DATE: August 31 2010
TIME: 2000

OBSERVATIONS: This morning we woke up at about 7:45 and had an amazing breakfast. The first thing we did was a deck wash using the firehose and then we left Waukeegan, Illinois. After that we raised sails, which was insanely intense. Then we switched through boat check, bow watch and steering the helm. And then we climbed the rig, which was awesome. Following that, we talked about trust on a boat and why it is important, and then we talked about the history of the Roseway. We had really good hotdogs, watermelon, and chips for lunch.  And then we dropped sails and anchored in Kenosha, Wisconsin. After that we cleaned the main salon with Emily and Evan. After that we rode the dingies to shore, where we planned a skit, swam (in freezing cold water), and played games with the rest of our group. We returned from the time of fun and merriment on the beach to the boat, where we changed and had a dinner of chicken, green beans, and potato salad. It was the best dinner we have had so far. We are looking forward to a fun anchor watch where we will get cookies.  Yay!

WATCH MEMBERS:

Emily Selinger
Evan Parnell
Sammy Armato
Eva Luckey
Drew Howard
Cooper Collins

Chicago is the last official stop on our Tall Ships’ Festival Tour here in the Great Lakes and the busiest. Roseway will host over 1400 guests over the next few days before ending what has been a whirlwind summer.

On Monday, we jump back into education with eighteen students on board–destination: Milwaukee, WI. Stay tuned!

Joining back up with the other ships in Green Bay this weekend, we’ve faced the challenges of being a big boat in a small river. Tomorrow we continue to head south to Port Washington, Wisconsin and then on to Chicago. Along the way we are learning things like: Green Bay is not actually a green bay and the Green Bay Packers stadium truly does seat almost the whole population of Green Bay. Who knew?

So far, we’ve liked Superior the best of the lakes and Duluth wins the port hospitality prize hands down. Port Washington and Chicago still have a chance to win. Stay tuned!

But Duluth has left no time for mourning. With three sails a day for four days and a few private charters at night (including a wedding on Saturday night), the crew is entertaining Duluth Roseway-style! And the crowds  are loving it. Tucked here at the end of Lake Superior, these folks don’t get a lot of tall ships. This might be the biggest, warmest, welcome we’ve gotten anywhere!

By Wednesday, Roseway heads back out across Superior for Lake Michigan–destination: Green Bay, WI. Stay tuned.

TIME:  1630

OBSERVATIONS: Sunday morning before we left Bayfield after a lovely breakfast hosted by the Duluth Power Squadron. We set sail for Madeline Island. Underway we made lanyards to hold our water bottles while we hiked. Some kept it simple with a braid or daisy chain, but others went all out complicated (crown sennits or monkey’s fists). We arrived at Madeline Island by small boat in the marina. From there we went to the Madeline Island Maritime History Museum. There we watched a movie about the European settlement of the Apostle Islands, mainly by the French. After the movie we walked around the museum and saw a lot of animal pelts (some of us felt good about it some not so much). Peter gave an opera of the movie we watched beforehand, it was hilarious! Then we went outside the museum where we saw a guy who was dressed up as aFrench and Native American mix. He taught us how to dance historically, but he had a very outdated wardrobe. Then we walked a beautiful 10 mile hike across the island to Big Bay where the ship met us. No one knew Wisconsin could get that hot!  We got shuttled back to the boat, swam in the bay then ate cheeseburgers for dinner. For anchor watch that night Jess made us lovely, delicious, chocolatley brownies for a snack.

On Monday we went bird watching early in the morning with Peter. We saw a crow, a great blue heron, two cormorants, a flicker woodpecker, then some sparrows, and a lot of squirrels. After the bird watching we went rowing with Zack in the lagoon. We saw a mama turtle with a baby turtle. When we got close the mama turtle pushed her baby off the log into the water and then went in after it. When we got back we had grilled cheese and tomato soup. After lunch we went to Raspberry Island. Abby, Katie, and Scott came up with a maritime version of “Yee-haw” (a game we play) called “Heave-Ho”. We had pork tenderloin, fluffy mashed potatoes, and corn for dinner. We swam off the boat and it was epic and very very very cold! For an anchor watch snack that night we had epic blueberry pie made with the blueberries that we picked in Bayfield.

On Tuesday, we went exploring on Raspberry Island. Captain came with us and he made us run through the woods on a trail that ended at a beach. After the trail, we went on a tour of the old lighthouse there that was built in 1863. It cost $6,000. When we arrived back on the boat, we had samosas for lunch and then left for Sand Island. We had a good sail and finished reading Captain’s Courageous. Dinner was really a treat, Jess prepared conch West Indian style with rice, black beans and salad. Since we finished the book, we were able to watch Captain’s Courageous the movie, made in 1937. Let’s just say it wasn’t like the book.

