckhand trying to keep a journal and after weeks of writing, “today I sanded and painted and varnished,” I gave up!  I’m sure the deckhands of today feel the same as I did thirty odd years ago. Anyway, the gang has been hard at it servicing the blocks, varnishing the smaller spars, and preparing the deck boxes. All this work carries on in the rigging shed next to the museum.