New Adventures and Ties to the Past
It’s a day of remembrance on our good ship today. This week I had the honour to represent Bluenose II at the celebration of life for Capt. Douglas Himmelman. I sailed aboard Bluenose II as Capt. Himmelman’s bosun/3rd officer. This was one of those gifts life gives you that you do not understand until it has passed and done. Capt. H was such an accomplished mariner with a breadth of experience rarely seen today. The master mariners in the church were impressive in their own right, mariners whose careers I hold as exemplary.
First Sail of the Season
Good morning,
Bending on Sail
May 12th
Mother’s Day, a good day to remind our young crew to call home! It’s easy when you are off on a big adventure to become involved in the world around you and forget to water the garden on the home front. In my day as a deckhand, we would line up in the evening behind the Red and White grocery and take our turn at the payphone. We would laugh and fool around while we called partners and parents. It was a bonding experience that is missed now with cell phones and the age of instant communication.
Lots to Learn
The seasons are slowly changing, at least here on Bluenose II our markers of time passing are being checked off. Our last deckhand arrived this week, fresh from University and fully ready for a different adventure. The addition of new crew during the long hours of a spring refit and uprig is always a happy adventure. First, there is an extra body to share the load and help, secondly, there is an injection of enthusiasm into the folks before the mast. With the addition of the last crew member the external training portion of the spring could begin.
Safety Training
Hi all,
Two Weeks of Maintenance and Transformation
by Captain Phil Watson
I cannot believe it's been two weeks since our last post. It seems like yesterday in Bluenose time but yet the ship looks substantially different and there is visual proof that a great deal of work has been completed by our crew.
The Work Continues
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.
Scrape, Sand, Paint, and Repeat
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.