Tally and Belay
So, on Sunday Sept. 7th - you see how hot and up to date the content is here - the fencing club had an afternoon excursion on the St. Lawrence II, Kingston's sail training brigantine, and, well I wouldn't be posting about it if I hadn't gone, would I?
(Excursus: There should be a name for that thing where you go off and do something novel and exciting and come back wanting to tell everyone about it only to meet with dull quotidian disinterest and bland incuriosity. Oh, you went to Mars? That's nice - did you have a good time? Dinner will be ready at five.
Not that I'm thinking of anyone in particular, of course >.> )
I took a lot of pictures, and even got a kind fellow pointy-object man to take some shots of me doing midlife crisis activities. Below are a selection; the rest can be found on my shiny new Picasa account (thanks, mylescorcoran , good idea!).
Here's the boat:
She's been afloat since 1953. It takes six people to work her. She's a training vessel, and usually has more people aboard, ages 12-18 or so. The 35 of us filled her up :)
We were all rated crew, so we had to work under guidance of the regular crew. Here's a bunch of young fencers getting ready to do sail things:
Lovely views of my city that I never had before, including this of a building invisible from the landward side: the old 19th century lunatic asylum. Call of Cthulhu, anyone?
I pulled on ropes:
:D
Hurrah for sail power!
Eventually I went aloft:
The footing was tricky:
Nice view of the deck:
And some lovely sights:
Eventually we put the sails away and went home:
All in all wonderfully fun! I came home tired and cold and wet and curled up with some hot chocolate.
TL;DR, aka quotidian disinterest version: Yes, I had a very good time. Please pass the salt.