With the sun shining over the yards the intrepid voyage crew boarded the ship on Sunday. We were greeted by the watchleaders and permanent crew.
Settled in and started to explore the ship to both find our way round and also where and what things were for. With everyone settled in the lower mess the permanent crew ensured that everyone was settled and briefed us all on what we needed to do and when.
tuesday,we were ready to go, slight problem, someone had taken the water, the tide was not in our favour till the following afternoon. Plan b came into it's own with a morning visit to the beautiful city of Liverpool. After lunch, with the pilot aboard, we were ready to go and the tide was ready to let us. On our departure we were able to stop the traffic as we passed through two cantilever bridges to the river Mersey. Having departed the lock we entered the Mersey heading for the open sea, passing the wind farms and the iron men. The Pilot jumped ship, literally, and left us to it.
With the wind on our faces we were unable to raise the sails for the following 24 hours and therefore motored through the night to be woken to a superb dawn accompanied by some dolphins.
Fwd port
Stuart Wood took the ship out today for his last run in a sailing ship as a Liverpool Pilot, he retires on Friday. I'd just like to say a public "thank you" to Stuart who has been organising volunteer (ie free) pilotage for ships like ours for too many years to mention!
Simon
Captain