10-9: DAMN THE TORPEDOS, RAMMING SPEED!

Today I dropped everything and surged to the bow of an oncoming ship with six other deckhands as it careened towards the port side of the Merc, full speed ahead, inches from rending a hole in the side and sending us to the bottom of the harbor.

Let me back up.

It'd been an efficient day so far. Wrestling the PVC framing for the covers into place, the combined crews of the Merc and Grace were making outstanding headway.

This was less true for the crew of a ship which we'll call, to both spare a bad reputation and assuage the history nerd lurking not so deep within me, the Farragut. Although they already have their cover on, they needed to navigate across the harbor to get mast work done. Fair enough.

Less fair were the conditions. Like the prevailing wind pushing it hard to the south. Or a pair of severely underpowered yawl boats to maneuver it. Or, like us, a lack of onboard engine. So, as we watched them drift about the harbor, scraping across other ships and pylons, we debated whether or not we should send a boat out and lend them a hand.

Then the wind shifted. And the Farragut started drifting, slowly at first but rapidly picking up speed, bow-first towards the side of the Merc.

"Fire up the yawl boats!" roared the Admiral, as the rest of us scooped up fenders and sprinted to the port. I snatched the eight-foot boathook from its stand and jumped housetops to get to the side. Our two yawl boats cast off and coursed towards the oncoming bow, and the Admiral shouted after them as though from the bow of a destroyer, "YOUR JOB IS TO DEFEND THIS BOAT!"

The ship was now no more than twenty feet from crashing into ours. Its bowsprit passed over the rail of the Merc, and two-hundred tons of schooner pressed closer and closer.

I stood on the housetop and pushed directly against it for everything I was worth, as six other sets of hands did the same. Two inches from my straining face was the blue star painted on the heavy wooden tip, closing the distance with the slow, irrevocable pace of an ocean wave.

And there, I think, is the cool thing about ships. Take six people together and tell them to move a log or a boulder just by pushing it. That fucker isn't going anywhere. It's just physics--weight, and ultimately just friction, hold it on the ground.

But put it in the water, and something cool happens (okay, the boulder will sink. Take the log instead): You take away the friction, and suddenly six people working in serious concert can move a few hundred tons. Not very far under these conditions, mind you, but just far enough to buy an extra second.

Sometimes a second is all you need, though. It was all the small fleet of yawl boats needed to move into position and shove the Farragut back into the harbor, where it safely navigated to the other side of the marina and docked up.

The rest of us got back to work. I re-racked the boat hook, and pondered my newfound respect for physics as the Farragut's cover fluttered softly in the breeze.

10-7: Downrigging--A Highlight Reel

Boy, it's been a while! Allow me to explain myself by elucidating the insanity that has been the downrigging process--taking off all the sails, all the ropes, all the heads (fun process, that), all the pumps--everything but the kitchen sink. And we thought real hard about removing that too.

And what better way to do that than a montage! By all means, I encourage you to read this with something jaunty and constructive--howsabout "The House That Jack Built" by Aretha Franklin, or maybe "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding. Got it queued up? Good!

Still didn't stop us from spitting over the side.

