life at sea is better
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Battle sail with Amazing Grace, from Californian.
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Amazing Grace during a battle sail with Californian.
She is the cutest little tall ship there ever was!
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Festivals of Sail!
Very tl;dr post here.
Be warned. I decided to be nice and put most of it under a cut.I’m back from the most busy and hectic fortnight of my life! Not only did school start on the 30th of August, but San Diego’s Festival of Sail was held the 1st through 5th of September, and the Toshiba Tall Ships Festival in Dana Point was the weekend after that! So much to do in such a short space of time. Bit of a break now, though. The next big events coming up are a sail to Catalina on Californian in October and the Maritime Museum fleet going out for the Star of India’s birthday in November.
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San Diego Festival of Sail
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Toshiba Tall Ships Festival, Dana Point.
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Well, it was quite a fun weekend! A couple other shipmates and I were sleeping aboard Surprise Friday through Saturday nights. We helped out Friday morning with getting Surprise ready to go by storing PFDs, cleaning compartments, and various other necessary things. By around noon most of the work was done, so we got some lunch and walked around downtown a bit and then got gelato. We came back to Surprise and played Kill Dr. Lucky (the most amazing and fun board game ever) while watching Master & Commander in the great cabin. By the time we finished that up we called it an early night and went to sleep. Only to be awoken by fireworks in what we thought was the middle of the night. It turned out that it was only 2200.
The next morning saw the rain come down. And Surprise began to leak everywhere. We got up and got ready at 0530 and at 0630 mustered in front of the Museum, ready to go sailing despite the rain. We helped move the catered food onto the ships, and then met on the upperdeck of the Berkeley. With the weather (which was more than just rain, but also the absence of wind and a seven foot swell), the plan was to wait an hour, then have Californian do some recon outside of the bay, and report back with the conditions. So, we moved the food from the ships to the Berkeley, but soon it was decided that we wouldn’t be going out. The swell was too high and we didn’t want to risk damaging the ships. So something of a party was made aboard the Berkeley, with all of the food and drinks that were going to be on the ships. The few of us who were sleeping over decided to have a fun day anyway, so we went back to Surprise’s great cabin and watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. With the rain, it was dripping everywhere in the ship. It was hard to find a place where the water wasn’t coming through the deck. The TV stopped working in the middle of the film, so we decided to take a break and walk around downtown some before heading back to the Museum and getting lunch on the Berkeley. We went back to Surprise and finished up Indiana Jones on a laptop, then went to the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park. We had a fun time walking around there, where it was dry inside. There was an exhibit on polar bears and penguins, so the gift shop had loads of penguin stuff in it, which made me very happy (penguins are my favourite animal). We got dinner in Little Italy before heading back to Surprise, watching Harry Potter 7 part 2, and going to sleep.
Sunday we got to go sailing! The rain let up sometime in the night and again, we brought the catered food aboard the ships. We got ready to go, got our guests aboard (which included my mom!), and got underway after the tugs pulled the Star out. We headed out of the bay, set our sails, and waited for the wind to pick up. It took a while for it to do so, and in the swell (considerably less than the day before and trending down, but still there) several of our guests and a couple of crew got a bit sick. The wind finally began to pick up in the afternoon, and then we had a good time sailing. We did two wears and a tack, and were successful! Tacking on Surprise has been questionable for a while in the past, but it now seems we can tack just as well as the rest of the ships, so hooray for that! Star looked absolutely stunning out at sea for the first time in four years, and it was the first time I’d seen her from Surprise. By then the day went by too fast. The sun began to set and we headed back in the bay. Doused and furled just after the sun set and got docked after the Star. After getting all of the ships cleaned up and put away, we headed over to the Star for a concluding muster and traditional ceremony. We “crossed the line and rounded the horn” by walking over a line laid on the deck and around a horn. We headed over to the Berkeley for pizza and drinks and fun talking with shipmates. A good way to end a good day of sailing.
I got a bunch of videos, so I’ll probably just post a link to a YouTube playlist when they’re uploaded.
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Hello, there! My name's Katherine. I work at the Maritime Museum of San Diego, where I get to sail some lovely ships.
Here I post about my adventures aboard 