Day 05 - First Day on Schooner

Before breakfast, we met our captain, John Foss. Several of the regulars followed Captain Foss when he moved to this ship. He gave a short description of the trip and what we should expect. He went over the safety devices. The one thing that had raised Kim’s eyebrows was the shower schedule. Kim had accepted the small bedroom. (Small is not a very descriptive word for the size of our cabin. Our closets at home are bigger than our living quarters onboard.) She even accepted the fact that we had to share the bathroom. But when he said that we should take a shower ever other day, she wasn’t as thrilled with that! (Well, again Jon is a master of understatement. The shower consists of a 2’ X 2’ room with a kitchen hose for a shower head. You have to get undressed, showered, dried off, and redressed all in this space.)



We had a great breakfast before we pulled out. When it was time to set out the food, we would form a food line to move the food from the galley to the cabin roof, which served as the buffet table. We would eat out on the deck. If it was raining, we could eat in the galley. They would ring the ship’s bell when the meal was ready.

When we left the dock, it was not windy enough to go under wind power and it was a narrow channel to get out into the harbor. Once we were safely in the harbor, we put up the sails. The crew did most of the work. We just helped put on some of the lines to lighten their load. I thought we would be doing more, but that was not the case.

It was foggy out, but I expected it would lift. Well, I was wrong. Right after we set sail, we could see several schooners around us. As we got out of the harbor, the fog got thicker. We could not see any other ships around us. We could occasionally hear a motor, but could not see the ship. After a few hours, the fog lifted enough to see some of the schooners around us. It was a magnificent sight. They would emerge and disappear back into the fog.



There was a rumor that the schooners would “raft-up”. This is where a few schooners set anchor and the rest of the schooners tie-up in between. There was great excitement amongst the seasoned cruisers. Right before we got to the harbor where we were going to anchor for the night, the fog finally lifted and we could see all of the schooners. They were putting on a show. It was a beautiful sight. I thought this was great, but the raft-up was awesome.

We set anchor in a cove at Holbrooke Island. One by one, the schooners started to tie up to each other. After dinner, we took the row boat out and took some pictures. When were back on board, we could walk from ship to ship. It was like a big party. There must have been a dozen schooners tied up as one. There were three other schooners tied up together near-by, but not close enough to the big group. Several other schooners anchored nearby. There must have been at least two dozen schooners in that harbor.









Once we were anchored, appetizers were put out with some wine. It was enough for a meal. I had to make sure that I wasn’t eating too much before dinner. After the raft was formed, dinner arrived.

As I looked out across this scene, it looked like a forest after the leaves were down. There were masts sticking up everywhere in the raft. I just could not stop looking at this. There were rumors of a race the next day. If there was no wind, we would race on Friday.