• First thing's first: we dry docked the Grace, and it was fucking awesome. Less awesome was listening to not one, but two hilariously uncommunicative captains (the Admiral and the owner of the dry-dock, who I suppose we'll call The Commodore) shouting orders and watching them verbally duke it out.
• Consequently, I totally lived in a boat-treehouse for a week. Check it out on the left!
• While walking around the Shop looking for painting supplies I come across--inevitably--the Conan hammer from a few posts ago. "What else do we need?" the Admiral asked aloud, as we readied to load things into the truck. As a joke, I gesture to the hammer. He looks for a minute. "Grab it." I paused. "What for?" He shrugged. "In case employees get out of line." I laughed, and started away. Looking at nothing in particular, he quietly, unambiguously put it in my pile and walked away.
• Using the hammer (hell with it--I'm naming it Hullcleaver) to pound caulking irons an inch into the ship's crevasses in an attempt to seal up any leaks. Thing hasn't sunk yet, so I guess it worked!
• Picasso, signaling me to pound the iron by yelling "BONK!" because really, the thing is pure Looney Toons gold.
• What scientific standards refer to as "an unholy fuckton" of lead paint on a good amount of my skin. Which might explain why you're getting this post in bullet points. At least I didn't get any in my eye!
• Definitely got some acid in my eye. While walking along the scaffolding, a piece of wood came up on an unlashed section and sent me backwards. Did the same with the jar of phosphoric acid in my hand. I responded by emptying a water bottle into it, then climbing into the shower fully clothed and having a staring contest with the faucet for twenty minutes (I won!)
• Plenty of fun times laying under the 200-ton ship scraping barnacles off of the keel. It's kind of like hanging out in a cave, but it smells much worse.
• The Admiral's temper gradually fraying has been a source of boundless entertainment. Upon attempting to show Picasso how to whip a line (cinch the end of a rope with sewing thread/needle to keep it from coming undone): "You take it like this...*pinches it tight*, wrap some duct tape around it...*wraps a few inches on the end*, cut it here...*cuts it short*, and you COME BACK NEXT SEASON AND LEARN THE REST! *throws it to the ground and storms away*". Nothing like a boss with a sense of humor.
• Last but not least, carrying away the entire bathroom contents of both the Merc and the Grace:

What a shitty situation.

9-25: Sam the White Collar Stiff

So...I work a 9-5 now. This is weird.

Okay, it's not the average 9-5. I spend a lot of time now painting ship hulls on a derelict raft, or climbing the mast to unscrew blocks the size of my head, or driving a pick-up truck full of marine toilets to the Shop. But it's a 9-5 in the sense that...you know. I work from nine to five.

Don't skip that part over, now. When you're on the water, it's more like a 6-11. Even--maybe especially--on the turnover days, the job's hectic as hell. Now that the Bailey's downrigging, we're going by the ring of the bell at the top of Union Street. Nine rings means we start, twelve rings means we stop for lunch, and five rings means quitting time.

Of course, because this job wouldn't be this job without spontaneity and chaos, they put a drunken toddler in charge of the bell. This means that sometimes at nine o' clock, nine bells ring. Sometimes at nine o' clock, seven bells will ring, then two more a minute later. Sometimes the five o' clock bell will ring at 4:45, which is great. Sometimes the 4 o' clock bell will ring at three in the morning, then the three o' clock bell will ring, which is just absurd. At least it keeps us on our toes!

And just because our downrigging couldn't have gone that smoothly, we went ahead and found that the main boom had a few inches of rot in it.

The bad news: this meant that we had to pop the entire boom--think a telephone pole, sideways, covered in varnish, hung over the deck--off of the ship and carry it back to the Shop. Yikes.

Fortunately, we didn't have to call Comcast. If we did, the boat might have capsized.

The good news: by its very nature, it's already rigged up to a crapton of pulleys. And it's surrounded by water. And it floats.

Which is how, as the Admiral disinterestedly worked the halyard, Wolfman, Picasso, Little Chef, and I put all our weight into the two-ton boom as we did our best to drop it into the Camden Harbor.

It's not really as hare-brained as it sounds. Or maybe it just feels that way in comparison, because half an hour later we lashed it to a trailer a third its length, hitched the other end to the Tundra, and towed that forty-five foot fucker ten miles up Route 1 with a bright red mooring pennant waving on the back, pedestrians gawking and diving out of the way.

The Admiral, one hand on the wheel, shrugged, adjusted his steel-colored aviators, and casually began telling us the first of many stories in which he'd towed much crazier stuff.

Like I said--keeps us on our toes.

9/16: Landlocked

Well, that's the season, folks!

It happened pretty fast, actually. The Admiral laconically informed us last week that at the end of the 9/8-9/12 voyage, we were to get all the food off the Grace Bailey. Downrigging would soon commence. Just like that, the last voyage began.

