Shortly after we left Jost van Dyke we heard whisperings about an upcoming Seamanship Derby. A couple of days later it was officially posted on the companionway hatch: One of Many Non-Annual Caribbean Seamanship Derbies to be held on Sunday, June 19th in which the three watches would compete against one another in seamanship skills such as identifying running rigging and parts of the ship, knot tying, hanging and coiling lines, boxing the compass, and steering the ship. The judges would be Kimberly, the ship's purser, and Joe, the cook, both of whom were more than willing to accept bribes for extra points.
We spent several days busily reviewing and practicing everything we've learned. We did pin chases in the dark on our night watch, practiced tying knots everytime we could pick up a piece of rope, boxed the compass instead of counting sheep to fall asleep...and tried to think of clever, creative bribes for the judges. One watch served Kimberly breakfast in bed two days before the Derby...we knew then that there would be serious competition. We thought up team "uniforms", made up team songs and kept practicing. In some ways it felt like we were all cramming for a big exam in school!
The two days leading up to the Seamanship Derby we had strong winds - Force 5 and 6 - with swells running as much as 10 feet high or more and very choppy, confused seas. Even under reduced sail we were scooting along at 8 knots or better. Steering became a full body workout as we had to turn the wheel 3 or 4 full turns, often with a lot of resistance, in one direction and then back the other way trying to stay on course. We doubled up on the helm, two people working together to turn the wheel. There was talk of possibly postponing the Derby if the weather turned stormy as the forecast predicted.
Finally, Sunday the 19th arrived. At 1500 (3 pm) we officially started the Seamanship Derby with the Captain laying out the rules. In addition to points in the different skills categories, we also got points for costumes, bribes and "other". We started with identifying running rigging and parts of the ship. Watches were switched to different watch officers who had to call out something and the person at the head of the line for that watch then ran to identify it. It was a bit of mayhem and hilarity as we all went running about. One of the items I had to find was the ship's bell rope. Well, one of the judges, Danie, the engineer (he replaced Joe who had to cook dinner), happened to be standing next to the ship's bell, so after grabbing the bells's rope I turned to give Danie a quick shoulder massage and said, "that's from the 12 to 4 watch." His eyes lit up and he said, "Wow. That's worth extra points!" We excelled at the pin chase and came out in first place.
We also did really well in coiling and hanging lines, except that we took all the slack out of the buntlines of the Foresail while the sail was set. We were still ahead going into the knot tying. We did not score well in that part, but I think the judging was a bit confused since there were so many of us tying knots all at once it was hard to really know who did it fastest and accurately.
Boxing the compass caught us a bit off guard. I had been practicing boxing by quarter points and then we just did it by whole points. Also, our watch had to do it first and we did not have the benefit of hearing the others stumble through it beforehand. So, that's all just an excuse for our poor performance in that area. At that point we were in third place...when there's only three teams that's not good.
Fortunately we have a top-notch helmsperson. One of the other watches had already set a very high standard with 3 minutes 29 seconds of staying within half a point either direction of the designated course. Andrea Deyling is a blimp pilot and, as the Captain said, if you can steer a blimp you can steer anything! She kept us on course for over four minutes. And the third watch to compete was not in the running.
Just before the start of the steering competition, the Captain announced one other event to be judged: each watch had to perform a skit on some aspect of seamanship; and we were given about half an hour to prepare. We did a two person performance - a narrator and one person to demonstrate - on the importance of attention to details, the need to conserve resources, and the proper use of the marine head. It was hilarious. Another watch did a skit on rowing the Monomoy. And the third one was about the daily workout of a seaman who wants to stay in shape: from hauling lines to heaving up the anchor with the windlass. All were quite creative and had us laughing uproariously.
In the end, my watch (12 to 4) won by about two points. The 8 to 12 watch came in third place so they had to bake chocolate chip cookies for everyone on the ship. And the second place watch ( 4 to 8) had to make cold milk to be served with the cookies.
We all had a lot of fun and learned a lot in the process!
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