The Captain's Logs are below.

Read the Crew's Views from John, KC, and Caroline as they reflect on their experiences in Asia.

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It was September 27 when the Pride of Baltimore II rolled into Baltimore from the Great Lakes. Four and a half months had passed since she set out from home to carry out her 1999 itinerary. Pride II had weathered Hurricane Floyd in Philadelphia a few days earlier. It was already a murky day when Capt. Miles conned the ship to the Finger Piers. But a certain slackness of the breeze made for a longer than usual lingering of the scent and shroud of cannon smoke. Pride II was home.

Home she stayed for two and one half weeks. This was an unprecedented amount of time to lay in Baltimore when the season is still in full swing. These weeks were a period of transition for the crew. Signing off was the Engineer Dan Weaver, Deckhand and Ship's Medic Seth Leidinger, and Chief Mate Stephanie Reynolds. Since Stephanie lives just up the street in South Baltimore, the return to port meant, for a time, the return of Oxford, ship's mascot. Joining us was inbound Engineer Cal Ocampo, Deckhand Christine Alberi, Deckhand Brad Fleury, and Chief Mate TomTom Cloherty. In the previous port of Philadelphia, Dan Thompson and Sarah Laudadio joined the ship to replace Sam Heyman and Likeke Goings. Of the new crew, Brad, Dan, Cal and TomTom all participated in the restoration of the Constellation. You can find out more about each crew member on our Crew Bio page.

The Pride of Baltimore II is an extraordinary vessel. Her builders made sure of that. Likewise, she is generally crewed by equally extraordinary people. This fall, as ever, the crew is made up of phenomenally talented individuals who are willing and able to give her the best attention, while augmenting their own experience in traditional sail. Though most of the original 1999 crew have now moved on, some have decided to see out the season and help bridge the transition from old crew to new.

Christine Cleary, who signed on last March as a Deckhand, has been promoted to Second Mate. When she came to Pride, she brought a solid sailing background and a US Coast Guard Master's License. To that she now adds recently acquired experience handling Pride II.

Deckhand Dave Briddle has also decided to stick it out. When Dave joined Pride II last March, the vessel presented many mysteries. This is normally the case for new crew. At this point, however, one could not ask for a stronger hand.

The usual variety of maintenance and mission related tasks presented themselves during our recent homestand. In addition, however, the crew focused their efforts on three special projects: cleaning out our storage facility, reefing out the deck seams and paying them with fresh pitch, and performing maintenance on the Pride Memorial at Rash Field. We made substantial progress on each of these.

Clearing out the storage facility should have been pretty straight forward. But is cleaning house ever straight forward? Like a home, a ship accumulates possessions. Some of these are useful, others are wishfully so. That which cannot physically fit aboard the ship has been carefully stowed ashore for the time when, like parents, the captains can triumphantly draw it forth as the perfect solution, or at least a money-saving solution, that will hopefully leave our young crew agape at our wisdom and foresight. Like parents, our recollections and schemes are sometimes at odds, illogical, or merely hazy. On a good day, the results are humorous; on a bad day there is vigorous dissent. In any event, the desired result is elusive and someone is left rationalizing a pile of sawdust, a jumble of rusted hardware, a bundle of tattered flags, or some such beloved heirloom of the ship's legacy. Over a period of days, Capt. Miles and I, with some gentle coaxing from the offgoing Mate Stephanie Reynolds, summoned the will to part with a number of empty cardboard boxes, some cans of skimmed over paint and some bags labeled "Garbage." Some old line was donated to the Living Classrooms Foundation across the harbor. Decisions on other items were forestalled till a more opportune time and will probably have to wait till we have to cross the Great Divide in a prairie schooner.

Repaying the decks with pitch has been a satisfying, if messy, task. Reefing out the brittle, old pitch with a reefing iron is easy enough. Inevitably though, bits of old pitch are tracked below and have to be cleaned off the sole with turpentine. Once the old pitch is reefed out, the oakum is bumped down with caulking irons to a uniform depth.

