I head to Connecticut this Friday, to start my brief experience on the 38th Voyage. It is true that it will start on Friday the 13th, but I’m not the least bit worried about that, since I was born on a Friday the 13th — in fact, a Friday the 13th in June, too: this Friday, in addition to starting my Voyage, is my 45th birthday. Sounds like a pretty great birthday present for me, I think!

The Voyagers consist of 8-10 people on each of the nine legs of the complete voyage. Each Voyager submitted a proposal and application, and then were selected by staff at Mystic Seaport. I believe there will be nine Voyagers on our leg (one seems to get added and dropped from message to message…); we’re all listed here, under the first leg from New London to Newport.

We will board the Morgan on Friday night, and will spend the night in the bunks of the fo’c’sle. On Saturday morning, because of tides in New London, we plan to depart at 4:30 am. Some guests, who won’t be sleeping on board, will need to arrive an hour earlier — yikes.

Anyway, my initial thought, when I heard we’d leave at 4:30, was “dang, that’ll be early.” Then I immediately thought “Whoa. We’ll see the sunrise.” and “That just means lots more sailing!” and “It’s only 24 hours; I want as much of it as possible to be at sea.” So now I’m pleased. I just hope I can sleep a bit, the night before.

We will be towed out from New London, by a tugboat that a family has donated (including the fuel!) to the Seaport for use throughout the voyage. Roann, another Seaport vessel, will be accompanying us the whole way, as well. We’ll get towed some distance toward Newport, and then the tow line will be dropped, and we’ll spend the day sailing. At some point, the tug will reattach the tow line, and we’ll be towed into port in Newport, at Fort Adams State Park.

Except we won’t! For some reason, we’ll be anchoring offshore, and taking small boats in to the pier. That sounds amazing to me. I hope we get to help drop those anchors. I also thought it’d be great if we could drop a whaleboat from the davits, as we used to do in Demo Squad, to head in. Who knows; maybe I can suggest it.

As to how much one will be allowed to do, I think each Voyager will pretty much be allowed to do as much as they want, as long as they’re not in the way. I hope to take a pen and paper (and camera) and hang out aloft for a while. And go out on the bowsprit, perhaps. And take a turn at the wheel. And furl a sail. And so much more…

Anyway, that’s what the day looks like. I doubt I’ll be able to post much while I’m on board, though I don’t know. If I can, I’ll post it to the ShipIndex.org Facebook page. I will spend time over the next week or so sharing images and experiences through the blog, and perhaps through some other photo sharing service, too.

Back in April, when I went to the Seaport for training for the 38th Voyage, one big part of the day was to try climbing the rigging, in preparation for doing so while underway. I have climbed the Morgan’s rigging many, many times, but most often it was 20 years ago, when I worked on the Demo Squad at the Seaport. I’ve been aloft occasionally since then, but wasn’t sure how I’d do this time.

My main concern was my shoulder – I’ve got this annoying “frozen shoulder” that limits my range of mobility, and can occasionally be anywhere from painful to excruciating if it gets bumped in just the wrong way.

So, after spending the day in the Seaport library, I met up with a friend who has worked at the Seaport, and been in charge of the Demonstration Squad, for many years. She had some other friends who wanted to give a try at climbing before the full training day. She has the authority to let us try this when the grounds are closed – or, I imagine, whenever she feels like it.

We went over to the Joseph Conrad, because the rigging on Morgan wasn’t done yet, and it wouldn’t have been advisable to try climbing that rigging yet. I had been dressed for the library, but I gave climbing a try, anyway. We started heading up the foremast rigging, and I was very pleased to see that I did just fine. My lack of range in my shoulder isn’t that big a deal; you mostly keep your arms close in to you when you’re climbing. I didn’t climb over the top, but I felt like that was more because I was cold than because I couldn’t do it.

And the next day, with the other Voyagers, I did climb over the top on Conrad’s mainmast. Here are some photos I took from there.

    These are all looking forward, from the mainmast to the foremast, where another Voyager (in yellow) was going over the top with the assistance of Seaport demo guy extraordinaire Tim (in orange).

Here’s a view from the main top toward the whaleboats that other Voyagers were in. We’d done some whaleboat rowing before going aloft. Whaleboats are a blast to row (and sail) and the Seaport received a set of ten new whaleboats for the voyage from a variety of schools and museums.

 Here’s a bit of a selfie from the main top. It was hard to take any good pictures of myself from up there, unfortunately.

In late April, I went to Mystic Seaport Museum, as part of training and preparation for the 38th Voyage. As previously noted, I’ve been to the Seaport many, many times, and have lived in Mystic twice – once while studying at the Seaport, and once while working there. So it is not a new place to me, but it is always a favorite.

This time, I went early so I could spend a day and a bit more working in the G.W. Blunt White Library, collecting information to add to my ShipIndex.org database. I got some help in the form of a smart young boy who was there with his mom; she was doing some genealogical research, and his computer wasn’t working, so I asked if he’d like to help me. I gave him a quick rundown on using the Library of Congress classification (because of course he was more familiar with the Dewey system used in his school and public libraries) and then we were off.

I had this view of a model of the whaler Two Brothers, from my desk:

After posting this on my Facebook page, several friends described how they’d seen the real ship, at its wreck site, in Hawaii.

The actual training program began the next morning. All the Voyagers who attended that training session (there was one other) gathered in the morning to do introductions, and learn a bit about the Seaport. As far as I could tell, only one Voyager had never been to the Seaport before. He was leaving early, too, to get to Vienna – I felt like maybe he wasn’t taking this thing seriously enough.

We broke into three groups, and my group was the first to visit the Morgan. Built in 1841, she has just completed a five-year restoration project. Many timbers were replaced, but some originals still remain, as seen here:

The portion on the left dates to the ship’s construction (so, 1840 or so) and the portion on the right is brand new, with this restoration, to replace rot.

In the hold, we saw some of the extensive fittings and changes made for the voyage. Extensive fire safety systems, and plumbing systems, have been installed for the voyage, including a bank of heads (toilets). While they’re installed in a permanent fashion, most of these will be removed when the ship returns to Mystic in August. Look at all of this:

Here’s the crew bunks, where we’ll sleep. (We may have the option of sleeping on deck, if we so choose.) We’ll board at about 7pm the night before, spend the night on board, then sail away very early the next morning.

We then visited the Collections and Resource Center, which will get its own post.