400 Years in a Day

That was the conceit, at least.

Today - all day, 9 to 5 - was spent taking part in a wonderful 'Historical Heartbeats' lecture/tour. We boarded a fast ferry in Hamilton and spent most of the day aboard, with two professors as guest lecturers, lunch served, and a full day scooting from one place to another, at fast and at slow speeds, with a captain apparently able to maneuver in very shallow waters and turn on a dime.

I'd love to have a copy of the notes from which our two speakers spoke - great stuff. After a whole day of it tho, and much of it new to me, and general exhaustion, I'm not sure how much I actually recall...History, how trade impacted everything, the roles of men and women, free and enslaved and indentured. We talked smuggling and blockade running, 'repackaging' of goods to avoid duty, partnerships and rivalries.

On an individual note, my companions from the office snorkle and dive and could comment when we were in the vicinity of some interesting wrecks from the last 4 centuries.

I am beat, tho, between the sun and the movement and the water (and the background exhaustion - way too many late nights.) Despite three applications of sunscreen, I'm crisped, too, which is not helping me stay awake. I've done my cool shower and aloe and cool cloths...

So, until I'm more awake and coherent, I'll post pictures.

Kruzenshtern out!

Unhappy to see this, but apparently the foremast broke on the Russian ship, the Kruzenshtern, and the ship has had to pull out of the race. It is such a beautiful thing...

This late breaking news tidbit courtesy of the Bermuda Sun, as follows:
Kruzenshtern pulls out of Tall Ships Atlantic Challenge
TUESDAY, JUNE 16: The Russian naval vessel Kruzenshtern has been forced out of the Tall Ships Atlantic Challenge after breaking its foremast.

No one was injured in the accident and the craft - the largest in the race - is now heading to a U.S. port.

Bermudian residents aboard the Kruzenshtern are Daren DeSilva, 26, Terrance Sousa, 24, Matthew Outerbridge, 20, Anthony Bailey, 16, Raymond Raynor, 17, Donald Smith, 17, Nesta Eugene Wellman, 17, and Raymond DeShields, whose age was not given.

The ship had to withdraw from the race as continuing could endanger the crew and cause further damage to the vessel.

A frontal system from this morning has passed us now and we are in very light north-westerly wind, which is expected to turn more northerly.


HOWEVER - much better than the news from the 1984 race, when, 78 miles out of Bermuda, one of the ships hit what was probably a rogue wave/squall line combinataion and, as I understand it, basically 'sailed to the bottom of the ocean'. The set of events were rather a surprise, they couldn't get the sails down quickly enough and went over. Wikipedia says:

In the early hours of 3 June she was hit by a sudden squall and a large wave, possible a rogue wave, and was knocked down onto her side. Although the ship had been converted to a sail training and charter cruise ship, she had retained the main cargo hatch from her days as a commercial vessel. When she was knocked down the main hatch was breached and water flooded into the interior of the ship. She sank in less than a minute, with the loss of 19 of her 28 crew members.

People here remember it vividly - a lot of the crew were young, they had lodged with families around the island for their time here and quite won hearts. I heard more than once from Bermudians that they haven't had the stomach for such racing since. (I'm that same way about watching shuttle launches - used to love watching them, but after seeing Challenger blow up I can't stay in the same room with the TV coverage on until I know they are up safely.)

Here is an article from Time on the 1984 tragedy: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,951176-1,00.html

Poo

I did go out to St. George's and did see the ships having rounded the end of the island and waiting for the start of the race in another couple hours, but between haze and showers and distance - and that 2 hour wait - my photos are not esp interesting. I'll post one or two to give a sense of what one part of the water before me was like, tho, along with a cloud picture - I keep taking cloud photos, the skies can be astonishing.

Poo. I was very much looking forward to seeing the sails full of wind and the ships underway. Traffic was so bad I couldn't make it back down here in time to see them come down along South shore and head off for Charleston.

Comments to blog

Several people have said they have problems sending in comments. It isn't as intuitive as the Google guys would like to think. See that "0 comments" bit at the end of each blog posting? (There is also a pencil, which is for me to edit the blog when I see something I didn't intend, and what is usually an 'email' icon, which I think looks like it would be the way to respond - but nope.) Click on the "0 messages". A smallish window, titled "post a comment", opens to write in. When you are done, click on 'post comment'. Your comment will show, with a yellow-highlighted "Your comment was published." That is it.

Now, I receive each comment and decide whether to actually have it post or not, so there is a delay. Don't worry; I'm a bit manic about checking whether I've received anything. I can also edit out the more private bits of a response. If it is posted (and there have been so few you have to go back to the near-beginning of the blog to find them), it shows up on the blog page as "1 comment" or whatever the number happens to be, and clicking on that lets you see what was written.

Hope that helps!

What fun!

Late in the afternoon yesterday, one of my co-workers poked his head into the office and said he'd just found out about a 3-hour sailing cruise for Saturday morning that would have us on the water close to the Tall Ships; food and drink included, there was still room - did I want to go?

Why not, as Dad would say...

So Jim picked me up at 8 this morning and we boarded a catamaran around 8.45 for our morning treat. A nice temperature, a good wind, 15 or 16 people plus 4 crew members handing around plates of pastries, fruit, snacks, and cups of juice, coffee, water, rum swizzler...

This isn't a big place, and ten minutes would have got us close to the ships, so we meandered out along one edge of the harbour and sound, up past the cruise ship behemoths at Dockyard, back threading thru islands and past the Princess and yacht club moorings, tidbits of local lore tossed out along the way. We puttered to and fro, circling about, enjoying the day and the view and the company; could have gone swimming near the islands we nosed around. Did pick up some stronger winds and a chilly rain shower at one point; captain pointed out a very low hanging cloud bank that, if the water was a little warmer and the wind wasn't as high as it was, would likely have spun out waterspouts. You could see the clouds bunch up and start tipping down, but then withdraw.) Lovely.