It actually went pretty straightforward. Go figure--just as I start to get deckhanding down, I end up landlocked. Although two events of note (aside from my ninjitsu escapades) occurred on this sail:

• Thursday saw, as if in some kind of nature-given boss battle, the most intense winds through which I have ever sailed. While tacking--a maneuver that under normal circumstances involves the relatively docile moving of the jib from one side of the ship to the other--I stood feet away from whipping lines that could easily have knocked me out. The jib wasn't passed so much as sucked from one side to the other by the roaring winds; the staysail club swung towards our heads like a baseball bat the size of your leg. All of this went down with salt spray and rain washing over my body every few seconds.
• Friday, conversely, saw us taking a two-hour day sail with forty-five 5th graders from a local school. In one sense, it was a nightmare. Try communicating across a hundred-twenty three feet with forty-five screaming children in the middle. It's amazing we didn't crash the thing. In another...holy crap, that was adorable. They were excited, hauled up the sails better than the adults ever did, (although it was nigh impossible to get them to drop the line) and the pirate references just kept coming. I'm not saying I'd do that everyday, but it certainly was a great perspective.

This last week has been a bizarre downrigging process. The icebox, the stanchons (hand rails), the water barrels--so many things on the ship I'm used to have disappeared, taken away to the Shop.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Shop. Think of your basement. If it's anything like mine (for those of us without finished basements), it's a strange mix: racks and racks of tools hang on musty, dust-covered walls in between nigh-opaque windows, wreathed by half-finished projects, old appliances, "treasured" family heirlooms, broken picture frames, Christmas decorations, Halloween decorations, Independence Day decorations, St. Patrick's Day decorations, Arbor Day decorations--all kinds of miscellaneous crap. Accenting all of this is a vague feeling that there should be a dissonant minor chord playing in the background as a ghost forlornly shuffles from the Halloween section to the Christmas section. Sound about right?

Cool. Now pretend your basement was owned by a mad sailor with hoarding issues. And it was ten times the size it is. And three stories tall. Now you've got an idea of the Shop.

Everything you would ever need to build a boat is, I shit you not, in this building. The Shop is three doubtlessly-haunted stories of woodworking tools, spare heads, spare ship parts, piping, and enough scrap and intact lumber to repopulate the Amazon.

Today, my job was to split most of that scrap wood into kindling with a hatchet. Shirt off in the crisp autumn air, swinging the hatchet thousands of times over the course of a few hours, I can safely say this was probably my favorite day in quite some time.

I'm still here for a few weeks--the Merc is still out and we've still got plenty to do on the Grace. Beyond that, I've got some kind of travel plan going. It will be cold, it will be northern-bound, and it will be epic.

Oh, and I leave you with goddamn Mjolnir, a little treasure I found in the corner of the first floor. I pray I get to swing it someday.

Ain't no kill like overkill.

9-11: The American Ninja Warrior

Exhausted and at the library for a short hour, so I'm just going to tell the story of how I didn't go for a swim yesterday.

We came in towards Castine, a small town on the coast known for a Merchant Mariner academy. The cool part was that there was a great wind putting us towards the dock; the less cool part was that there was a rather massive tide tearing us the other direction.

So, you know. Tricky conditions, nobody really knowing what to do, and a big decision bearing down on us--drop a serious amount of anchor, or try to catch a mooring--a small hook that'll fasten us to the bottom of the harbor?

What the hell. Let's shoot for the mooring.

Remember those cables I was balancing on? Well this time, I found myself sitting on the lowest one with a red hook attached to a black mooring line the thickness of two fingers. The goal: to get the hook around a three-inch diameter shackle attached to the buoy that marks the mooring. Yelling commands up to the captain at the helm, I get it to within a few feet of the ship.

I stretch and try to hook it. No dice--it's still a few feet away. And drifting past the ship. Fast.

I look up, and I see another chain. I prop my feet on my seat, grab the other chain, and lean out more. Nope. Just short by a few inches.

At this point, pandemonium is going down on the deck. Picasso is cheering me on, the Admiral wants to know what the hell is going on, and the passengers are reasonably sure their deckhand is about to get keelhauled. Suddenly, the image of having to hand-crank a hundred feet of anchor chain the next day pops into my head.

