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We are done with the open-to-the-public part of our London port call, and have just spent the day cleaning up, stowing away, and making ready for sea. The weather map doesn't look at all good, with significant gales forecast out of the SW. This is dead on the nose for where we're trying to go, which is Lisbon.
Because of the weather we'll spend today, and probably tomorrow and the next day working on the boat, giving the crew and students a run on shore, and allow Professor Williams to take the students around to see some of the historical sites in London.
Personally I don't mind a short break because my pulse and respiration are just returning to normal after our foray up, and then back down, through Tower Bridge. This maneuver was undertaken so that a film crew could get footage of Amistad at this historic site. The passage up was no problem, simply shooting the piers with a fair tide, under power. Then things became more complicated.
The Tower Bridge requires that any vessel that needs a bridge lift to get by must wait upstream for half an hour before coming back down, so that traffic can return to normal. The half-hour is spent making a one hundred eighty degree turn with not a lot of room to spare, and then holding the vessel in place with the current running upstream while the wind was blowing hard downstream. Normally thirty minutes doesn't seem like an eternity, but these were very long minutes, watching us slide across the current toward the side of HMS Belfast, a retired navy cruiser that sits in the channel, cleverly positioned to impede the navigation of yankee raiders. This was done while cruise boats and high-speed vessels tore past, winking with flashbulbs. With five minutes to go we cast off the gaskets on our square fore topsail, hoisted up the yard, sheeted the sail home, and started sailing toward the bridge, which providentially chose to open on time. With our third mate Kent standing atop the yard striking a heroic pose for the home crowd we went through the bridge, furled up the topsail, and motored down to Docklands.
None of this would have been possible without the excellent service and good humor of John Freestone, senior Thames River Pilot, a gentleman and a scholar, and he even lent me his rakish cap and elegant jacket for the attached photo. Freestone looks handsome wearing the Captain's tar-stained wind jacket and Funk's Hybrid Seed cap.
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