Ahoy, Mates! Where were you when Hurricane Floyd hit Maryland? On a school bus racing home early before the storm hit? Maybe helping your folks "batten down the hatches" (tie everything down) so your outdoor furniture wouldn't blow away? Or were you cozy in your bed listening to the wind blowing?

Pride of Baltimore II and I were in the Atlantic Ocean charging like a race horse down the coast of New Jersey looking for a place to hide before the storm got to us. We left New London, Connecticut, just as Floyd was messing around in Maryland. Captain Miles decided that we could make Delaware Bay and get into Philadelphia (our next port of call) before the storm reached us.

Here's a map of Maryland where you are, and the East Coast where we sailed. Can you trace our course from New London, CT, to Philadelphia, PA?

The sea was rough, even though the storm was far away. We bounced around like a rubber ducky in a bathtub. OK, I'll confess. I got seasick. But then the Captain gave me some motion sickness pills and I got better. (Do you get car sick sometimes? Seasickness is like that.) When I was looking particularly green, Chris Landers whispered to me, "This is the worst since I've been aboard!" So I didn't feel like such a landluber (a person with no experience at sea).

And it rained! Boy, did it ever rain! The crew is prepared for days like this. They wear foul weather gear (FWG). It looks silly but it keeps you dry and warm. Fortunately, they had a spare set for me. After I got better, I got to steer the ship in the storm and the rain. We flew up Delaware Bay like a NASCAR with the storm nipping at our tailpipe. It was awesome!

When we got to Philadelphia, it was 6 AM in the morning and everybody in town was asleep. It was still raining cats and rats. Captain Miles found a docking place at a City Pier in an industrial area. The wind there was blocked by a huge warehouse. We tied everything down and sat out the storm as cozy as could be. When people came to work the day after Floyd, were they ever surprised to find a schooner parked at their pier!

That's what we did during Floyd. But let me tell you about what your ship, Pride of Baltimore II, did before that.

In my last log, we looked at some of the neat places the ship visited this summer in the Great Lakes. But now she's on her way home to Chesapeake Bay for the fall and spring! She's be home soon so that Maryland with PRIDE kids can go on School Tours. You'll have Blue Ribbon Teachers aboard sharing their experiences in some of the historic ports around the Bay. New London, CT, and Philadelphia, PA, are the last two places on her itinerary (list of places to visit) before she's home for the fall.

I got aboard at New London, CT. New London is a small historic seaport in New England. It's an old whaling port, so it has a custom of welcoming traditional ships like Pride II. Today New London is famous for three things:

1. It's the home of the US Coast Guard Academy. The New London Academy is like the Naval Academy in Annapolis, only it trains officers for the US Coast Guard. The Coast Guard Academy is the home port of the US Eagle. She is a beautiful full rigged ship (a very big ship with lots of sails) where Coast Guard cadets learn to sail.

2. New London is directly across the river from Groton, CT, where General Dynamics builds nuclear submarines. It was kind of weird to sail past modern day submarines lurking low in the water on an old fashioned sailboat.

3. New London was the home of Eugene O'Neil, who was born about one hundred years ago. Eugene O'Neil is one of America's most famous playwrights. There is a stature of him on the waterfront where Pride II docked. The stature shows Eugene as a lad of about 10. He used to go down to the waterfront and write in his journal about the ships he saw in the harbor. Do you think that was a clue that he would take up writing as a profession?

Go to Part 2 of the Sept. 17, 1999 Log