This weekend I had an amazing opportunity to go to Mystic Seaport to uprig the schooner Mystic Whaler. In this trip I learned so much; from going ALOFT to rigging the jib sheets and placing blocks where they belong. Going aloft was something I always wanted to do, ALOFT is the top of a schooner where you rig the sails. Doing it for the first time on the this trip was an unforgettable EXPERIENCE. A crew member of Mystic Whaler and I went up to place blocks up above. Climbing the ladder is a little scary because it’s moving and you aren’t clipped on so you want to try to climb slow and safe. Once your up there, there isn’t much space and you need to be aware of your surroundings and what you do up there. We had to repeat commands to people on deck, we repeated commands like, “lose gear on fore”, “gear secured on fore”, “on deck”, “sending tagline” etc. Being up aloft and working wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be, the view up there was beautiful! It’s also very cold up there and windy. After going ALOFT my next task was to rig the jib. I’m a J-24 sailor at school and it wasn’t the same rigging the jib on a J-24 then rigging the jib on Schooner Mystic Whaler. Captain Pat showed me how to use the twine to go in the holes of the sail to the hanks and I picked it up really fast. I started to do it with a crew member and then did it by myself for a while. Towards the end of me working on it Bryan, a vessel operations senior, came and helped me out. We had a rhythm going on and we got the job done in about an hour. Then we did little jobs throughout the days. Over all the trip was amazing, I’m glad we got a lot of work done and schooner Mystic Whaler will be sailing soon. Thank you to the crew and Captains John and Pat for having us down there it was great!
~ Ashley Cruz