Oh, fuck it, I decide, and let go with my legs. As I dangle, twisting in the wind, by one hand, I swing my momentum over and jump onto the buoy. The red hook swings around, and click-- it's on. Sweet!

Ah, right. Now I'm stuck on a mooring buoy.

I scramble back and manage to grasp the cable. Holding on with both hands, my feet scraping the water, I look up and see the Admiral handing me another black line.

"Swap it out."

Oh, joy.

I swing back over to the buoy, manage to thread the shackle, and hand it back to him. As soon as it leaves my hands, the boat shifts, and I'm left hanging again.

"Oh, gosh." the Admiral says, and his tone indicates something approaching mild alarm. "Don't fall in."

And, because I am a bonafide master of clever one-liners, I of course respond with something kitschy, dashing, and clever, right?

"I have great upper-body strength, sir!"

Oh, fuck off. I was too busy being a ninja.

That's what the passengers seemed to think, anyway. After I pulled myself back onto the deck, I received a number of high-fives, and one decided that I was "the next American Ninja Warrior" for the rest of the day.

It's been that kind of week. Today we furled the headsails--the one that involves climbing across the bowsprit--in eighteen-knot winds and bitter rain, then did a surprise docking in Camden. Got compensated in shore time and steak, though, so I'm calling it a win. Catch you later.

9-5: Sam Goes Back to Serbia?

Another Friday, another weekend trip. We board the passengers as per usual. Frantic, rushed. We try to keep the ice from melting under a sweltering sun as we try to raise our awning through whipping wind. Wolfman reads off the passenger list, and I hear the name "Dragan."

Huh. That rings a bell.

The trip commences, and as I'm pumping the bilge, I see him walk by. We strike up a conversation, and to my incomparable delight, Dragan is from New Belgrade! I tell him that I used to live and study in the Balkans, and when he hears that I studied conflict resolution, he nods sagely.

"You know," he says, as a matter of course, "the Americans started that war."

Ooooh boy.

Which is how in conceivably the last place I'd expected, I became embroiled in the knock-down, drag-out, strangely, pleasantly familiar conversation of who-the-hell-started-the-Yugoslav-War. My personal favorite part was when I brought up the involvement of paramilitary war criminal Arkan (in concurrence with the thirty page paper I wrote comprising most of my last semester in college). Dragan brightened up and said, "Ah, Zeliko! I taught him to box when he was fifteen!"

Arkan, and yes, that's a real tiger cub. No, I don't know how much your balls have to weigh to rob a zoo.

Well, shit. Where was this guy a few months ago?

Aside from meeting the primary source of my dreams, this trip was unique in that we were wracked with one of the most formidable storms I've ever had the pleasure of sitting through. Storms are great on porches, even better in skyscrapers--they're downright entrancing on a ship (as long as you've dropped anchor and flaked out some extra chain. Otherwise, I'd imagine they're much wetter).

As it pitched the ship around like driftwood and spat jagged dashes of lightning a few dozen yards from the deck, Wolfman, Picasso (the messmate--you should see him paint) and I undertook one of the most intense dishwashing jobs I've ever heard of. Hey, just because Thor and Zeus are throwing around in the firmament doesn't mean we get to skip dishes. And since everybody (understandably) packed into the galley when the thunder started, there was only one place to do them.

Up on deck, we ignored the sideways sheets of rain buffeting our faces, instead allowing it to rinse off the soapy suds as we lathered up half of the galley dishes.The paltry glow of a few headlamps cut through the lightless night, and as we belted The Doors off-key against thunderclaps that cracked hard enough to shake your chest, it hit me: stress, exhaustion, and disrespect aside, sometimes you wouldn't need to pay me to do this shit. I'm not sure what that says about me, but I'm pretty sure I'm okay with it.

Back on dry land, I heard rumors that we narrow down to one boat after the five-day that starts tomorrow--meaning that in a week, I'll theoretically have about twice the shore time that I do now. Granted, considering how my last week "off" went, this probably means I'll end up in the forest mushing sled dogs or something equally insane. Not a terrible thing, I suppose. I'll have more concrete details next week!