Now we are underway on our way to Duluth, MN. To pass the time, we had a deckhand olympics where we were timed and judged on our coils and ballantines. We also made turk’s heads bracelets. Now we’re going to climb the shrouds and it will be awesome.

WATCH MEMBERS:
Capt. Dwight Deckleman
Emily Selinger
Evan Parnell
Kai Bartlette
Josh Winckel
William Wampler

TIME: 10: 50 AM

OBSERVATIONS: After a very long five days on the lakes, we finally arrived in the town they call Bayfield. When we arrived in port, we started our usual deck wash. During the deck wash the local camera man recorded us putting in a full effort. When the deck was complete, we disembarked off the the ship and all  of us had a minor case of sea legs. We started exploring the City of Bayfield, and we found an open patch of grass to play an epic game of Ultimate Frisbee. Mid-way through the game a native of Bayfield gave us some ice cream and hot fudge. After we all ate the delicious vanilla ice cream and hot fudge we continued playing our epic game of Ultimate Frisbee. In the last second the game was finally decided the team of William, Kyle, Scott, Kimoy, and Kelsey was victorious.

Since we were not allowed to take showers because of water conservation we were all very stinky, and we were overjoyed to take showers! After showers we read two long chapters of Captins Corageous. At the end of the second chapter there was a french song which our crew member Paul sang. It was a hilarious sight to see, we wish you all could’ve been there. After an extremely exciting day of exploring the awesome City of Bayfield we felt complete, and then we retired for the night into our bunks.

When we came out of retirerment, we wandered over to the local Farmers market, and we met some of the people and learned all about there crops. After this we went to Good Earth Gardens and we meet the super nice owners, Lana and Larry, and introduced ourselves and we learned the rule of blueberry picking “One for the mouth! One for the Pale!”. We went blueberry picking and in total we all picked 40 lbs. of blueberries. Then Lana and Larry gave us homemade apple cider and  we sat under the apple tree and had lunch. Then we got to go hiking through the forest and saw nature firsthand. Then Lana gave us a ride to Flying Snakes Farm. Where we got see many differnt types of animals including pigs, piglets, chickens, turkeys, gesse, ducks, dogs, goats, bulls and cows. Our faviorte animals were Cpt. Kirk the Pig, King the Dawg, and Ricardo the Turkey. We got a tour of the farm and some of us got to have a ride in the tractor (Josh, Kyle, William, and Jason). We made the epic Cpt. Kirk bob for apples and it was an insanely hilarious sight to see. William and the whole gang of Roseway got to hold a chicken, caught by Jason. After a long stinky day at the farm we took amazing showers and got a private tour of the U.S Coast Guard Boat “Sundew”. The boat was 180 ft. and made of steel. All in all the City of Bayfield  was insanely epicly intensely awesomely awesome!

WATCH MEMBERS: William Wampler, Kyle Murphy, and Jaleesah Bess

TIME: 2000

OBSERVATIONS:
This is 5th day of transit and it’s been great! Because we sleep on and off throughout the day it’s quite hard to keep track of dates. Two nights ago we anchored in a smallish bay called Whitefish bay. We were really glad we had decided to anchor because a rarther large lighting storm came our way, unfortunately because of the lightening we were not able to go swiming. Instead we played games in the fishhold. Throughout the night we were divided into different watch teams, rotating every hour and a half. Jess as always made us a fantastic night watch snack; blondey, peanutbutter-chocolate, cookie/brownie thing, that was delicious! During our watch we have to check the anchor and be sure it’s not dragging, we also have to use a compass and measure the angle between us and four lights on land that the captain chose based on our position when we first dropped anchor. this allows us to see how much we have driffeded over the course of the night.

Last night our watch, b watch, was on from midnight untill 4am and it was freezing! Jason, Kelsey and Eden all saw many shooting stars; while Kelsey was at the helm the red lights on the compass were starting to give her a head ache, so with the help of our watch leader Peter a few stars were picked out to help her stay right on chorse of 275. Around 0240am, simply by chance Eden noticed a very very large tanker on the radar system. We tracked it and collected valuble information on the tanker: speed, course and most importantly it’s distance form us. Once close enough it was impossible to miss this ship, the light’s were so bright it looked like the side of a cruise ship. Only one problem we were not seeing the side of this tanker, instead we were looking it straight on. we did more calculations with the radar system and found out that we were on a collision course with this monstrosity. first he sped up and still that wasn’t enough in the end we had to cut our engines, so he could cross our bow safely. Fortunately our watch was over pretty much as soon as the drama this ship had caused was cleared.