While this is occurring, someone else is stirring a noxious pot of simmering pitch. The hot pitch is ladled off into smaller containers for pouring into the seams. It is important to fill the seam completely to the level of the deck planking. In consequence, there is little choice but to pour till the seams overflow onto the surrounding deck. The overflow on the deck can be scraped and re-cycled, but as it cools it sticks to the scraper so that at a certain point it becomes unclear as to whether pitch is being scraped from, or smeared onto, the deck. A second, and final, scraping is also required. This can be done at anytime. However, since sunny days are at a premium for other kinds of maintenance, the final scraping is generally reserved for rainy days. It is a hands and knees job that leaves a pile of wet wood shavings mixed with pitch, and a sore back. Little tiger stripes of freshly scraped wood parallel the newly payed seams giving the impression that there is something wrong with the deck when in fact we have just made it better. Our plan is to replace all the pitch, one section at a time. It is time consuming job that can only be bitten off in segments small enough to ensure that we can pour the new pitch before there is any chance of the deck getting wet again. Given our schedule and the unpredictability of the weather, the crew find themselves working with very small windows of opportunity.

The finest thing we accomplished in Baltimore, by far, was the care given to the Pride of Baltimore Memorial. The monument stands at the southeast corner of the Inner Harbor and is dominated by a representation of the first Pride's foremast. The memorial is both graceful and profound. The loss of the Pride has been commemorated on that spot each year since in solemn ceremonies. Whenever we enter port, coming from afar or from near, that frail mast against the sky is among the first things we spy as we round the bend to the Inner Harbor. It is a reminder that we have been preceded by others, for no matter how swiftly we sail in the Pride of Baltimore II, there will always be that one Baltimore Clipper, or at least the spirit of one, that has arrived in port ahead of us. That is an honor we are happy to concede.

For those born of a generation not scarred by war, and thusly commemorated, it is an uncommon experience indeed to stand beside a memorial to a thing that entails personal involvement. That frail mast crossed by two yards is a reminder that we were not the first to set forth in a Baltimore Clipper, not in the old days and not in these days. Nor are we the first to round that bend gripped by the turbulence of feeling so common to the mariner. Upon entering port that euphoria known as channel fever, or sometimes just "the channels," still swirls alongside the discreet stresses of re-entry, like waters of two temperatures commingling. Coming from sea, sighting the Pride Memorial is like a threshold. It signifies the end of something, and the beginning of something. As it has been understood since the beginning of time, for every coming there is a going.

Pride of Baltimore II is a vessel in the traditional sense: it is a container. It is a container for something more rare than its physical parts, which is the simple basis for making any cargo worth transporting. What is that cargo? Different people would tell you different things. The Pride is Maryland's Goodwill Ambassador. She promotes economic development. She is a vehicle for public relations. Each of these is true and vital in a temporal world. Also worthy of consideration is the manner in which the mere sight of that black sliver of a hull, those rakish masts, ghosting into port, cannons blazing beneath a field of canvas the size of a drive-in movie screen sets people's hair standing on end and releases trains of thought no one should attempt to describe. This phenomenon is a particularly difficult benefit to quantify empirically, but if you've ever seen the spectacle, you will know what I mean.

For the crew, the vessel holds other things of value. Significant among these is the opportunity to be the upholders of a tradition for which the world has little practical need but all too much spiritual need. Here on the Pride, tradition dictates that everything be done in the hope of perfection and with an eye toward beauty. This means that the vessel be painted smartly, sailed sharply, and that every little thing be done with a deliberateness best described as care. This is the Pride way, though it is also a seaman's way. In respect to the Pride Memorial, tradition has also come to dictate that the mast be oiled, the weeds be pulled, the stones be swept, and the yards be squared. Without fanfare or permission, that is what the crew of the Pride accomplished this week.

Watch Below,
Capt. Daniel Parrott