Tall ships' races 2013

To get back into my adventurous blogging, I thought it nice to start where I left it; sailing ships.

"Göteborg" (Sweden), the biggest wooden sailing vessel in the world.

Århus, Denmark, where I now live and study, was the first host of this year's Tall Ships' Races, from july 4th - 7th.

I participated as a volunteer, and for three days I walked around in sunshine dowb at the harbour, making sure trash cans didn't overflow, and that the area looked neat. 

Never underestimate the work of outdoor cleaners - I figured out it was the best task one could get at the TSR. Free to walk around and look at ships, people and shows, meet a lot of new people, and just stay outside enjoying the perfect summer weather.

"Cuauhtemoc" (Mexico) at dusk. Beautiful military ship with good, Mexican music playing at all times, and pretty Christmas lighting.

"Gulden Leeuw" (The Netherlands) by night. This was my first meeting with life at sea, two years ago.

The harbour. 

Students at the Danish vessel "Georg Stage" singing shanties.

The parade. Mexicans apparently invading Århus. What a sight!

Hello there, sailor boy! A Brazilian sailor at the beatiful "Cisne branco", posing for us.

I guess there's no need to say how much the sight of these great ships and feeling the seven seas within reach made me want to sail again. I spent most of the days figuring out the best way to sneak onboard somewhere and hide there until departure, but having a trip to Iceland with my family the 7th kept me from it. 

I have decided that it hasn't been the last time I feel the salty spray in my face from the deck of a sailing ship!

The grande "Statsraad Lehmkuhl" (Norway).

I heard the sad news that the Norwegian vessel "Vywern" sank on its way to Helsinki, and a man went down with it. 

Terrible. 

He wasn't even of the crew, but came from another ship to help. The elements are merciless.

Ship ahoy!

(Written some days ago)

 

Windy walk on the dike.

After one month on board, the autumn finally has come to Vlissingen with heavy winds, rain and a chill that creeps into the poorly insolated ship and forces me to wear wollen socks and scarf inside.

Vlissingen on a good day. Isn't as exciting as it might look.

 

Sun! Vlissingen from the inside. 

No reason to complain though, because since I arrived here four weeks ago with the rising sun colouring the sails of my future home orange and pink, the weather has been better here than during the whole summer in Sauda.
Week 39 was the climax with over twenty degrees and not a cloud in sight for days. Not bad to work outside in shorts and t-shirt, sweating like hero and getting burnt shoulders in the end of september. 

My cabin

 
Living area/saloon

My life has changed dramatically in only a few weeks. I have discovered a whole new world. My social life is reduced to three individuals, with whom I eat, work and spend my freetime, all within a very limited area. I have changed my daily activities from computerscreens in an office to hard physical work, and there is no internet connection on the ship - something I haven't really thought about, even though it is a dominant factor in my everyday life in Norway.

 

Home, sweet home.

Ropes are not just ropes anymore, but buntlines, sheets, clewlines and downhauls, and watching «Master and Commander» is suddenly way more interesting, because you know what it takes to turn a tallship around.

Mick's attempt to explain how it's all put together

My once well maintained, soft hands are now dry and rough with cracked skin and blisters, broken and busted nails and are permanently dirty. And speaking of dirty, being all fresh and wearing clean clothes is a rarity.

Tallship Astrid is a lovely lady. A 33 meter long brig (42 including jib-boom) from 1918. For the part of you that is not into naval names, a brig is a ship with to masts with square sails. Astrid has five square sails (course, lower topsail, upper topsail, lower topgallant and upper topgallant) on each mast, four staysails in the front, one in the middle and a spanker in back. 480 squaremeters of sail and a 340 hp engine.

 

...and 6,5 km of rope.

The people who now dominate my world are captain Pieter (60), a crazy old pirate, and his wife Ineke (61), and Mick (23).

 

Aye, cap'n!

Mick hoisting the colours.

 

Pieter and Ineke having morning coffee.

Mick is professional and do this for living. He also has the same music taste as me, as the first one I've ever met. Pieter and Ineke are away from the ship a lot, and they have their own apartment here where they spend the nights. That means that I spend most of my time together with Mick, working, relaxing and watching movies at night. He is my best friend and worst enemy here. We get along really well, and we fight a lot, mainly because we are equally stubborn and proud. But I am very grateful for having someone on my own age around. My days would be very sad and boring without anyone to discuss The Lord of the Rings with.

