At Sea Under Sail
Our final full day aboard found Sea Cloud racing the full power of her two German-built 770 horsepower SKL diesel engines toward the Aegean Sea to catch the light northerly Aegean winds for a day of sailing. We woke with the southern end of the Peloponnesus on our port side and the island of Kythera to our starboard, in the vicinity of the Antikythera shipwreck that marine archaeologist Robyn Woodward would describe later in the day in her talk on undersea archaeology.
Today the seas were calm, and Captain Pushkarev delayed the sailing until we reached the light ripples on the eastern horizon at 0900. “Permission to go aloft sir?” came the call from the bosun. “Hit the Rig” commanded the captain, and 18 deck crew scurried up the ratlines and out onto the yardarms. No matter how often we had seen it, it seemed we could not get enough of the vicarious thrill of the young sailors so high above the decks and sea as they unfurled the sails. Once they were all back down on deck we heard the command “Set squares in order”, and an orchestrated machine went into action to set 15 of the ship’s 16 square sails. While setting the jibs, the halyard on the outer jib caught the stay and the head of the sail was torn, forcing the foremast team out to the end of the bowsprit to unshackle the sail and bring it back onto the foredeck for repairs. Spread out on the Promenade deck it looked far more immense than when proudly flying forward, and we all marveled at the scale and size of this lofty square-rigger.
The wind picked up to about 12 knots, and we settled into a very comfortable three-knot sail towards the east. Even Captain Pushkarev found an opportunity to take a break on the Monkey Deck while “inspecting the sails” (see photo). National Geographic Balkan Expert Grace Fielder gave a talk on the Fourth Crusade, which tied together the main themes of the voyage and explained the historic Venetian dominance in the area. As the day heated up, sighs, whispers, longings, dreams and finally inquiries surfaced about the possibility of taking a final Mediterranean swim. The wind was light but steady, and Captain Pushkarev surprised us all by calling for the clewing up and furling of the sails in the mid-afternoon and then holding the ship in a drifting broadside lee so that we could all take a final swim. It was a magnificent sight to see so many of our happy group bobbing in the buoyant and saline water. To finish it up, we emerged back on board to she ship’s baker Marc preparing custom-made crepes for all the returning swimmers.
It was a delightfully fitting end to a dream-like voyage, topped off by the farewell cocktail party and dinner. Everybody on board hates to see a happy trip like this end, so we consoled ourselves with the ideas for our next voyage on the legendary Sea Cloud.
