Carpe Riggum!

For the last few weeks climbing our shrouds has been like a circus act gone wrong - where you're sure the guy is about to fall. We tuned the rig, took her out sailing on the Gray's Harbor bar, and after that one sail we were still spinning around wildly while climbing topmast shrouds. In the twilight hours of our last day in Westport we descended on the lanyards like a plague of flat-seizers - Carpe Riggum! That's well, belay. And we were off...

Although we were almost delayed by a TSUNAMI. The question was, go way out to sea or head for higher ground? We wanted to go out to sea and save the boat! But it wasn't necessary. The town decided not to evacuate and there were many cheers for the bars still being open. As our new crew Raff Mendez said: "You bet there's gonna be a tsunami... a tsunami of BEER inside my mouth!" 

We love our new Puerto Rican crewmembers!

THANK YOU to the Islander Hotel in Westport for wi-fi in their lobby, 15 donated hotel rooms, breakfast for all the crews! You guys are AWESOME!

Below are Lady & Lynx during their first Westport battle sail.

Yay for Mini Brigs!

New crewmember "ROBO" with Engineer Macgregor, hooking up the intercom.

OK so Natalie thought she could handle the throat halyard, with new slippery line, with Adventuress's sails bent on and creating quite a bit of tension on our rig (they don't totally fit - the peak is way high, both the main and fore are reefed, and we're pulling up the boom jaws a lot higher than usual). The line didn't exactly get out of her hands, it took her hand with it. Natalie has rope burn like you've never seen before! She's cooking one-handed. I said "Natalie! They replaced your hand with a roast!" What they should have done was replace her fingers with spatulas and whisks.

Here's Nick tending to Natalie's raw paw.

AH... the morning of the movie shoot I woke up and said "I can't work in these conditions! Where's my assistant?? I need to be dressed! Get me my Shiny!" But the movie crew didn't bring us assistants. They brought us breakfast, lunch and dinner at the top of the dock for 2 days though!

Here's Lady/Lynx cook Jesika Starr and Assistant Shopkeeper Carley Tallman before hitting wardrobe.

A beautiful Westport sunset.

The movie crew also brought lots of fake cargo to make Bill look like a merchant vessel.

And plenty of camera gear of course.

Last day in Westport: transferring an old sail up the dock. The guys are checking out a big purple starfish.

Our mate, Capt. Michael Kellick, waves goodbye to Lynx.

Baby Guns, I mean Big Guns, since he's Bosun now, poses for the camera. Bosun Shawn Jonutz shows off his new bicep implants.