Times are changing

Arwyn standing her last watch-
Antibes, France- Mallorca, Spain

Yesterday was an important day for Arwyn and me. Slowly but surely we are going through the phases which end our time aboard Galileo (for now. It's the last dinner with the boss, then it's packing the boss off to the airport, it's our last sail back to Spain, saying buy to crew members as they trickle out, and yesterday was a big one- taking the boat out of the water.
Galileo has always been hauled out on railways. This puts the least amount of compression tension on a vessel, which at this size, can buckle a hull. This is what we have done the last two years in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. This year we went with a yard in El Toro, Mallorca called Port Adriano. They have a travel lift style crane capable of lifting 250 tons. Galileo has a gross registered tonnage of 183 tons, making the crane's lifting capacity adequate, but it still looked small and the slip was entirely too short for us. This means the crane couldn't lift us from the middle of the boat, rather it had to try and get as far aft as possible but was WAY too far forward for comfort.

Removing the forestays to allow for small crane 

 We also had to remove the head stays. To do this, we removed the outer stay and tied a halyard to a car, tensioned it by moving the car away from the boat, moving the lift into place, and re-attaching the halyard in front of the lift.

Travel lift was a little small, so I helped by using "the force"

Prepping Galileo was interesting from an engineering perspective and started about a month ago. I had to try and estimate our fuel and water consumption to make sure we were as close to empty as possible when lifting out. It really makes a difference: Galileo holds about 27,000 lbs of
diesel and 36,000 lbs of water.
It was almost emotional to watch her come out of the water. To see the areas of the boat that were worked on only with scuba gear come into plain sight as she lifted- was surreal I guess. I was one of the last off the boat after de powering the boat that kept us safe for two years. Call me dramatic, but when the engine room went quiet for that last time, I felt like an animate object became a piece of metal.









We watched as it lifted. The straps creaked and groaned and we cringed with each popping sound, but she made her way safely to her winter home. Chalked off, cooling tower installed, and shore power connected- goodbye to out home.









Below is a time lapse of the boat coming out on the travel lift and moving across the yard to our parking space.

We are now in an apartment in Palma. One more week of work and this chapter closes.

Andrew's Life Aquatic

After meeting the Cousteau gang, I felt compelled to make my own underwater exploration video underneath Galileo. Watch closely and you'll see me slice my leg real good on the propeller on my first pass. hahaha!

Meeting the Cousteaus

One interesting element to our summer was a scheduled meeting with Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the legendary underwater pioneer Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Jean-Michel has continued in his father's footsteps and founded the Ocean Futures Society. He travels the world filming underwater documentaries in order to spread awareness of ocean conservation. Recently he has become involved with our boss to start a dive shop on Petit St. Vincent (our boss' island). It will actually be more than a dive shop, it will focus again- on marine conservation- and make moves to designate the surrounding waters as a marine preserve.

Jean-Michel, who wears a red beanie in honor of his father, came aboard for dinner. He had such a pleasant demeanor and an honest smile, that we were all inclined to see him as a warm grandfather figure. It seemed like he spent more time talking to the kids aboard, as he believed they were "more worthwhile to invest in than adults." Isn't he right though?

Earlier that day I took Phil and his business partner Colin on a dive. We dove on a cement barge wreck off the Porquerolles Islands. As an aside, I saw an octopus blending shape, color, and texture to look like a piece of coral, it was probably the most impressive animal I have ever seen. On the way back from the dive, Phil and Colin were prepping for the big meeting with Cousteau and asked me if I could get a video ready to show him. I said that I had the B-17 video (posted on this blog already) that we could show him, but Phil wanted me to include all of the historical research that I had done into the video. As soon as the the dive gear was stowed, we set sail for Sanary-Sur-Mer for the meeting. I helped get us underway and then retired to the my cabin which was the quietest place I could find on the busy boat. I typed up a narration script about the history of the B-17's pilot, career, and last mission. Then read it out loud into the imovie editor over the dive video. I tried to make it as much like a documentary as I could, but in the end I stutter here, and a cabin door slams there. hahaha- and then we presented it to Mr. Cousteau 2 hours later. Boy was I nervous! We all gathered in the Salon and I opened the viewing with our B-17 video, then he showed us his most current projects. It was a nice little show and tell kind of gathering.
Jean-Michel brought his daughter, son in law and grandson out for a sail the next morning. We had a great day of it. They were all very nice people. We got to see some of the great things that Cousteau is working on too. He is involved in an imax film coming out using new technology to film 3D micro sized organisms underwater. He claims it will be like nothing the world has seen (comes out next summer).