That is our favourite subject here. The first weekend we watched all three movies, and we are both reading the book. And we both know all the lines of the movies by heart. Priceless.
«Go upstairs»
«Up, up, up, until you come to the TUNNEL».

Fun!

 
Oh yeah, that's it! 

Because of changes in the plans, we haven't left for the Canary Islands yet, even though we were supposed to be on our way now.

But not sailing does not mean no work. The day normally starts with breakfast at eight o'clock, and then we start working. There is a lot of maintenance work on a ship.

So far I have washed, cleaned and scrubbed floors, wall, ceilings and impossible corners of cabins, kitchen, corridors, toilets and saloon, polished more square meters of brass than I thought I would ever do, done a ton of dishes and sanded down the railing and two small staircases, painted them and lackeured several times.

I have learned to appreciate handwork, both to do it and be aware of what effort lies behind wellkept wood.

 

Ready to be attacked.

  

Tadaaa! 45 minutes and a sore arm later. Totally worth it!

Apart from maintenance work, we have had some daytrips – one wedding party, two tours with school classes and one with tourists.

Canal early in the morning

Original place to throw a wedding party.

Vlissingen from the seaside

These are the fun days. Unpacking sails up in the rigging, pulling ropes until your hands burn and your face is red, and being out at sea with the wind in your hair, feeling the waves under the ship. And when we are back at our spot in the inner harbour of Vlissingen, after Pieter has done some crazy parking manouvering with the 42 m long vessel, the sails have to be packed.

Climbing the rigging is fun. But when you pack sails, you need your hands. Both of them. And you are standing on a very unsteady footrope twenty meters above deck, and have to pull up, furl and tie up heaps of heavy, thick and stiff fabric that does not cooperate.
The heaviest go was last Monday, after our tourist tour Sunday where we set 13 of 17 sails, and Mick and I were the only ones to pack them. It took us almost four hours, a lot of energy, pain, aggression (both on the sails and each others) and fear to get nine out of ten square sails neatly packed on their yards. No need for gyms here. There is not a muscle in your body that doesn't hurt after packing sails.

Plenty of sails, but no wind

I haven't got a problem with heights anymore, and I have slowly learnt to trust my on body. We always wear climbing harnesses when up in the rigging, even though that doesn't make you feel safer, because I wouldn't want to fall 1,5 meters from the mast and just hang there by a thread. Mick has been sailing for four years and has never needed the harness – until Monday, when he slipped and hung by his arms. Nasty shock.
Personally I had a close-to-death experience two weeks ago when we were packing sails with the schoolkids. When the sails are taken in, two of the five yards are pulled down with about a meter inbetween, so one can slide down from the upper one onto the lower. The downhauls (ropes that keep the yards straight) were not tightened, and I was out in the end of the yard, slid down, and suddenly the whole yard dropped one meter when my weight came onto it. For some reason I didn't get afraid, I just got a heavy adrenaline kick.

 

Pretty lady on daytrip.

I have gained a lot of respect for sailors in earlier days, when they didn't have any security gear or were berthed in a quiet inner harbour when the work was to be done. I would rather not try to pack the sails at sea. A soft breeze is bad enough when you get some meters above the ground.

This is indeed a risky lifestyle. Did you know that at sea, the chance of the body (not necessarily alive) being found again and pulled back up if you fall overboard, is around 50% during the daytime. At night it is less than 10%.

I don't have to say that I like it here, do I?

It is great. Sometimes when I hate some extra nasty spots or difficult corners when sanding, or being covered in dust from top to toe, I think «Hey, I could have been in a classroom now, having tests», and then I think my life is pretty cool again.
And a few hours at sea makes up for a week of boring work. Sunday was perfect. 25 degrees, sunshine, sparkling green water, and I could sit in the net below the jib-boom in the front and be on top of the world, with the soft waves 7-8 meters below me and the sharp sunshine in my eyes.
Complete happiness.

Pure therapy

There is so much to learn about sailing. So much I have never really thought about, like how important the movements of the sun and moon are for a ship, because of the tidal currents they create.

Every day I learn something new, and get impressed by how brilliantly problems can be solved, and how clever humans can be if they have some centuries to improve systems.

How to "get away" for a while in Holland; build numerous beach houses all crammed together, five minutes from the city.

 

Middelburg, a nice neighbour town with an impressive city hall.

