I realize that I should probably start writing about Africa before Alison shows up and after she shows up. For me, this is a real turning point in the entire trip – being as how I’ve been thinking of her most of the time. After working my second yard period contract in a row, I was happy to stand on the dock and watch Amistad sail away with out me. I remember standing there on the dock with one friend of mine, and picking up water bottles after the festivities because Long Wharf was back to a ghost town after the boat had left. It would feel like only a blink of an eye before I was able to join them again in Falmouth England. The first leg students had disembarked in Falmouth, and left double crew there to take the boat from Falmouth to Liverpool where we would meet up with our second leg students and say good bye to the first leg crew. That trip was a real puker for me. I wrote this horrible blog about motion sickness somewhere on the Amistadamerica.org website. Long story short, I made it to Liverpool alive. This second leg of the trip was scheduled to be six months for the long crew (myself and three others). There were many port stops – I should try to find them all… ain’t no time like the present right?!
08/26/07 Liverpool England
08/29/07 Bristol England
09/05/07 Scilly Isles, England
09/08/07 Tor Bay, England
09/11/07 Dover, England
09/12/07 Tilbury Landing, England
09/14/07 London Bridge, Canary Wharf, London, England
09/26/07 Falmouth, England
10/04/07 Cascais, Portugal
10/13/07 Lisbon, Portugal
10/24/07 – 11/11/07 Cascais, Portugal
11/17/07 – 11/22/07 Lanzarote, Canary Islands
11/28/07 Porto Da Palmeira
11/29/07 – 11/30/07 Ilha Da Boavista, Cape Verde
12/07/07 White Man’s Bay, Sierra Leone, Africa
12/09/07 Freetown, Sierra Leone, Africa
12/18/07 at anchor off Freetown, Sierra Leone, Africa
Well, that’s an exciting looking itinerary isn’t it? Many of those stops weren’t really planned, but se la vie, especially onboard a ship when all sorts of things can go strangely and not according to schedule.
Bristol was a wonderful city. Lots of neat life to be had there, friendly people, nice pubs around. I’m going to suggest to Alison that we try going there and staying for a month or so. She and I have limited time, so I want us both to decide what to do during our vacation time. Perhaps living and working somewhere is not what she has in mind?! Heh
Dover was really impressive. The entry to the harbor has big walls, and bright light houses. The cliffs of the mountains are steep and beautiful, rising quickly behind the mass of the city by the water. I think it was actually the little harbor boat that impressed me a lot too. They had these nifty blueish running lights making them look like they had a landing pad on either side of the boat.
London was… it could’ve been much better. I think our arrival and advertising for our open boat was done very poorly. For the whole time we were open, only a few hundred people came by. Sounds like a lot, but really it was a slow trickle pretty much the whole time. One thing I can’t complain about though was the weather – I remember it being wonderful the whole time we were there.
Portugal was pretty neat. The dock we were at there in Lisbon was mediocre but the boats coming and going – it was impressive to be sure. And the other tallship folks were so friendly. Many of our crew got tours aboard other ships. I got to go aboard a Finnish ship. I can say without a doubt that our two “interpreters” Alexandria and Renato really made the experience of Portugal a special one. Had we been there without their support, surely the student tours wouldn’t’ve happened, and we would’ve missed out on many things that Portugal has to offer. I had one of the more amazing meals I’ve ever had there in Renato’s company. It was wonderful to be out with them, and I’ll never forget it.
So how about a moral to this story?: Six months is a long time to be apart from family and friends and home. I’m moving into another part of my life. I have the four years pretty much planned out in a maritime academy, and living with Alison. I’ve spent so much time thinking about what that will be like… I don’t know if I’ve really lived like I normally do while she’s been gone.
As we went further down south, the weather gradually was getting warmer and warmer. Our first developing country stop was a small island that we stayed at for only a few hours. I think it was Cape Verde. I was surprised at how poor everyone was. Freetown Sierra Leone. By far and away the most successful and busy dockside tours we’ve ever had. The estimate for the week was 15,000 people across our decks. Luckily, the first day I had off. I heard it went to hell in a hand basket. The local police had no idea how to handle all these people and it was chaos all day long. When I arrived on Tuesday, Mike Moreland had designed and executed an excellent plan for keeping people moving through the boat, and in an orderly fashion. The rest of the week was only fine tuning the experience for everyone. They were busy days, and our patience was always wearing thin, but I could tell how much our presence there meant to the locals. Sengbe Pieh is on the 5,000 Leone note for God’s sake. Now that I sit here and write this, it seems like a long time ago that we had all the students and rest of the crew onboard – and now we’re down to a skeleton crew just maintaining each day. Doing a little work here and there, but mostly relaxing. From the looks of the logbook, I think most of the crew left the boat on 12/22/07 and we’ve been running on this short crew the whole time. There are three watches: Even and Barry, Drew and Gina, and Rev. Paul and Johnny. On 01/15/08 Gina will be leaving, and two days after Alison will be showing up and Drew and Alison will make up the second watch until the new crew and students come to Sierra Leone to relieve us and take Amistad to her new destinations.
Now, more than ever, I feel like a sailor. I answer with out hesitation when someone asks me what my day job is: sailor. Sometimes people do a double take because there aren’t that many sailors around all that much anymore. I suppose they’ve gone the way of the farmer: machinery and technology has taken us so far, you simply don’t need that many people for the job anymore. To ship 5,000 cars from America to China? To harvest 1,000 acres of corn? Hmm I might say you’re just as likely to run into a sailor in the shopping mall as you are a farmer. Well, I’m about out of steam for the moment – from now until Alison gets here, it’s a safe bet that I’m maintaining Amistad and trying to stay out of the full sun. Until next time, mrDrew