Picture on the aft deck: Phil and friends on the left, Cousteau family
on the right.  

I will leave you with this... It hasn't always been as easy as it is today to access the underwater world. Jacques Cousteau co-invented the aqualung in 1943, which became the first way to get underwater recreationally. Normal air tank set ups can get you down to about 130' safely, past that you need to use gas mixes to maintain proper nitrogen levels in your blood. We have come so far, and even recently. It used to be high end diving to use these gas mixes, now it is common practice here in the Med. Every dive shop here offers these deep dives daily. Jean- Michel said he has been diving for 65 years. If you think about that, it means Jacques strapped him into
an aqualung when he was 9 years old when they were still experimenting with it. I don't think you'll find but a handful of people who have that many years of diving under their belt. It just wasn't available back then, unless your dad was Jacques Cousteau...  

Flash "Dave" Gordon

Photo Arwyn used to steal
Dave's face from.

We live in a pretty close community. We know everything about each other because the old saying is true: "there are no secrets aboard a ship." Out of this comes a strong bond, like brothers and sisters, where one minute you are angry with each other, and the next you ask them if they want to go grab a drink with you. 

With this intimacy comes an endless series of inside jokes. They have sources ranging from monty python movies, obscure English 80's rock bands, funny things that happened during charter, and former crew members, to having no discernible origin at all. One of these jokes, started by our fearless leader, Dave Hanna, involves Flash Gordon. Dave has endless energy and is quite eccentric. Anyone who has met him knows exactly what I mean. Dave will sporadically jump into the crew mess, or bridge, or wherever people are congregated and yell "FLASH!!!," and then the whole crew screams back "AAAHHHH!!!!" in unison like in the Queen song. It seems silly but when he yells  "flash,"  you HAVE to yell "aaaahhh!!!!" It's just the rules...

Flash "Dave" Gordon

So when Dave's birthday came up, Arwyn put that graphic design degree to work and spent the evening working in photoshop. She took an old picture of Dave and superimposed it onto Flash Gordon.  

Jared playing guitar in the crew mess with
Flash Dave in the background.

Everyone liked it so much that we took down a picture of Galileo and posted Flash David instead. Now the picture is part of the art living in our crew mess, above our dining table....

FLASH.......AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!

  

The Welcome Hotel

Well sometimes luck smiles upon you. Last Saturday the 3rd was one of those days....

Harbor Front in Villafrache-Sur-Mer

To start, Friday the 2nd was NOT one of those days. We were anchoring in the bay of Villafranche-Sur-Mer when I heard a weird sound come from the bow thruster. After anchoring, of course, the captain told me the bow thruster stopped working.  Down in the engine room I tracked down an electrical fault that led me to a safety cut out designed to shut down the system when there is no oil present in the reservoir. O' boy... where did six gallons of hydraulic oil go???
Turns out we blew a fitting on a 1 1/2" hydraulic line.  I found the oil in the engine room. Quite a bit in the bilge too. And this is where you find me on the morning of the 3rd.
I had been in the ER for hours that morning, soaking up oil with absorbent pads. I was covered in bilge water, oil, and sweat. It has been around 112 degrees in the ER lately. I came up for water and Arwyn says "you heard the news right?" "O great, what now?" I shoot back. It turned out that the boss' ex wife couldn't make it out for their son's birthday party. She was turned back at the airport for visa issues. The boss, Phil, decided to give Arwyn and I the hotel room he had booked for her so it didn't go unused. We are so tired these days, and so burnt out, that when I stood there covered in grease and grime and sweat, and heard Arwyn tell me what we were about to receive, I choked back tears of excitement.

Welcome Hotel-Our room is the second window down on the right.

The Welcome Hotel is situated directly on  the harbor front of Villafranche-Sur-Mer, which is one of the nicer, but quieter towns in the French Riviera. The welcome hotel is a 4 star establishment and Arwyn and I had a suite on corner of the 4th floor. We had two balconies, one overlooking the water and the other the town.

Arwyn and I watching the boats come and go
in the harbor.

The stay was nice. The hotel manager said bon jour Monsieur Kaiser every time I walked through the lobby. Arwyn and I spent the afternoon walking around the beautiful town, listened to street musicians, dressed up and had a nice dinner, used the fast internet, and I drank a beer on the balcony overlooking the harbor as the sunlight faded. Around midnight, a fireworks show started in the harbor and Arwyn and I watched them from bed, looking out the open balcony doors.