I can't wait to set sails, and have only water in sight as far as the eye can reach.
Unfortunately, we are delayed a month. Long story.
Instead of 3^rd of October, we will leave the 31^st , and reach Tenerife about a month later.
Good thing is, we are stopping in Cascais! Yupiii, Portugal, here I come, way before I thought I would be back.

 

Freedom. Definite favourite spot on the whole vessel! 

But a month more of waiting is a bit boring, at least now when the weather is getting worse, so I have been impulsive (maybe more than I kind of should be), and ordered tickets to Ireland!
So now I am sitting in Eindhoven Airport waiting for my plane to Dublin. Two weeks, no luggage, no sure destination. I am crazy.

ADDITION: Now I am sitting in a hostel in Dublin, and it's all fine. It's even been sunny today! After a heavy meeting with Irish nightlife yesterday, very little sleep and a lot of walking today, I think I'll take an easy evening tonight, so I can be ready to continue my trip tomorrow.

Tall Ships' Races 2011

One week with action and happenings to fill a month!

To participate in the Tall Ships' Races 2011, I left my coworkers in a nasty situation, because my boss way back had given me a week off, and there were only three journalists left working because the rest was on holiday.
I felt a bit bad.
But I quickly forgot about that, because my days were so packed from the minute I arrived in Stavanger to when I was back in my own bed 10 days later, that I didn't have time to feel bad.

Norwegian marines preparing for opening show on Statsraad Lehmkuhl.

Norway's pride! Crazy beautiful Statsraad Lehmkuhl.

Last year I passed a poster in Stavanger with a nice ship on.
«Wow, pretty boat! I want to go sailing!»
Sailing with a tall ship has been on my life list for three years, and it was pretty convenient that I suddenly saw this poster about young people on sail training.
I entered the office and talked to the man who was responsible, and he told me that Stavanger in 2011 would be one of the host ports in Tall Ships' Races '11, and that I could sign up for a week as trainee on one of the ships.
I was ecstatic.

I sent a bunch of e-mails to the office even before the announcement about trainees was out, and finally I got an answer that I would be sailing on the Dutch vessel «Gulden Leeuw».
I was also to be a volunteer during the festival when all the ships were in Stavanger. 

Pretty crowded! And sunny!!

Stavanger was crowded that weekend. People everywhere, stands, lively market and thirty-forty tall ships berthing in Vågen in the middle of Stavanger.

What a sight. 

Funny balloon-man

Vågen by night.

I was titled «crew friend», and my task was to socialise with the trainees and cadets and help them if they needed advise og guiding in the city. 

Sounds easy, but it wasn't. 

Because my ship was «Sedov». «Sedov» is Russian. And Russians have a very different perception of situations than I do. And they are shy, and speak very little English.
So, there I was. One blonde, outgoing girl among seventy uniformed, shy, young Russian boys who were very suppressed by the military hierarchy onboard. Fascinating, but frustrating.

 

Here you can see a cultural crash. They were nice, though. 

The result was that after one day of people just staring at me, not daring to talk to me – except the first mate who loved talking to me and inviting me out for dinner, which was not really the point («crew friend» was, I fear, commonly misunderstood as another kind of entertainment on the Russian ships).
The next days I just helped out wherever needed, and spent most of the time with some sweet girls I met, running in and out of all the ships and just enjoying the activity and live music around the port.

 

Much easier to socialise with Dutch people. Here on a random, Dutch vessel. 

 

Magical 

Thursday to Saturday as a volunteer, and then I shipped on the Dutch tallship «Gulden Leeuw».
I was to sail with her from Stavanger to Halmstad in Sweden with around 70 trainees, mostly from Norway and Sweden. 

The Golden Lion!

Artsy naval photo

Sunday morning we made way for the open sea to start the actual race.
A day filled with the most beautiful sights. I felt I had fallen into a painting from the 16th century. I was speechless (for once).

  

A sight for gods!

I might be weird, but this gives me goosebumps.

No comment. It doesn't need any.

What a week.

The list of negative things was long;
*Too many young people

*Too many Norwegians
*60-70 people sleeping in the same room below deck (that means a lot of snoring, farting and otherlovely sleeping-noises)

*70 cms wide three-storey bunkbeds

*Pea soup for lunch

*My watch group had the dogwatch; from 1pm to 4pm and 1am to 4am
*Two showers for 40 girls

Et cetera, et cetera.

But, as it often is, these things slowly moved to the list of positive and memorable things.

