Shiver Me Timbers!

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day! What better holiday is there?

Learn the lingo here. And even my German-speaking friends can learn to speak like a pirate here. And my Swedish-speaking friends can listen to Swedish pirate-speak here. And, yep, my Chinese-speaking friends (not sure I have any, yet, but if I do...) can find Chinese-pirate-speak clips on this page, too. See? Told you it was international.

I think I'll celebrate by drawing more treasure maps and raiding the rum. Later. After I draw the treasure maps.

(Coincidentally, I am listening on my iPod to Buccaneers and the Pirates of our Coast, by Frank Richard Stockton; I downloaded it from LibriVox, and it's so compelling that I find myself looking forward to going to the gym or getting in the car, just so I can listen to some more. It's like stepping into another world. Now that's good "reading," my friends.)

It's love, not obsession.

With ships, that is. And the ocean. All oceans. And any large body of water, really.

As promised on my other blog, here are photos from my recent day trip up to Onancock.

Remember back when I went to see the tall ships in Norfolk, and couldn't identify one ship? Imagine my delight at finding it right in front of me, again. Like running into an old friend. (Just an old friend whose name I can't remember... which, really, isn't all that uncommon in my case.) And this time, I got to step aboard.

The ship is the Godspeed, a replica of one of the three ships English colonists traveled in to establish Jamestown in 1607.

As I drove home, I crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, and crossed the same waters that those original colonists, caught in a terrible storm in the Atlantic, were blown into. Lucky for them.

(This view is looking west into the Chesapeake Bay from a pullout on the northern end of the bridge. So there is land in that direction. You can see a little bit on the right hand side as a sort of wiggle in the horizon. The size of the Chesapeake Bay awes me. Someday, I'd like to really explore it. You know, when I build my own ship.)

The beach on Fisherman Island National Wildlife Refuge.

Yes, a good day. Filled with love.

Tall Ships

I should NOT have gone out on Friday, recuperating me, into 100-degree, humid weather, to stand in the sun for three hours. But, oh, it was worth it, to see the parade of tall ships coming in for Sail Virginia in for Harborfest. The heat wiped me out, and as a result, I never got back to board the ships later in the weekend, and I regret that, but I am so glad I got to see them come in, because it was... magnificent.

My pictures cannot even begin to do them justice - my spot on the harbor was just at the point where they were furling their sails and getting a little help from the tugs -- but oh, it was magic.

The GORCH FOCK II ** 294' 3 Masted Barque ** Germany




The PRINCE WILLIAM ** 195' Square Rigger Brig ** England




The ALLIANCE ** 3 masted gaff rigged Schooner ** Yorktown Virginia




Can't identify this one. I've looked through the pictures on the web site, and I can't find it.
But it was beautiful.




I can't identify this ship either, with the red sails, but I thought this looked cool -- old and new.

Ghost Ship

(I actually tried sharpening this in Adobe Photoshop Elements, but it lost the mysterious quality, and became a picture of just a ship under a spray of water.)

I think the best part, though, about the whole thing was coming home and reading a week-old newspaper article I had set aside, to discover that Captain Horatio Sinbad, the owner of my favorite ship, the small, sweet Meka II, built it in his backyard.

One of my dreams is to build a wooden sailboat by hand and sail it around the world. Never mind that I don't know how to sail. I'll learn. And now, I know it's possible to build not just a sailboat, but a brigantine. We'll need a little bit bigger backyard, though. I don't think Al will let me knock down the garage in order to build a ship.