The next morning the tender came to retrieve us. Before I knew it I was back in the ER, covered in oil and sweat and grime, but I had to laugh at how crazy our life can be.

A Treasure Hunt

Last week, my boss approached me and asked me to assemble a treasure chest, bury it, and draw a map to find it. 

What's cool is where I had to hide it too. I hid it next to an old fort/ prison on an island called Isle Sainte Marguerite. The island is just off the harbor from Cannes, France and is most famous for the fort, which housed the famous French prisoner know as "The Man in the Iron Mask." It was actually a velvet mask in real life….

Yesterday we picked up the boss' son in Villefranche-Sur-Mer, and today is his Birthday. Jack turned three today and is a special little guy to Arwyn and Me. We met him when he was one and have spent a lot of time watching him grow up. So today we gave him the map and took him ashore with his birthday party and searched for the treasure. 

We had a lot of fun and he was certainly excited to find the treasure. Inside the box was the left over change from the Galileo crew (quite a bit of money from many different countries), pirate tattoos, gems, worther's candies and a note from his dad. 

It was a good little adventure...
 A funny aside is that two weeks ago, there was a jewel heist in Cannes, France where a single man walked with 136 million dollars of jewels. It was two days later that I was sketchily climbing in the bushes burying this treasure box on the island in front of Cannes! haha

B-17 Bomber in Calvi, Corsica

Earlier this summer, I saw an interesting opportunity developing. My boss wanted to do more scuba diving, and I felt that I could facilitate this finding dive locations in all of the places we go. I have thus been named the boat's unofficial dive master. 

It is pretty hard finding dive sites. The scuba diving sport is just not set up for people in our situation. Typically, you travel to a destination, rent the gear, have them guide you out to the locations they personally know about. No one ever shows up with their own tank and compressor, therefore there is no infrastructure for this type of operation. Dive operators don't want to give you information, they want to take you themselves. So I scour the internet looking for dive sites and GPS coordinates for them. We never fully know what to expect when we get down there.

Our first dive of the summer was a hard one to beat. On June 16th, we had anchored Galileo off of the town of Calvi, Corsica. It was a beautiful place with snow capped mountains, quaint town, and the old citadel posted on the point. 

 

It wasn't the first dive I found, but all of the sudden the words B-17 wreck came up on a search. It gave GPS coordinates and when I plotted them, I found we were within a half mile of the wreck site. Arwyn, Phil (my boss) and I suited up the next morning and Alec did the overhead assistance for us. The plane rested in about 90 feet. We could not see it from the surface and it was not marked. Initially we did not find it on the bottom, but turned to search offshore and found it within 4 minutes or so. You can hear me flipping out when I first saw it. It was extremely cold down there. I got an appropriate wetsuit after this one. I was so cold afterwords that I was violently shivering and couldn't think straight. Below is a 7 minute video. I cut it down from around 30 minutes so I hope it's not too long for you. 

I looked up the story of this plane the night after the dive, and I have never been touched so deeply by a history.  They were on a bombing run to attack the railroad yards in Genova, Italy when they were attacked by German ME 109 fighters. I read a transcript from an interview with the pilot who said that they were damaged and couldn't hold formation, which made the fighters focus on them. The were able to shoot down 3 (some sources say 4) fighters before American fighters arrived on scene  and got them out of the jam. The radio officer, left waist gunner, and tail gunner were shot by the fighters and died. Tragically, en route to Corsica, the tail gunner called on the intercom and managed the words "I'm dying." They had two engines out when arriving in Calvi when they discovered the runway to be too short to land. At that point the third engine failed leaving one running. The pilot said "I decided we'd ditch in front of the citadel. No one died in the crash.  Below is a picture of the crash site just after the plane sunk. The crew is being rowed in and you can still see the oil slick on the water.

 This is the crew posing for a picture in the Citadel just after the wreck. The pilot Frank Chaplick, a small town Minnesotan, was shot by a Japanese Zero in the leg during pearl harbor as he was running out of the barracks, was shot down in North Africa, and then again here in Calvi. After this time, the Army Air Corps sent him home. It was his 37th bombing run in Europe. He went on to be an air traffic controller at Boston Logan and never flew again.

I am starting a blog.  Arwyn and I have had a pretty exciting time of it and I thought this would be a good way to document it while sharing with those we care about. It is my hope that you won't be a silent reader. It seems that this is how most blogs die, when the author believes no one is reading. Please share your thoughts with us.
I will not be writing a day to day account of my life, rather I will be writing about stories in my life or peripherals that I think would be worth reading. So bare with me as the dates will jump around.

So here we go...