Flashback: A Little Blood In Your Salt Water – Tall Ships, Victoria 2008

Because it was time for a change from Alaska…and because some would argue that *this* was really when I became a ship-girl.

“with a flourish, Kato throws himself upon his sword! I…quietly take to the ship.” – Moby Dick

For me, it was all about the Lady Washington. I love this ship. I’ve loved her since the first time I set eyes on her. And then I boarded her, and fell in love with her all over again. She’s ….I can’t even describe what she is. I was talking to one of the volunteer crew about how to go about joining – and she told me that if I do nothing else, I should drop everything and “do it now.”

“She’ll change your life. Whether she loves you or hates you, she’ll change your life.”

And said crew member looked at me, and , in response to something I said that I can’t even remember, said

“you’d do well here.”

I could have spent hours just leaning on her railing, not saying anything, just…being. But they were funneling poeple through fast, and I wasn’t allowed the privledge of exploring as I’d like. But I did come through several times later, and then there was the cannon sail…which was an…entirely different thing all together.
For three years I waited for this. Longer than that really, I suppose you could say I’ve waited for this since the day I first set foot on the Robbie much longer ago than that.

In all honestly I don’t know what to say about it. There’s so much to say that I find myself speechless. I have always been a child of the ocean, a daughter of Neptune, a “childe of wind and wave” as my best friends so often put it. But this was different…this was…home. A different home than any other I’ve encountered, even on other times I’ve been on the ocean.

The pulse of it, and not just the phyiscal pulse made up of the creaking of the rigging and the call of the crew back and forth to each other as they scramble and haul the ropes, or any of the other sounds and elements that make up the workings of a ship under sail – but the actual pulse of the ship herself, which is made up of something I can’t even describe, but that you can feel when you rest your arms on her railings.

We couldn’t  get under sail until after we left the harbour, so we used the motor to glide along until then, but we dropped sails just outside the mouth. There wasn’t a lot of wind, so there was none of that dramatic “BOOM” you hear about , just a quiet rustle of canvas, and with that sound, she had me.

We won the battle, due to some luck with the wind and some clever maneuvering, and there were some highly amusing moments (one of the observer ships motored along between us [observers were under no obligation to operate by sail alone] and had all it’s passengers yet ” BOOM” in their best imitation of a cannon, t’was funny). We cornered the Lynx, and despite her boasting that she was going to sink us all, managed to score five shots in a row to her stern as we sat right off her rudder. I almost felt sorry for her.

I actually helped haul a sail, and have to say there is a power in that, in being a part of that kind of team, that runs through you as strong as any ley line – because you’re not just part of the team, as temporary as you are, you’re part of the ship.The lines are heavy, and the ropes burn, but you find that you just don’t care.

I said to Nessa (the crew member I had spoken to earlier) that I saw what she meant:

she gets in your blood doesn’t she

so much so that eventually it becomes the other way around, then you start complaining that you’ve got a bit of blood in your salt water.

And she’s right.

When it was over, and we were heading back to port, the crew struck up a shanty while they were scrambling aloft and recoiling the various ropes, and I realise how much I didn’t want to leave. People talk about perfect moments, this was about three hours worth of perfect moments, and it felt like ten minutes.

~You know what a ship is? It’s not just a hull and a mast and some sails, that’s what a ship needs. What a ship is. What a ship really is. Is freedom…~ Pirates