We are on our first foray from Baltimore this year, following our return from Portsmouth, VA, where we hauled the ship and worked on her bottom. 

Rig-up this year was busy with capital improvement projects tailing into the time allotted for the actual preparation of PRIDE II to be underway.  Foremast repairs, work on the course yard, and the completion of our new electric generation and storage machinery were still going on as the winter cover came off the ship and work began on bending on sails and organizing materials for our annual haul out.

All is "laid along" now, however, and our attention has turned from the up-rig of the vessel to actually sailing her.  And sailing her with an eye for deep water, transatlantic sailing.  Our crew is, as always, very experienced, with many vessels under their collective belts.  Many have sailed with PRIDE II before.  But now we are sailing for the first time as a crew, and everyone needs to find their place in the grand scheme of PRIDE II operation. 

And so it was we left Baltimore last Monday in a fitful west/southeast breeze, bending on storm trysails, storm jibs, and reefing sails though the weather conditions hardly called for that kind of sail plan.  Now all the crew have seen PRIDE II's technique for heavy wind, which should help speed things up when the spray starts to fly and the ship starts to heave a bit.

Chestertown, MD

Since I started this missive, we have shifted from Havre de Grace down the Bay and up the Chester River to Chestertown, where we are currently laying at SULTANA's dock.  The weather is grey with frequent bits of rain and this is knocking a hole in our plans to address some of our other priorities, i.e., general maintenance.  It's hard to work on the varnish when it's actually raining.  The chief mate, Andrew Mckee, is the arbiter of the weather.  The crew knows that "it isn't raining until the Mate says it's raining" and will push on until Andrew gives the word that the water percentage has finally exceeded all possible tolerances that will allow paint to eventually dry.  But there are plenty of projects that can be done in the rain and so we tackle those.

The crew this year is a first rate group of sailors, about 50% of which have sailed on PRIDE II before.  Returning this year are: Lilly Morris, joining as Second Mate; Kelly Poole, joining as Bosun; Bill Ryall, joining as Engineer/Deckhand; Krysta Tyburski, joining as Deckhand; Ben Erne, joining as Deckhand; and Katy Grey, joining as Cook.  From a management point of view, this represents excellent continuity which allows us to advance the ship's sailing technique that much more quickly.  This year we also have joining us: Andrew Mckee as Chief Mate, and David Castle, Alan Morse, Bonita Johnson, and Joshua Koerpel as Deckhands.  The crew mix is a good one and the result seems to be a happy crew - a very important thing for a transatlantic voyage.

Not much more to report at this time. The vessel will be doing daysails out of Chestertown this weekend and then on Monday we will sail our way back to Baltimore with guest crew aboard.  While in Baltimore, we will load on the last bits of food and odds and ends for the voyage, as well as hosting the PRIDE Person-of-the-Year Gala on Thursday, April 28.  The next day we sail for Annapolis and on May 2, 2005, I'll hand over command to my partner, Jan Miles, who will swing the vessel off for Baltimore, Ireland, a little after noon.

Until next time,
Captain John Beebe-Center