I can highly recommend Jungle Speed! Great entertainment, including risks of getting a blue eye.

Now I can't think of one thing that I would have changed. It was all just perfect.

Living closely together with all these strangers turned us into one big family after five days at sea.
Getting up after three hours of sleep with a bunch of sleepy, but awesome and funny people. 

Pulling ropes until my hands were deep purple and burning. 

  

One, two, PULL!

 

Bye bye, soft piano hands! 

Hoisting the Danish flag after leaving Norwegian waters.

Pictures like this make me smile now

Being interrupted during breakfast by screaming people, and run out on deck to see dolphins playing alongside the ship somewhere off Denmark's coast.

Playing cards after dinner.
Conquering my fear of heights and climbing up to the highest point of the square mast.

Thrill

 

I was all the way up there, believe it or not!

Sitting 30 metres above deck with the sun in my face and the wind in my hair, holding on to only a thin wire, looking down on the endless, shining mass of water around us, is one of the best feelings I have ever had.

 

On top of the world back down on deck

Living and working on a 20 degrees angle - that includes eating soup and showering.

 

Just hanging around waiting for lunch.

Getting up early after late night watch to help the chef preparing breakfast.

Being the one at the wheel, actually steering the freaking 80 meter long, three-masted tallship! 

Apart from the clothes, I would say there is no difference between me and Russel Crowe in "Master and commander".

Oh yes. Those five days just erased two and a half months of grey and rainy afternoons.

 

Freedom

 

Taking a break 

 

Great people. Funny how 70 people can become so familiar during so short a period.

 

 

World's end

We didn't really get into hard weather.
Not at all.
The weather was (for the first time in my life) so nice that it was a problem. We actually had to go in direction of Great Britain for a night to find some wind. We didn't succeed.
And because we had a schedule to follow, the race was cancelled after only three days, and all had to use the engines to reach Halmstad in time.
We got there around midnight Thursday, and were permitted to take a stroll along the port.
I became landsick! Suddenly the ground didn't move anymore.
Fascinating.

 

Haha, this is a "Gulden Leeuw" joke. Great people in a park in Halmstad.
WOOP!

 

I couldn't resist taking a picture. On board of "Gloria", a Columbian military ship. I couldn't get over those tight, white uniforms!

 

 

Compared to the "spaghetti" on "Gulden Leeuw", this is from a higher dimension.Columbian artwork. If you ever tried coiling rope, you know why I still just stare at this and shake my head in disbelief. 

 

 

Sailors ashore. Note the hats.

 

 

The last time onboard. Perfect moment.

 

 

The Golden Lion! Lisa is ready for crew parade. 

In every host port during the TSR, there is a crew parade where every ship does its' best to show the others how cool they are. Because of some bad organisation from Stavanger, all the Norwegians had to leave Halmstad Saturday, this meaning that we missed both the crew parade and the final crew party at night. I was pretty pissed off during the bus trip to Copenhagen before the flight back to Stavanger.

And I was sad for having to leave all these funny and nice and fascinating people after so short time together, knowing that I probably won't see them again.
But the memories I keep close.


Now the fun part;
I am very easily influenced. Very. By anything.
From the moment I set my foot on a deck, I was completely lost.
So, during the first morning in Stavanger, I was already considering everything from stealing a ship and become a pirate to joining the navy. Didn't matter how or what, as long as I could sail.
That fascination didn't diminish after actually being out at open water, feeling the power of the wind and seeing naught but blue masses around me.
I had fallen in love with the sea.

So, what to do about that? I NEEDED to sail, at least for some time. And I didn't care how or where.
After working one more month, I had fixed my "problem".
Joining the navy would be great, but that's for a year, and I needed to go NOW.
I sent out e-mails to 25 tallships in search for hire.
And I got a job on Tallship Astrid from Vlissingen in Holland.

My home for the next two months. Pretty, right?:)

They needed someone to help out on deck, cleaning and cooking, and they are preparing for a voyage to the Canary Islands where they have their winter base.

Result:
Now I am sitting in Stavanger, waiting for my plane to Amsterdam later this afternoon.
I have my life packed down in a big bag for the fourth time in my life, and despite already being tired of travelling (got up at 5 am) and knowing that I will arrive at 01 am in a foreign place where I don't even know who I'm going to meet, I feel fine.
Good.
Great.
This is exactly where I should be - heading for (now also literally) unknown waters and distant shores, hunting down my dreams.

BRING ME THAT HORIZON!