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A small winter lay-up crew of four has been working on Pride of Baltimore II since shortly after the first of the year. Their work ranges from cosmetics to repair. Since this winter has been colder than any winter of the last 8-10 years, it is fortunate that I arranged to have a "hothouse" assembled inside the storage building where we keep all of Pride's gear over winter lay-up.

Without the hothouse, the storage building may protect us from wind and rain, but it gets nearly as cold inside as outside. With the hothouse, it is possible to do some work in the warmth of its heated interior, or if the work is too large to move into the hothouse, to at least find periodic relief from the cold.

Our winter lay-up period is something of a blessing and a curse. Because there is no mission-related reason to send the ship away during the winter, there is no need to keep a full crew. Instead of reducing to a skeleton crew who would continue to live aboard, we dismiss the whole crew after they have winterized the ship in December. This includes removing almost all of the ship's gear - literally stripping her of all mattresses, cushions, stored food, goods, utensils, spares and tools, along with all her sails and smaller spars. It is a heck of a lot of work and means there will be a heck of a lot of work to put the ship back together for the coming sailing season. What we can take apart and store ashore for the winter in the first two weeks of December, takes five to six weeks in March and April to put back.

However, with all this gear ashore, we have more room to work on the ship and her gear. It also makes it possible to ventilate the ship and gain access to spaces for maintenance. Also, in the shop we are able to work around rigging gear and spars more easily. And when we put things back, we can be selective about what goes aboard. This, hopefully, limits the tendency of the ship to gain weight over time.

After the holidays, a small crew of skilled and unskilled labor is hired on an hourly basis. This winter crew is made up from the same "crew pool" from which we hire the sailing crew. Sometimes the winter crew is from the season just ended, sometimes they are new crew hoping to be chosen for the coming season. In early March, the sailing crew will come aboard to live and work, replacing the winter crew.

The coordination of all this winter transition and maintenance is normally a collaboration of the two captains. However, this winter I am on my own. Captain Dan Parrott was surprised by an invitation made in early December to come teach at the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine. After a painful but quickly made decision, he accepted and by the end of December was in Castine getting ready for his first semester as a professor.

With me left to deal with Pride's winter maintenance alone, I negotiated with Christine Cleary to stay and be foreman of the winter crew. Since she had led the winter maintenance last winter and had sailed with us as Mate almost the whole of last year, she was reluctant, particularly due to the unheated storage building. With my promise to fix that, she agreed to stay. So I built the hothouse while last year's crew winterized the ship. Considering we did not know how cold this winter was going to be, it is a wonderfully fateful collusion of events that led to the existence of the hothouse. Winter crew morale is good and work has proceeded well. Without the hothouse, I am sure morale would not have been good and work would not have proceeded well.

The cause of Dan Parrott's sudden departure was in fact a tremendous complement to his first book, Tall Ships Down (McGraw Hill, 2002). If you have not read it yourself, I highly commend it to you. Just before Dan joined Pride, Inc. in 1998, he was concluding his Masters Degree at the University of Rhode Island. His thesis was on the impact of sailing ship disasters in the modern era. His advisor suggested Dan's work was "book material" and so it is. It is also the reason for Maine Maritime Academy's inviting him to teach. With two young children and knowing that at some point in the not too distant future he would want to reduce his sea time, it made every sense in the world for him to accept this invitation now. Eventually we will find a replacement captain. But it will take a while to locate one who will match the fine tradition of professionalism and longevity that has been established by Dan and his predecessor, Bob Glover. Dan sailed with us for five years and Bob for six.

Fortunately, this winter has not been one of those heavy maintenance winters that we have had from time to time. For instance, last winter we had the main engines rebuilt which required removing them from the ship and then reinstalling them. On three other winter layovers, we have removed the large lower masts from the ship and worked on them as they lay on the ground. Each of those winters represented a lot of on-site management. This winter the work list is long but not heavily technical. Christine knows the ship and the storage building well and has managed a winter maintenance period before. With no seriously technical items of concern so far, I am able to check-in periodically between longer periods at the office or working at home locating crew for the coming season, helping the office with advance logistics, as well as considering another partner captain. Thus far, it's a busy but manageable winter season.

Cheers
Captain Miles