Interlude: Summertime in September

Remember those few days off I talked about? Well, so far I've been pressganged, moved towns, joined the ship of the insane, possibly died for a few days, and drank an inordinate amount of Dark & Stormies. Yesterday I found myself dangling 45 feet above the deck, clinging to the mainmast amidst bouts of uncontrollable laughter at the absurdity of it all.

Needless to say, the days off didn't really happen. Should've seen that one coming.

Sunday featured an open house on the boat, in which hundreds of people got on board, commented on the galley, and asked the same five questions. As Wolfman, Little Chef (the cook on the Grace--kind of the opposite of Chef) and I sat slumped in the galley after a week's work, the Admiral came down the stairs.

"Sam," he said, not a trace of anything behind his opaque aviators. "Can you be on the Summertime tonight?" The Summertime, located a few miles north, is a ship half the size of the others that runs day sails and overnights.

Don't let punctuation fool you, kids; tone and body language are where the money is. And this was not a question.

"Good," he said. "It's an overnight. Be ready at five."

I checked my watch. Five of four. Awesome.

Which is how I found myself in the work truck bound for Lincolnville, a small fishing village a few miles north of Camden, sitting next to Hawaii. Hawaii is a hell of a character, having spent much of his life sailing from one tropical paradise to another. Captain of the Summertime, he now spends his time doing daysails, overnights, and repairs, while singing '50s pop songs and drinking Barbados rum. He runs a revolving door crew ("I go to the bar and see who's mostly sober"). This week he had Maine, a gentle fellow with a good attitude but a poor grasp on punctuality, and myself.

The Summertime is surreal. Due to the booze, exhaustion, or some other factor, much of our time here is spent in a wandering state of ambiguity in which conclusions are never reached and tasks take hours to finish.

Adding to this is the fog that rolled in an indeterminate number of days ago. Until this morning, we could see roughly fifteen feet in any direction--roughly enough to make out a single other ship in our mooring field. We could hear the bell buoy, or occasionally the ferry go by, but nothing else.

I think I went a little crazy at this point. Maybe, I thought, I'm dead, and my company here in purgatory is a crazy old Hawaiian and an IT professional-turned-sailor. Instead of Dante's mountain, however, we sit in a ship in the endless fog, making repairs that never seem to take.

It didn't get boring, though. One of these repairs necessitated my going up the mast in this, a rig called the Bosun's Chair:

Hauled by this guy:

And, as I ran line through a shackle  high off the hard wooden deck, my life swaying uneasily at the behest of an old belaying pin and Father Christmas up there, I was struck with a wave of laughter at the stark absurdity of all this.

A lot of these sailors--the salt-sprayed old hands, not the seasonal chumps like me--have been saying the same thing: you have to love sailing. Mate, Obi-Wan, the Admiral--you have to take it up, feel it in your blood and bones.

And I don't think if I do. I don't mind hard work, rough conditions, even the injuries (the daredeviling, admittedly, I'll probably do for free). But I can't say for sure that I love this. I certainly have a few personal reasons that I don't. And if that's the case, then it might be a long month ahead until the end of season.

But I won't lose. I gave my commitment in to October, and I'll be damned if I renege on that. So I guess we'll see how it goes. Maybe it'll grow on me. Maybe it won't. Either way, I think the term "adventure" as laid out earlier is well beyond applying.

Anyway, I didn't die horribly up there! So I'm calling that a win.

I'm getting off the floating carnival and back to Camden today. I've ordered some Onnit stuff to give me an edge, and maybe I'll pull through this lunacy on top.

Finished the Odyssey. It was...eh. Good story, but I just don't care about sacrifices to Zeus enough to read fifty pages of them. To quote Mark Twain (or Oscar Wilde?), classics are the books everybody loves and nobody reads. Maybe there's a reason for that. Incidentally, I've started A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway, and am so far immensely enjoying it. Go figure.

Also of interest: I might be hiking the highest mountain in Maine after all of this. Stay tuned!