Windjammer - part three

I first boarded Star Clipper in Cannes from where she sailed to Mahon - a Royal Navy base during the Napoleonic Wars - on the Balearics. From there to Puerto Pollença on Mallorca, onetime holiday destination of Winston Churchill and Agatha Christie - though certainly not together.

Next stop Ibiza, still renowned as a party island, but not with the cachet it once had. I'd planned a 'cabin party' (pictures in previous post) and so stocked up on wine for the long Atlantic crossing.  

Here's the Clipper moored quietly in the harbour. The steel-hulled vessel is a four-masted, square-rigged barquentine.

A couple of pictures from our next port, Malaga: a flower stall, which speaks for itself, and statue of Picasso silhouetted against a building in his old neighbourhood.

The Battle of Trafalgar's 200th anniversary was October 21; one day later. we pass through the Strait of Gibraltar, close to where the battle took place. Astern and under power is another tall ship. Behind her, the mountains of Morocco, one of the 'Pillars of Hercules.'

A few days later, Funchal, Madeira. A welcome stretching of the legs, sidewalk cafes, lovely gardens and mail ten postcards, which must be a record for me. 

Along the harbour wall, crews of other sailing ships have left a record of their visits.

As the sun's going down and we're about to cast off, I spot these runners on the breakwater. 

At Las Palmas on the Canaries, it seems appropriate to visit the house where Columbus reputedly stayed in 1492 before leaving (he hoped) for Cathay. Doubtless historic, but I was most taken by the parrots.

Find some Pringles and replenish my wine supplies ... we can safely head to sea. Two-and-a-half weeks to St, Maarten in the Caribbean. 

Captain and second officer consider the set of the sails.

Time to explore the very traditional bridge ...

...and wander the decks. 

A small cannon, sometimes (carefully) fired to salute other ships. 

Early morning sextant practice.

Approaching the Caribbean, our course displayed at the mainmast's base.

Land! The island of Nevis as we near our final destination, St. Maarten. 

Windjammer was such a big production you could send postcards from the cinema announcing you'd seen the film. 

Consider this blog a postcard. A lifetime after seeing the movie, I finally - and most satisfactorily - went to sea on a tall ship. 

Windjammer - part two

There are passengers who want to do more than stare out of portholes, take pictures and write an occasional sentence.

Below, Hans from Holland is at the helm. I try and it's not easy to control a sailing vessel of Star Clipper's size. The navigating officer sets a course - 235 - and other passengers brace as a tall ship novice - me - sweatily (and briefly) grips the wheel. Hans, on the other hand, is a natural and spends many hours keeping us headed in the right direction. 

He's watched by the charming Peter - a German U-boat veteran. Never, given the casualty rate, did I expect to spend time with a survivor of the wolf packs. And certainly not on a tall ship. 

Other passengers help with lines and climb the rigging. I make it up the ratlines to the crowsnest, completely forgetting my camera.

The captain gives talks on the sails, manoeuvring, setting course, navigation and so on. 

But there's plenty of time for relaxing, talking and just looking.

In the evenings, corridor and cabin socializing. From the left, Don from Michigan, Ron from British Columbia, Pete - another former submariner - from New Hampshire and Jode, Don's wife.

In confined quarters but with plenty of wine, Jode, Pete and Don.

Each night at sunset, an accordion comes out. We gather near the wheel to sing 'Salve Regina.'

'Salve, Regina, mater misericordiae, vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.'

It is the ancient vesper hymn that Colombus' men sang as they crossed to the New World. 

Windjammer - part one

In 1958 my parents took me to a film …

Windjammer was a documentary of kinds. It followed a Norwegian square-rigger, the Christian Radich, as she crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean, sailed up the U.S. east coast and back to Europe. For a ten-year old, the story would have been entrancing enough as an ordinary movie, but, for the Fifties, the film's technology was extraordinary.  

Most people under forty are likely unaware of the Cinemiracle system. The huge curved screen was 120 degrees wide; the film was shot with three cameras and shown with three projectors, which 'joined' the films. The advanced stereo sound was based on seven channel recording. This pullout picture of the Christian Radich in New York harbour is from the book you could buy at the cinema. 

Technology for producing and then showing the film was so expensive and cumbersome that Windjammer was the only film ever produced in the Cinemiracle format. 

As the projection systems no longer exist, I haven't seen Windjammer in nearly half a century, but, its impact was lifelong. The film was the source of a child's, then adult's, daydream that, someday, I would go to sea on a tall ship. 

Now I have. I'm just home from a voyage on the Star Clipper. For much of October and November, she crossed the Atlantic from the south of France, through the Strait of Gibraltar and on, by way of the Canaries and Madeira, to the Caribbean. 

Shown in the handout picture above, she is the loveliest of vessels, built in 1992 with a 226 foot mainmast that is tallest of any tall ship. Here she is below as I saw her in the Mediterranean. 

Aside from sailing - sailing as opposed to steaming or motoring or whatever it is that ships do - across an ocean, I was attracted by what also interests me in freighters. This is mixing with the crew and watching how a vessel's handled in a way impossible on normal cruise ships.

Below are a crewman at the wheel, the second officer and captain (on the right). The captain's Ukrainian and trained when Soviet merchant marine cadets learned much of their calling on sailing ships. 

Alan Villiers was an Australian who went to sea in the last days of tall merchant ships just before World War Two. He wrote:

"Those sailing ships are a tough school. They're meant to be. The sea is not a calling for softies … seamanship is best learned under sail." 

Fortunately for this softie, I'm on a mid-autumn crossing, generally a time of calm seas and fair winds to the west.

Best of all, someone else - the crew come from twenty-five countries - is doing the work.

Here, using an industrial sewing machine, they're mending sails. Star Clipper carries 36,000 square feet of sail made of Dacron.

The Clipper has clocked an impressive 17 knots, though not with me around. For a short time, it would be exhilarating, but, having been in rough weather on container ships and yachts, I know it would become very tiring very quickly. Coping with days (and nights) of a constant heel, shuddering and shifting, is not just physically - it's also mentally - wearing. 

I found this painting - very image of a tall ship - on the Clipper. Such a ship needed fit, competent, brave men. Not transatlantic bloggers.