What do the crew do at a tall ship festival?

If you are a member of the professional part of the crew, you have a lot of work that needs to be done. If you are a member of the training crew, you have a lot of shore based events to attend and participate in.

For PRIDE II, the professional crew have ship maintenance and consumable resupply to attend to while also hosting private receptions and tours of PRIDE II with school age kids learning about the origins of our country’s national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

PRIDE II’s cook must get out into town and shop for food to resupply what was consumed coming to Boston, then also fill the ship up with food for the sail to Halifax. He will also shop for more than is needed to get to Halifax as a strategy to keep food costs down while in Canada till mid-August.

PRIDE II’s engineer must attend to an electrical glitch in the reverse osmosis water maker, an irritating problem that has been troubling us since just before arriving Bermuda at the end of the first week of June.

The bosun and the rest of the crew will take advantage of the good weather and check the rig for any wear or tear, as well try to catch up on some cosmetic maintenance.

Meanwhile, PRIDE II’s Captain splits time between talking to officials of the festival, organizers of the sail training races, consulting with crew about maintenance and the technical glitches, phone calls to technical advisors, co-hosting the private receptions, attending official festival events and scraping time together to spend with his wife, who took a train to Boston to see him…the last opportunity before PRIDE II leaves the country till near the end of August.

Included in all of this is splitting the crew up so they too get some time off…even at the expense of not getting some general maintenance done.

Altogether the time in Boston flies by very quickly. Tomorrow PRIDE II and the fleet depart bound for Halifax. 

Cheers,
Jan C. Miles, Captain aboard Pride of Baltimore II