Over there was the house and island the original illustrator of Wizard of Oz lived; he'd come to Bermuda after a dispute about earnings with Frank Baum, the author, but had made enough to buy the island, and declared himself King Denslow I.

Over here is an enormous manor house built in fussily non-Bermudian style; the top floor was reachable only by a tight spiral stairway. (Apparently the builder installed his mistress on the top floor; his wife, sharing the house, was a woman of considerable physical substance and could not get up the staircase, and presumably wasn't aware of what was going on upstairs, other than that was hubby's playroom.)

That one was where secret meetings were held between Churchill and Roosevelt, and the bunkers nearby, now not visible, was where every piece of mail going to Europe from the US, or the US from Europe, was processed for security's sake.

Margaret Thatcher met President Reagan over there; she stepped off her boat, hand bag on her wrist, and strolled down the way to their meeting place, while American security had sharpshooters on all the high points, and had such control over the area germs couldn't get in or out.

That big blue house was the last official brothel for military use; over there was the original airport, where the Pan Am Clippers came in.

The Bounty was a Nazi ship, confiscated during/after the war and rebuilt for training and movie use; it was not just in Mutiny on the Bounty but was the ship used for the Pirates of the Caribbean Johnny Depp series.

Opinion was unanimous on the complete inappropriateness and general hideousness of the way-too-prominent Bank of Bermuda building.

All in all, with material like that, the time flew by.

And the ships are stunning. I managed another 266 photos (added to yesterday's 200, and the day prior's 60), but today was a darker, cloudier day and I didn't compensate well for that, so many are too dark for my taste. (I know I can tweak them, but haven't and probably won't...) Nonetheless - more fotos!

In that oft-noted Bermudian way, it transpired that our captain a) is the husband of one of our consultants-on-staff at the Planning Department, a Brit who has been here for 30 years and can't think of any place he would rather live; and b) owns the Tucker's Point dive and sail shop I'd been referred to by a family friend as the best on the island. His wife will be bringing me info on their offerings and rate sheets when we go back to work Tuesday.

Tuesday, note, because Monday is when we celebrate the Queen's birthday. The Queen's Birthday Parade was going on while we were sailing about in the harbour; we could hear part of it. Pinkies up as we toast her health, gang!

The Kruzenshtern

Yuri - да, это русский корабль тренировки - определенно среди самого большого, и одного самого красивейшего.

Wow

I took my lunch break to climb aboard 4 of the tall ships, from Romania, Brazil, Russia and Holland. These things are astonishingly photogenic, and that is while they are at rest. I do hope to see them at sail on Monday, when they head off to Charleston - there is very little that could match these beautiful things in 'full sail'.

Apparently they have been a big draw as well. Front Street etal was packed last night, the first night of the close-the-streets festival, despite periodic rain. Tonight was expected to be bigger, tho there was a very heavy rain shower right around 6 pm. This being Bermuda, the showers tend to the violent and brief; this blew in while I was waiting for the bus, and by the time it arrived the rain was past.

I'd thought about staying in town tonight, but decided that between my trawling at lunch, my sail tomorrow morning to see them from the water (with buffet and bar), and Monday's view from St. David's Headlands I was doing pretty well for my part. (I went to the opening of the newest show at BSOA - photos and paintings with water somehow as its theme - after work. If I were feeling acquisitive there were several things I'd seriously consider. And three 'gallery' shows, single artist productions that held up well - one where, somehow, photos were 'reproduced' as gold leaf on clear glass (which, with lighting, produced a shadow of color related to the light used) (Peter Lapsley, tho this is quite different than the work on his website); one I wasn't overwhelmed by; and one, in acrylics, with such meticulous detail and saturated color I'd thought they were photographs until I read the fine print. Spoke with the lovely young woman who is the artist for those - she paints astonishingly, precisely. Sigh. Alice Coutet. (There is a website.)

Weekend plans are a bit scattered. Normally, of course, I head into St. George's for painting class. This harbor thing came up at the last minute, and since Tall Ships happens not all that often (last time about ten years ago), I thought I'd do that, tho who knows about the weather. I'll have dinner Sunday with a friend who is visiting, whose family is here, but who I met and got to be friends with in Pacific Grove, CA.

Otherwise I have a wagon-load of work I brought home with me.

More tomorrow. A bunch of photos, tho, if I can make any choices - 200 photos were taken at lunch, and I haven't junked a one!

Boats and Flame Trees

The Tall Ships have started sailing into Hamilton's Harbor. I wandered down to Front Street, a block and half away, to see what had come in by lunchtime today. They are so gorgeous! So a few pictures...

The gloriously stunning red-blooming trees are poincianas, which have lots of other names including flame trees (but lots of red-blooming trees are called flame trees, too.) Seem to be two versions - this bright red, and a lighter, more orangey version.

Busy busy at work, between mentoring, case work, special projects...and lots of power outages around the island today, for no particularly discernible reason. Several government offices closed as a result. Didn't have power here at the apartment for the first hour or so after I got in, AND my phone conked out. I used it as a sort of practice for the aftermath of a serious storm - what did I have, what did I need to get, how prepared was I?

Enjoy. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and there will be more of these in tomorrow and this weekend - 23 in all are expected. The Russians are here - they have I think the largest of the ships, and they are visible around town in their sailor suits and broad-brimmed hats. (They jump like they've been goosed if you toss off a bit of Russian, even just a 'dober dan', as you wander past.)