Celebrating the 4th of July on a Dutch vessel

July 4th, 2009 – 2135 hours – 40.29.35′N x 68.42.26.‘W

    Common sense assumes that the Fourth of July, being the independence of the United States of America, would not be a big deal on a Dutch flagged ship.
Contrary to my assumptions, the large number of Americans on board were indulged with a celebration. American flags were lashed to the quarterdeck and foredeck. A sunset celebration included many hand-held American flags, singing of the national anthem, and sparklers (I have no idea where they came from). Our friends of other nationalities, Australian, British, Bermudan, Dutch and South African joined in as well. A firing of the small cannon topped our observance of the U.S. national holiday.
     In other news, we made 174 miles of distance on July 3rd – an excellent run! We are still closing in on the Mircea, now 36 miles north of us. We keep talking about how awesome it would be to overtake her, even though we started late. Reflecting on our progress, we are still first in our class, and second overall. At 1400 today, we were just south of New York, with 240 miles to go until Boston.
      Last night we skirted by a massive thunderhead, a mushroom-cloud of electrical bombast that lit up the sky with constant stream of lightning from within. Flashes and distant booms, like a warzone or a dance party lit up a sky show that lasted for several hours.
     As of today it has started to get colder. Jackets are finally in fashion to match an air that brings a hint of a chill with it. If it is anything like the last time I went north in these waters, by the time we get near Nova Scotia it should be frigid. Today the wind picked up, and during the afternoon we were heeled way over. When I went aloft to furl the main skysail I had to climb the Jacob’s Ladder to get to the top, it was swaying enough, and at an angle that I had the sensation of climbing up it sideways.
    Surprisingly, it seems very few people are seasick. They’ve had days of light weather to adjust, and in this choppier sea they are standing up. They are lucky that they aren’t getting the immediate hazing that the Bermuda to Charleston crew received.
  After dinner tonight we watched the documentary “Around Cape Horn” a silent
collection of film from a 1929 voyage from Europe to Chile via the infamous Cape Horn on the German square-rigger Peking. Narrated by the famous sail-trainer and circumnavigator Irving Johnson (who himself did all the filming) the film is practically required viewing for sailors on board these ships. I remember watching it on Picton Castle and here we are, doing the same on board Europa. It is awesome for the trainees to watch because it is only after viewing the film that you realize fully what you have been doing on ship all along and what a piece of living history it is. Small details like the color of the seizings on the shrouds, the shape of the mast caps, and the font of the ship’s name on the wheel box are all in replication of
the great Cape Horn square-riggers that carried grain from Australia and nitrates from South America to Europe. The twentieth century, up until World War II saw, arguably, the ultimate culmination of the great square-rigged ships.
     Peking, for example was a four-masted ship, rigged like a barque, just like Europa. It could carry 5,300 tons of cargo around Cape Horn and keep it dry.
While Europa is quite small by comparison, many of the details, sail-handling, and ship-board life are similar. That is evident in the video and it is great fun for us all, and especially the trainees to see those sailors doing their work, and realize that we are doing nearly the same thing – but without cargo. True, they are a more extreme example by sailing a much more massive ship in far crazier waters (Who really climbs down the leech of a topsail anyway?) Peking was full of trainees, just as Europa is, a surprise to many. Watching them aloft to furl sail, or on the deck
stitching sail, peeling potatoes, or wobbling around a rolling deck are
scenes that are very familiar here on Europa.
     My favorite scene shows a view of the stern from aloft, with the wake of the ship churning up the waves. “Four propellers churning up a wake” says Irving Johnson on the video,”No, no propellers!” It’s a ship, hauling at a clip underway being “sailed with our own hands”. It couldn’t have been said better, and I think the same when we are making good speed en-route in the ocean out here. All the work that goes into it – raising sail, adjusting its trim, the maintenance etc. All this work to harness the wind to get to where we want to go – no engines, just wind. It is remarkable to think about. This floating community we have here, of over three hundred tons, moving from Charleston to Boston, only by wind, and rather efficiently as well!

      It is no propellers getting us where we want to go, it is our own hands, manipulating a massive wind-machine, like a giant puppet that needs to be tuned as acutely as a Stradivarius violin. The only way we get there, to rise to the challenge of this ship, this machine of wind, is by our own teamwork and skill.
      To think that we’ve been doing it every day out here too. So much work, but very rewarding. We rise to the challenge though, again and again. I was contemplating this the other day and realized that Johnson said as much in the video tonight. It is “something about the vessels that cause some kind of hypnotism [that] make you do things you would never do!” True, we all seem to do things that seem positively
daredevil, but, it is about the ship,  your shipmates, and the need to not only do one’s duty, but to rise above for all. It is something I see happening on board with so many people, time and time again. From Captain on down to the trainees. It seems to bring out the best in us and that is something that makes our community out here seem so unique, so different then what many of us feel we experience on land. These sails on our ship, they are not only our “connection to the elements” as Johnson said, but they are a connection between us, that force us to bring out the best that we have, not only for ourselves, but for us all on board.
      It is nearly midnight. Time for watch.