Star Sail Crew 2006

It occured to me that I had not posted anything on working on Sail Crew in a long time. The last post I wrote was about how I'd been put on the mizzen crew on the Surprise. Well...A lot has happened since then. I guess I hadn't written about the Surprise in a while because I was so crushed, and after a while, I didn't know how to talk about it.

First off, we spent several weekends after my last post's doings, sail training. We would set all sails dockside, and pretend that we were out sailing. Captain Welton would give out commands, and the mast captains would pass them to us. "All hand prepare to wear ship!" meant that we would man the braces and get ready wear the ship. On one memorable Sunday, Captain Welton suddenly called out "Missed stays!" which threw most people into confusion. But somehow everyone figured it out and we all managed to be in the right places to follow the next orders to bring the ship back into the wind and try turning again (missed stays means that in a tack the ship has lost its ability to turn and can't finish the tack. Not a great thing to happen.) We figured it out! And slowly we, as the crew of the Surprise, got better and better, and faster as well (with the topmen able to furl the sails in 45 minutes instead of an hour and a half).

And then a big weekend came up. Captain Welton had arranged for us to take the Surprise out the two Sundays before the big sail. We wanted to make sure that we wouldn't make asses of ourselves in front of everyone, like backing up into the sub and sinking it or something (which isn't necessarily a bad thing really...). We even made arrangements for specially ordered lunches those Sundays. But alas...it was not to be. If it had happened, I surely would have plastered this blog with my recounts of the wondrous event.

We mustered on the Surprise at 7:30 with a sense of trepidation. I already knew we weren't going out, because I had placed the lunch order at work, and Captain Welton had emailed me to tell me to cancel it if I still could. But still...I had no idea it would be as disappointing as it turned out to be. We mustered, and Jim Davis, the mate of the Star, showed up to tell us what happened. The Coast Guard had been told of our coming excursions and reacted badly to it. Someone (whose name will not be mentioned) asked them permission, even though sometimes it is better to ask for forgiveness. And the Coast Guard decided that we weren't properly registered and so couldn't go out.

Its all in a name. We couldn't sail because the ship was registered as a yatch. So what?! The bottom line is that the Surprise needs a Certificate of Inspection, and do to that, she has to be dry-docked. Which won't happen till at least February, and depends on the availability of the dockyard and the 40K needed to haul out her delicate 500+ ton self.

The Museum spent that morning doing what they could for the 50 or so of us that were now stuck without a ship to sail in two weeks, and suffering because of our long weeks of hard work for nothing. (I shouldn't say for nothing, because the Surprise looks so much better now, and something about her feels better too. She's ready, we just need permission now.) They offered to split the museum crew into A and B with each half going one of the two days of sail on the Star. But we didn't want to do that because it would be unfair to the Star crew and ackward for us, not knowing how to work the Star. They offered to give us the left over spots of people who didn't show up come muster time on the Sail weekend. There would only be a few spots, but some of us who'd never sailed before would get a chance to experience it. We pondered that. And they said that once our ship had been cleared, we could have a couple of good sail weekends to go out and have a blast. There was even talk of overnight weekends, because the Surprise is qualified for that. But all that would have to wait till probably March.

So, at the end of the meeting, we were all very unhappy and depressed. I think many of us were a little angry too, including our captain. But apparently we impressed the Museum by our show of solidarity as a crew and voting unanimously to wait till March instead of taking the other options. The Star crew nearly made a few of us cry a little later by standing on the poop deck of the Star and giving us a three cheers.

We spent the rest of the day continuing sail training, and same on the following Sunday. But a lot of our momentum had been lost. We are not giving up on our ship. Far from it. The silver lining of this whole incident is that we have until February to get the Surprise looking as best as absolutely possible. For me this means that I can now start on my long desired project of replacing the rotting hammock netting around the sides of the ship. With my schedule and the holidays coming up, this will probably take till February to finish. But it will be worth it. Everyting about this ship is worth it. And that's the way we all feel. One crew, the museum says, one crew, three ships. But we also thing we are a bit of three crews too. I know from sailing on the Californian, two weeks later and taking copious pictures of the Star looking gorgeous off the coast of California, that it was a great experience, but I would have given anything to have been on the Surprise out there too.