Off the coast of Southern England, in the English Channel, I was woken for my morning watch.  Stumbling on deck with the bright morning sky blinding me temporarily, I found the mighty schooner Amistad sailing just fine on a beam reach in a fresh southerly breeze.  The rugged but serene coastline filled the view off our port beam and the salt air accompanied my morning coffee nicely.  Chief mate Bracken turned the watch over to me, filling me in on the plan to fall off and schoon right through the Solent, the channel that separates Isle of Wight and the mainland, the birth place the America's Cup.  With a grin on my face I took the watch and filled in my deckhands on the grand plans and told them to work smart on their sail handling and enjoy themselves as this is going to be pretty cool.  We tacked and jibed a few times to shake off the sleep and make sure we were up to the task short handed.  I got the go ahead from the Captain to lay a course to the entrance and head in.
I put my go-to helmsman, young Skywalker, at the helm and told him to get comfortable as he was going to be there for a while.  Good square rig training.  As I conned the Amistad through the channel under nearly full sail downwind, it became very clear how much of a sailing Mecca this place was.  Sailing vessels of all types came out to check out the big black schooner ripping down wind.  Yachts of all sizes, mega fast racing boats with narrow, towering mainsails, old pilot cutters and so on accompanied us down the channel for the whole morning.  By the end of my watch at 1300 the wind had freshened a bit and we were now making a good 9 knots.  I handed the watch over reluctantly, as I was having a blast but knew that I had to let Kent Kassels, third mate, get a chance to have a go at it.  My watch stayed on deck after lunch and laid in with the sail handling as we tacked up the meandering channel a ways.  We put the hook down off South Hampton in the late afternoon and furled all sail, putting the our beloved boat away for the night after she treated us so well all day.

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