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Days on board lose their moorings and the seven-day cycle that usually guides my life has completely disintegrated. In its place, the repetition of watch day, work day, off day had become the rhythm of my life, but that has all changed again. At about 2:00am on Tuesday, the next wave of Amistad’s new crew arrived, with Capt. Eliza, our new First Mate, Logan, and deckhands Joy and Toby arrived and the ship has come to life. No longer are we just waiting; the time has come to really get to work and get ready to embark on our journey! The down side to that is that days off also appear to be a thing of the past as we all are required for the tasks at hand.
Today got started with a whole lot of excitement as we had a plumbing malfunction, where one of the pumps ceased to function and water began pouring into the bilge in the main salon. Logan and I were out working in the head-rig when we heard the alarm and heard Eliza calling us in to deal with the emergency. The entire crew flew into action, opening up sole boards, breaking out pumps and getting them fired up, checking the through-hull fittings to stop the water from flowing in. It was amazing to see everyone responding so quickly and so effectively to the emergency. Afterwards, when the water flow was stopped and the bilge was pumped out, we all were faced with the task of removing all of the cans and bottles from the bilge and cleaning them with a bleach solution so we could re-stow them in the bilge for later use. It was smelly, hot and exhausting work and took over the entire morning, but we still managed to push ahead and get several other projects taken care of, including work in the head-rig, hauling down the foresail gaff in preparation to repairing a tear in the sail. We also had the pleasure of welcoming several guests aboard in the afternoon, including Bill Pinkney, the original captain of Amistad. All in all, it was not a bad day’s worth of work. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get any deck water aboard today, so all of us are facing the prospect of another smelly and gritty night.
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