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It's true! During the last 2 weeks of May, I had two at-sea experiences.
1. I sailed on a Colleagues Cruise with SEA (Sea Education Association), on their SSV Corwith Cramer, from Key West to Miami. The crew was made up of historians, marine scientists, and museum people. While in Key West we visited the Hemingway House (highly recommended) and the Green Parrot (recommended). Then we spent 4 days offshore sailing between Cuba and Florida, standing watches 24 hours a day. We even went through a squall at 4 AM, a potentially very dangerous situation that ended up OK. I was on bow watch when it struck, and we had a ton of sail up. It hit like a wall, out of nowhere, and laid us over on the lee rail - it was blowing upwards of 45 mph, steady. The whole crew woke up because all the pots and pans in the galley came crashing to the floor, and everyone clambered on deck to get the mainsail in with much desperate chaos and shouting. Highly dramatic and (since we didn't die like some of these folks or these folks) a very cool experience.
2. Then, I went with a crew from the maritime museum where I used to work to the US Brig Niagara, a recreation of an 1813 Great Lakes warship that won the decisive battle of the War of 1812 under commander Oliver Hazard Perry. The Niagara is a square-rigger, which means climbing aloft to handle the sails on 118-foot masts while underway. Dramatic again (and beautiful and cool). The work of sailing a square-rigger was intense - tacking ship requires about 20 people at a minimum, all coordinated by watch and division group, under the command of four mates. The discipline was actaully quite in line with naval tradition. If you saw "Master and Commander", that gives a basic idea of what this vessel was like, minus the bloody gun battles. But everything else -- from the crew heirarchy to the loud shouting and hearty echoing of commands to sleeping in hammocks -- was true to history. We were there to lend a few hands to help them pass their Coast Guard inspection, which meant that we did what felt like dozens of man overboard drills, fire drills, and abandon ship drills while under way. Part of this involved wearing the odious immersion suit.
Both very cool and different and instructive experiences that just make me want to do more large-vessel sailing.
I just hope the poor cook didn't catch the fits, throw away all your grits, and then take and eat up all of your corn; I think if that happened, I'd wanna go home.
Ooooh! I've always wanted to do that! (or at least since I first read Patrick O'Brian's novels 10 years ago.)
So what sort of shape do you have to be in? Are you allowed to climb the rigging even if you can't do a chin up?
For a while I was trying to figure out a way to build a rigging up the side of my apt bldg to practice but I sort of gave up. (Any ideas on how to build a 3 story rigging would be welcome, though.)
I love the open sea. Still get seasick, but they say that goes away over time. I'd love to learn to sail, run away and write books. And then, some day, when no one cared about my work anymore, and my health began to fail, I'd set course for one final journey, never to be heard from again. (Spawning, of course, huge amounts of speculation, a Dusk 'til Dawn sequel, and inspiring future lonely, misguided writers with a romantic spirit.)
So what sort of shape do you have to be in? Are you allowed to climb the rigging even if you can't do a chin up?
I'd say you have to be in fairly good shape, or it's just a lot of suffering. Being just plain strong in muscle is more important than cardio endurance. The hauling on lines and the pulling up of sails when furling is just sheer resistance work.
I can't do a chin up (though i can do reverse chin ups pretty well) and I climb rigging regularly. Arm strength is definitely important, but it's really the legs doing the climbing while the arms are used for an alternating grip. There is one important exception -- when you get to the first platform on the mast (the top), you have to climb outward at an angle where you're leaning back. That's because there's a set of shrouds that attach the top to the mast, and they run from the outboard edge of the top in to the mast, so they lean outward. ON that part of the climb, you are definitely hanging from your hands, kind of upside down with your back to the deck, while you walk your feet up and over. That part is called the futtock shrouds. ("futtock" comes from "foot-hook").
I would think it would be possible to build rigging on your building. Why not? It's wire cordage wrapped in seizing twine and then coated in tar for the upright pieces (the shrouds). The horizontal steps (ratlines) are just heavy 1/2-inch cordage tied from shroud to shroud with clove-hitches, seized with a loop at either end, then tarred for weatherproofness. The tricky bit is fastening them above and below - that's also done with seizings. You'd need some sort of armature with holes to lead the ends of your shrouds through. Here's a book on the topic.
/me is so jealous she can barely speak AND MUST SHOUT. WHAT A FREAKING AWESOME INCREDIBLY COOL TOTALLY FANTASTICALLY AWESOME (DID I MENTION AWESOME?) WAY TO SPEND THE END OF MAY!!! YOU ROCK!!!
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
