Wow. I hadn't planned on hitting the trifecta of west coast tall ships, but I found out yesterday that the privateer Lynx has been in town all weekend and none of my idiot co-workers bothered to tell me. I missed their public dockside tours, so I scanned Flickr for photos of the crew to see if any old Lady hands were on board. Sure enough, Victoria's on the Lynx now, so I biked down to say hello and invite the crew out for beers. Herding sailors is harder than herding cats, but we managed to get Victoria, the Captain (whose name I forgot), Henry (bosun?), and a new trainee whose name I also forgot over to the Lucky Lab for a bit of authentic Portland. If I can't be a tall ship sailor, at least I can be a tall ship groupie.

Aaaand then the next weekend (which is now the weekend before last, for those keeping score at home), I drove up to Olympia to visit the Lady Washington for the first time since June, when I called her home. Being on the Lady again was fantastic, well worth the drive up; where I never got over being a tourist on the Chieftan, I felt like crew again as soon as I stepped on board the Lady. I even got to sleep in my favorite berth at the base of the ladder into the hold, where you get plenty of fresh air and a 7AM wakeup call when the cook stumbles into the galley. But Lady had no cook while I was there—as it happens, more often than not, the previous cook was more interested in swinging through the rigging than spending all day in the galley.

There were a few familiar faces on board: JB, who took over as captain during my two weeks, was still on board with only a couple weeks left on his contract, and looked ready to be back on land; he was more than happy to spend the cruises below decks with first mate Rob running the ship, getting ready to take over the captain's spot. And, no surprise, there was a mess of Gemplers as well: patriarch Greg was on board when I got there, but headed back to the Great Seafaring State of Idaho next morning; Miah, whom I met briefly when he came on in Portland, was engineer, I think; and brother Matt was on to haul on anything that needed it.

And the rest of the crew was amazingly friendly, warm, enthusiastic, kind, and so on: all of the qualities I never expect in strangers but seem to be endemic in tall ship sailors. I'd planned on staying only one day, but I was having such a great time I stayed on another, and then as I was about to leave on Sunday they offered to kick off another hand so I could go on the evening cruise. I was exhausted from seven hours of public tours in the sun and I was nervous that I wouldn't remember anything and I'd be totally useless, but I couldn't pass up a chance to go sailing. And everything came right back, like I'd never left the boat.