This happened fast, but now I’m a deckhand on the sailing ship Matthew Turner, albeit unpaid and part-time.  She’s a brand-new wooden brigantine 132′ long.  I’ve been going out on sails ~3 days each week (which is enough!  The deckhand life is exhausting and there’s no alone time on the ship) and showing up for maintenance and summer camp days as well.  The campers go sailing and build ship models in the wood shop. 

When I started I thought we could develop a lot of new oceanography/science activities to do on board but the constraints of a typical half-day cruise quickly became apparent; you can’t make things too complicated.  Early in the cruise the passengers/students/campers are way too interested in the operations of the ship, and later on they’re tired.  So I mostly do plankton tows, marine plastics tows, sail handling and lead sea shantys. 

Haul away you Rolling Kings!
Yeah, that’s right – leading sea shanties is sometimes part of my gig.  You just have to be loud and ham it up; that I can do. I know “South Australia”, “Leave Her Jonny”, “Drunken sailor” and “Cape Cod Girls”.  The format is call-and-response, where I sing a line of two of nonsense at the top of my lungs (it’s very windy out there) and the passengers sing out a refrain like “Heave away!  Haul away!”  “We are bound for Australia”, etc. 

I also collect plankton with a plankton net and put some under the ship’s microscope, which is hooked up to a computer screen so everyone can look at the same time, and teach the basics about plankton.   Sometimes we use a special net for marine micro-plastics called a Manta Trawl.

Sail Handling
There is a LOT of sail handling to be done on this ship and it keeps us all busy for hours.  The square sails have many more lines to control them than the triangular sails.  There are 11 sails on the Matthew Turner (we never set all of them at once) and roughly one hundred identical-looking lines to manage them: sheets, halyards, bunts, braces, topping lifts, outhauls, downhauls, etc., etc.  All these lines come down from the masts and are tied to wooden pins at the rail, and the only way to know which line is which is to memorize its position in the row of pins.  We don’t have set duties – the mate will yell out something like “Hands to set the lower topsail!” and we shout “hands to set the lower topsail!” while moving to the appropriate places at the wooden pins.  On board you always repeat every order.  Whoever jumps to a particular line first gets to handle that line.  But some of the halyards and sheets require three or four people heaving with everything they’ve got.  We let the passengers haul up the mainsail, a long row of people heaving on one line. 

Usually when the ship is doing a maneuver, as soon as you have hauled in or eased a particular line you have to run over to a different place on the deck and do another because every part of every sail needs adjusting.  So in a few minutes there are dozens of lines jumbled up on the deck.  Then you have to coil each one neatly and hang the coil on the wooden pin like it was before.  Everyone is really persnickety about making the coils perfect and symmetrical and all the same size, so I usually have to re-do each coil before it looks good enough.  Then a few minutes later there is another maneuver and we do it all again. 

Going Aloft
Besides matching crew t-shirts, we wear harnesses like the ones rock climbers use.  That’s because in order to furl the square sails several people have to climb up the mast and then lay out onto the horizontal yards (poles) to do the furling.  You stand on one shaky rope, like a slack line, leaning over the yard while pulling the sail towards you, 40-80 feet above the deck.  Another volunteer named Randall taught me how.  You free-climb up the rope ladder (not clipped in ) and once you get to the horizontal yard you clip in with a couple of carabiners.  About fifty feet above the deck there is a little horizontal wooden platform attached to the mast, like a tree fort with no railing.  The platform has two square holes in it that Randall calls “lubber holes”; he says you’re not supposed to climb through them but pull yourself up and around the outside edge of the platform.  You are clipped in during this part.  I went through the lubber hole the first time, but now I do it Randall’s way.

What’s it like working aloft? The other boats on the bay look smaller than toys. It’s like wearing seven-league boots on 100-foot legs. It’s like having a flying dream, if you ever have those. Time stops; you are hyper-focused on each action you do. It’s exhilarating.

Tall Ship Planet
The experience is making me feel like I’m 21 again and the rest of the crew more or less are 21.  They live on board.  They all have experience on other ships. A few are college students who are going back to college in the fall.  The turnover is high for crew on tall ships; a few months to a year is a typical period of time to serve on one.  That’s partly because most tall ships operate seasonally, stopping operations in the winter.  Also because these twenty-somethings are always trying something new.  They are paid $400/week, plus room, board and occasional tips.  I am hoping that I can do this part-time on the Turner for years, and maybe go on some of the longer cruises as time permits.  They have 3-5 day educational sails and even longer trips to Baja in mid-winter. 

Besides the Matthew Turner, the organization has a smaller ship docked next to her called the Seaward, an 82-foot staysail schooner.  She is just as beautiful in her own way as the Turner and probably faster upwind, but since she doesn’t have square sails and isn’t brand-new she isn’t as glamorous and these days the Turner gets all the love.

Old Dog New Tricks
The physical part is not too hard.  Yes, the lines are rough on your hands and you’re always jumping from task to task.  Yes, I was jittery the first time I went aloft, but once I realized there’s no way the harness can let me fall I got over that.  (The captain told me a very wise thing: he said to go halfway up the mast, clip in and then let go and lean backwards with my hands in the air. That’s how I learned you can’t fall when you’re clipped in. ) Yes, a half-day sail somehow becomes a full day when you include all the preparation, cleaning and putting the ship to bed afterwards. 

What’s challenging is the mental part.  It’s being the most inept person on the ship.  It’s being corrected by crew who are younger than your own children but who know more about it: “No, we don’t coil halyards like that.  Let me show you…”  “We never use a locking turn here…”  “ALWAYS stand forward of this cleat…”  There are a million little ways to do things wrong and sometimes it feels like the only way to get them right is to do them all wrong a bunch of times first and get corrected.  So I have to accept that and absolutely leave my 57-year-old-guy ego on shore; that’s what’s difficult.  Never get defensive or justify yourself, just smile, listen, watch, and learn.