Day 15: Gaining time (which begs the question...How'd we lose it? I'm guessing Erie weather.)

So my plan from yesterday to get some aloft photos failed because we worked until 6:00 today.  I will have to shoot for next week because we have a couple of days off in a row for Easter.  Consider it a cliffhanger or dramatic pause or something...or just hold your horses - does everything have to be immediate satisfaction with you people?

My job much of the day was:

1.  walk the capstan to raise the main t'gallant mast (the highest part of the ship)
2.  walk the capstan to place the fore t'gallant mast (the same part of the ship but on the smaller mast closer to the front of the ship)

Here are the masts on this photo...

Black arrow:  fore tgallant mast       White arrow:  main tgallant mast 

(so you can see putting them up there is a bit of a challenge.

3.  Get in a "mustang suit"  (see earlier word of the day) and use this...

Paint Float (this is the actual float I was on)

To rig much of this...

This is the bow sprit and the jib boom.  There is yet another boom that goes out the front called the flying jib boom and will make the front of the ship 60 feet out from the deck - I will go out on it when done.  Oh yes I will.

The hard to see black post sticking down toward the water from the middle of the light colored jib boom is called the martingale but sailors call it the "dolphin striker."  Heh not super PC I guess but a little humorous.

The word for the day is.....Bitter End.  A simple one to hold you over until the next blog.  This is simply the end of the a line or rope.  So think of it this way:  imagine a rope is wound around a pin and attached to something at the other end.  The standing end is the end that is connected and the bitter end is the end that, well isn't connected to anything.  You almost never want to let this go.  Bad things usually happen.

Looks like I may be AFK for Easter maybe until Tuesday.  So the next blog may be then.  Now, now before you get all woebegone on me...actually I got nothing here, I will miss my blog too so maybe you can just cry when people aren't looking - you wont have to explain things that way.

Ahoy!