Be that as it may - for the last couple of years, I’ve spent a lot of my weekend hours sailing on the twin 110-ft brigantines Exy and Irving Johnson, to the point where the non-profit owning them have seen fit to declare me deckhand qualified and made me a volunteer instructor. I am most unseemly proud. On a board that counts an amazing number of Aubrey & Maturin fans, I thought perhaps a thread where questions regarding the handling of a wooden square-rigger could be answered would be worthwhile?
OK, very funny. 6 ft, and I’m taller than most. Can be a bit of a problem on a ship dimensioned for high-schoolers - when I lay out on a footrope (line strung below and parallel to the yard, you stand on it as you work the sail) the yard can be close to my knees - not at hip height where you want it to be to avoid, well, falling.
The husband is your height, and captain of a container ship. I have travelled with him, his height is not a problem, and he had taller crewmembers. Why is your ship so low, pardon the stupid question?
Our purpose is to run a sail training program for youth - underprivileged youth mostly. The ships are designed and built for that, and dimensioned for middle and high school students. Mostly not a problem, except for the footropes - and I’ve learned to avoid some of the bunks, as well.
Indeed. A lovely surprise that was, first time aloft. Just as I had this “balancing on the footrope” thing figured out, now I have to maneuver around obstacles?
Sadly, we mostly do day trips (school programs), but I’ve done 4-day voyages. I’d love to cross an ocean - and the boats could do it - but I don’t think it’s likely to happen. There may be some northbound passages along the coast coming up, but with a day job, it’s hard to fit in.
Oh, half a dozen - port and starboard, on all 4 yards.
The captains prefer we use the compass. But I have seen the grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking, and I completely get that poem now.
The way I learned it was this. You can steer by the compass, but because the ship is rolling back on forth on the waves the compass tends to wobble back and forth a bit, and the ship can drift a couple degrees off course before you notice. What I did was the get the ship on course (in those moments when the compass settles down for a few seconds), and pick our a particularly bright star ahead of me. Looking forward from the helm, all the ropes and lines on the ship form kind of an irregular grid. Then I just steered the ship to keep that star in the same place in the grid. When the ship started to drift I could notice it sooner and make smaller corrections.
I hope you don’t mind me chiming in, Spiny. And your ship probably has reasons for doing it your way.
Yeah, that was the tricky part. At the USS Constitution Museum they have a section of mast and a yard so people (mostly kids, I’m sure) can try it without being 20 feet in the air.
If the ships ever get to Boston, I’d love to see them.
Container ships are a totally different animal than a 110 foot brigantine, which is a 18th-19th century ship type. So I imagine they built those ships as either replicas or in the style of the originals, meaning that they were both built for smaller men, and probably even cramped by the standards of the time.
Essentially, they were built specifically for kids to sail - the sailplan is a bit underdimensioned, the deckhouses are low enough that a 5th-grader can climb on them to furl and flake, that sort of thing. As we’re dedicated to sail training and don’t allocate room to cargo, the ships are comparatively roomy below - we can stand up pretty much everywhere, not a given for most tall ships. Of course, with a full load of 30 students and 8 crew members it still gets pretty darn crowded.
We sell tickets for trips when there’s downtime (not often), and when we’re part of tall ships festivals, of course. 2017 saw us visit Dana Point and San Diego.
During May to September, we have the ships at sea with students 5 days of the week on average and the live-aboard crew do need the occasional day off, so we don’t serve the public as much as we would like to.
But if you’re interested, we can always use volunteer crew. Training provided, all it costs is every bit of your free time.
That was before my time. But it’s a testament to the shipwrights that she’s back in operation and hasn’t suffered in the slightest - still sails dry.
It’s complicated. In conversation with non-sailors, we’d call them tall ships - they can carry a boat and are ocean-going, which are two of the criteria used day-to-day to decide what makes a ship. The Tall Ships America organization classify them as Class A tall ships.
However, if you get into traditional sailing vessel terminology, a “ship” must be ship-rigged - at least 3 masts with squaresails on all masts. Our vessels are brigantines (or hermaphrodite brigs) - the rig has 2 masts, squares on the foremast, fore-and-aft on the main. So in that context, “ship” is certainly wrong.
Also sailors have used “boat” as a term of endearment for their vessel for ages, so… In the end, we tend to use “tall ship” when we need to sound cool, “boat” for more relaxed occasions and “brigantine” when there’s need for specificity. A regular-sailboat friend of mine insists on calling them “pirate ships”, and that I do try to discourage.
6 ft, and I’m taller than most. Can be a bit of a problem on a ship dimensioned for high-schoolers - when I lay out on a footrope (line strung below and parallel to the yard, you stand on it as you work the sail) the yard can be close to my knees - not at hip height where you want it to be to avoid, well, falling.