{"id":1946,"date":"2013-02-15T18:00:59","date_gmt":"2013-02-16T02:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=1946"},"modified":"2017-08-06T21:45:03","modified_gmt":"2017-08-07T04:45:03","slug":"up-where-we-belong-sydney-australia-02152013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=1946","title":{"rendered":"Up Where We Belong \u2013 Sydney, Australia \u2013 [02\/15\/2013]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sailorgirl2\"<\/a>There are some things that you have always wanted to do, and think you never will. Or that you\u2019ll never have the nerve, or the money or the time. If there\u2019s anything that working on ships has taught me, it\u2019s that there is always some excuse, but if you really want to do something, you will find<\/i> the nerve, and the money and the time. Because if you don\u2019t you\u2019ll spend your whole life wondering what would have happened if you had.<\/p>\n

Being my mother\u2019s daughter, I have come into my own on this philosophy, especially recently (see my recent plunge from the sky tower). I\u2019m not sure why this is, but somehow I have just become dead determined to do<\/i> things.<\/p>\n

Anyway.<\/p>\n

My ongoing love affair with tall ships is certainly no secret. I\u2019ve no idea when it started, I certainly didn\u2019t have it when I was little, it\u2019s not something I can lay claim to since I was a child. If anything I suspect it took root when my hometown hosted its first Tall Ship Festival. Anyhow, these days everyone knows that I wept when the Bounty<\/i> sank, and railed when the Robinson II<\/i> was run up against a well-known reef. I know my \u2018ladies\u2019 so to speak, and if there is such a ship anywhere near where my current floating home is docked I will find it.<\/p>\n

This time though, I knew well in advance, since I\u2019d done the Sydney Harbour Sail just last year. At that point, my spur-of-the-moment planning style hadn\u2019t worked in my favour and I couldn\u2019t do exactly<\/i> what I really wanted, so this year I booked beforehand (which also had the perk of getting me a better price)\u2026and paid for the chance to climb up the rigging.<\/p>\n

Finally.<\/p>\n

I was shocked to find that I was actually nervous once I started climbing. Not scared really, just\u2026slightly uneasy. It never once occurred to me that I was in any actual danger (and not only because I was wearing a very secure safety harness) but there was a sensation of butterflies simply from knowing precisely what<\/i> it was I was doing.<\/p>\n

Remember, you want to do this, you\u2019ve wanted to do this more than anything for a long long time\u2026so you can<\/span><\/i> \u00a0<\/i><\/span>do this, you were born to do this, now DO it.<\/i><\/p>\n

That was what kept going through my head as I carefully made my footing on the ropes\u00a0 – and yes, they are ropes, they don\u2019t rig up any kind of special ladder or anything along those lines, these are the same rope ladders and cable supports that the real crew uses. The swing under you, and they\u2019re rough under your palms. You feel totally connected with the ship underneath you, and the higher you go, the more aware you are that this is a symbiotic relationship: you respect the ship, she will respect you. You treat her with care, you will always be safe.<\/p>\n

The rigging tapers to a point near the crow\u2019s nest platform itself, and it was then that I found myself thankful that I was small, because it was easy for me to grab onto the two diagonal metal poles that serve as the last struts to get you up onto the platform. Though I was struck by the thought that I really need to work on my upper body strength, it\u2019s never been good, but I\u2019ve become so lax about it since I started working behind a desk. My dance teacher would be ashamed.<\/p>\n

Once up in on the platform, the world spreads out below you like a tapestry, you can see for miles. Despite the fact that this isn\u2019t a rooftop, I found that it was Mary Poppins <\/i>that kept rolling through my mind<\/p>\n

What a view! And who gets to see it but the birds, the stars and the chimney sweeps<\/i><\/p>\n

The crew member who was photographing me from the opposite mast asked me at one point if I was cool simply staying where I was for a bit, my response was to ask if that meant at some point I was going to have to come down. This made him laugh. So I stood up there for a long while watching the seagulls, and \u2013 moreover \u2013 watching the other crew members who were doing work in the rigging. Far from having the full body safety harness they had rigged me up, these guys work with only a waist harness clipping them to the ropes. Their bare feet balance effortlessly on the rigging as they grip the stays one handed to do whatever it is that needs doing. They move so seamlessly and so easily that it\u2019s hard to believe that they aren\u2019t actually a part of the ship herself. Which in a very real way they are of course. And as I was standing there looking at them \u2013 knowing that I really should be looking at the scenery \u2013 I was struck again by how much I want to do this. All the way up there, with the other paying passengers so far below me, it was so easy to let myself forget that I do not<\/i> know how to sail, that at the moment I barely know how to belay or sweat a line. That I was not part<\/i> of what was going on. There was a part of me screaming,<\/p>\n

Hey, let me do<\/span> something!<\/i><\/p>\n

But I didn\u2019t say it out loud of course.<\/p>\n

For far too long I have put off my desire to crew a tall ship because of the time, the money, the nerve. The fear that I won\u2019t be any good at it, that the more experienced would laugh at me. Standing up there, I realized that I really really<\/i> need to not be afraid of all those things.<\/p>\n

I am thinking, now more than ever, that some vacation in the very near future I will book the Lady Washington\u2019s training program and commit myself to living in cramped quarters and developing calluses and sunburns and very very sore muscles, working probably harder than I ever have in my life. One day soon I will be able to see a stack of sails on the horizon and say \u2018yeah, I did<\/i> that\u2019, but for now? For now this will do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are some things that you have always wanted to do, and think you never will. Or that you\u2019ll never have the nerve, or the money or the time. If there\u2019s anything that working on ships has taught me, it\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-vo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4670,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1946\/revisions\/4670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}