Galleries

Thursday 2012-07-19 - Tall Ship Parade

Being "purred" at 06:00 for loading proviants from the quay. All hands form a large human chain to get all kinds of excellent and fresh food (including cookies and ice!) loaded into the ships galley. It took us half an hour for everything.

The modern cooling stores are nicely hidden inside the ships body, noone would ever think of how modern everything has been equipped; this is why our ship is often referred to as "two-ships-in-one". Her framework and her rigging is ancient, but her machinery is modern and safe.

Breakfast 07:15 AM

08:00-12:00 Morning Watch

Sigge was our watch leader for this trip, Linus assisted her.

Preparations to leave the port of Brest at 09:45 on high tide waters. Many small tasks again ...

We were told the Götheborg "leads" the PARADE ... well, we saw many ships and boats, erh ... "awaiting" us =)

For this day we had historical clothes on, all sailors as well as all our officers and the captain:

Those without historic clothes were tourists of the day =)

Then we fired our salutes! 8 of our 10 guns were loaded with blank cartridges (into the muzzle, that is) ...

... that make hell of a bang and smoke when fired!

Some 100 boats and some tall ships around us (also AHEAD): Krusenshtern, Tolkien, Ooseterschelde etc.

Unfortunately I had to help in the galley for an hour or so, and for the parade I almost came too late on deck again:

The Kruzenshtern was faaar away already: my zoom lense has 300mm and she is almost gone.

Last hour of the watch I was "utkik", the look-out, at the bowsprit; lucky not to have to announce near-collisions during the parade! Because, as I was told, no matter what really would happen, if anything came from our right side into our course, WE would have the guilt, no matter that we were about the largest ship around here ... and of course we would not have been able to outmanouvre quick enough - the Götheborgs helm is steered by hand! Two of us were always on duty at the helm.

End of watch 12:00 - lunch! ... until 13:15, I am the latest - and I was so f***ing tired of all the hard work we did (well, I am completely untrained) so that I took some short sleep instead of making photos of the parade all the time ... others did, of course. But I found to my surprise, it was not only me who was tired and taking some sleep.

Awakening at 16:00 by the next "Goodvakt" (the changing of the watches from starboard to midships) - writing this part of the diary.

20:00-24:00 Evening Watch

When we left port of Brest, we had soe wind, but just from ahead - no sailing!

Going for machines, no wind now, but long groundwaves (also called swell) from the Atlantic coming in! Even if calm, that made me seasick - being backis under deck, no good ... for most of the times, being seasick just made me extremely tired but not more than that. THIS time, it was REALLY no good indeed. On cleaning the seats and tables at the gundeck, I suddenly had to spit out all I had eaten - the first time since my childhood maybe, don´t remember when I had it so badly ... or this was another new physical limit for me. Working under deck has always been my weak point - I am no seaman! I am a wanna-be sailor, a humble modelmaker who plays "pirate" for a week.

21:30 PM recovering from the worst - being on deck. Asked Linus if I can leave the watch before time for resting, as I did not feel fit for it anymore this day. Almost everybody else also was some kind of seasick but all of them except me made it through. But the "backis" who helped in the galley had to be switched many times ...

22:00 getting off my dirty clothes and sleep! I did not even hear the others coming back at 00:30 for their round of sleep.

Questions? Feel free:
j_gelbrich@gmx.net