The Return of the Gift Fish

March 24, 2007

Creaky yawns and stumbling back to bed, the crew is not really waking up this morning. We all have earned a day off and will probably spend a significant percentage of it resting, Tomorrow the fore topmast goes up and that will be a delightfully complicated foray. We put the main topmast up this week and even the cook got to help at the crankalls. With the signature rake of Pride II's masts, I was curious how we would go about setting our tops. Except for a few carefully tended taglines, the process is the same that we used on Inland Seas where I got to be the one up on the crosstrees, waiting for Jan to tell me what to do. This time, Fiorentino and Charlie were up there, sweating bullets as Captain Bradley looked on with the seeming omniscient eye of captains. Everything seems bigger here on Pride II. It's not only the scale of physical things but the mindfulness and energy that go into every little detail. I just continue to putz about in the galley and visit with the weary boaties as they come down for tea. Sarah and her siezings, Shelly and the blasted main clew outhaul, Ryan and the precise weird cuts for this coffin-like shower that's going in to the fo'c's'l. I do believe that though tedious at times, it is the smallwork that sets a boat apart to be admired. Why else would we blush to see electrical tape on bitter ends and rusty mousings? (But I think I'm talking too much about boats, boats, boats...) As I was just finishing up from brushing my teeth, a man came to the boat asking for LuLu. What a flutter! I didn't realize how I like visitors so much. I dashed up the companionway and there was a man with two huge bags of frozen fish, all caught here in the Chesapeake Bay. I love gifts of food for our crew, even though they are not starving by any stretch of the imagination. Mmmn; fish. My stomach growls in anticipation.