We are now in lake Superior! Yay!!! It’s even colder now that it was earlier during anchor watch. There are no big waves here like we are used to back home in the VI, but there is still a fair amount of top chop – whenever there’s wind (sadly not right now).The area we are sailing through right now is also frequently used by the Navy, we thought we were seeing a Laker; basicaly like an air craft carrier only smaller. we also were not sure if it was stationary so Kelsey was sent up on to the bow-sprit with a pair of binoculars to figure this out. It ended up that it wasn’t a Laker it was a very big tanker. But still Kelsey was very happy to be on the bow-sprit, I want to say it’s like flying but it’s not it’s more like what I imagine riding on the back of a whale to be like. Currently Jason and Kelsey are sitting on the cabin top watching the sunset while we write. (Now Peter wants us to do a boat check).

WATCH MEMBERS: Jason Ayala, Kelsey Morrison, Eden Leonard, Tanner Tillotson and Peter Flint

OBSERVATIONS: The last day and a half since we left Bay City, MI has been really busy.  Kai enjoys the four hour watches way better than the six hour watches she did last year. She also found Evan’s explanation of the meaning of his name hilarious (noble warrior priest of the forest?!). Jess is like the best cook ever! For breakfast this morning, Jess made french toast covered in honey bunches of oats. Pure genius! She also likes to play music while she’s in the galley. SO far she’s played Otis Redding and Bob Marley.

Josh and Kimoy like the peacefulness of bow watch and the responsibility of keeping the boat safe. We all enjoy steering the ship. Kimoy doesn’t really like steering the ship because he feels like he will get us lost. However, Kai and Josh like steering the boat because they’re both really good at staying on course.

Plotting our position is really cool because we get to find out exactly where we are on the chart.  The satisfaction we get from crossing the latitude and longitude lines is great.  Estimating our arrival time at a given destination based on our plot is very interesting.

On our 4:00am to 8:00am watch, we were dodging a lighting storm that was on our port side. It looked like a huge claw in the sky illuminated by the lightning.  The sunrise was nice and beautiful and looked like a fresh painting.  All of the colors were wonderful: orange, pink, yellow, purple, and blue.

After the early watch, we had a really good nap.  After lunch we went through a really cool lock that had a lot of people waiting to watch us go through. We rose about fifty feet in the lock along with a tourist boat that was going through as well. Kai took pictures of people taking pictures of us.  There were some cool islands and seriously large birds. We traveled up St. Mary’s river and now we’re anchored for the night and ready for a long sleep.

WATCH MEMBERS:
Capt. Dwight Deckleman
Paul Martin
Evan Parnell
Kai Bartlette
Josh Winckel
Kimoy Christopher

The first act of community service we performed was volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club of Bay City, Michigan.  When we first arrived some of us played basketball with the kids while others hung out in the teen and game room with other kids.  Then we served the kids pizza and ate lunch with them.  During lunch, Kimoy, aka K Cris, one of the students from the Roseway, beat boxed, sang and danced.  He was surprisingly good and he gained a lot of fans.  After lunch we got to know the kids and had a lot of fun with them.

After the Boys & Girls Club we went to the Bay City Historical Society Musuem and Maritime Gallery. We learned about how the logging industry made Bay City.  We learned about skull islands and how it disappeared due to changing water levels, it had a lot of history because there was a battle between two native American tribes, there were only 12 survivors (all of which were women).  This is the reason that we can’t find it because we don’t want to invade Native American burial grounds.  The museum was great because we learned about the port we are in.

Over the past couple of days we visited Europa, Pride of Baltimore II, the Bounty, and the Roald Amundsen.  Some of our favorite ships were the Europa because it travels to Antartica 5 times a year, and the Roald Amundsen because it’s a symbol of the reuniting of East and West Germany and our tour guide is a current German Navy Officer (and has been for 30 years).

The Planetarium of Bay City was so awesome because we learned about how to travel by the stars and saw a cool promo of Space Park 360 technology.  We also go to go to the top of the Planetarium and had a great view of our home, the Roseway.

Another act of community service was volunteering at the festival making balloon animals and tying knots.  We liked making kids happy and seeing the smiles on kids faces when we gave them the balloon turtles and teaching them about wetlands and protecting water.

Our crew is so awesome.  Peter has great life lessons, Capt. Dwight is funny and a great leader; Jess is a great cook and has mad cooking skills; Tanner had good scary stories; Eden is a great leader and had fun activities; Paul has great taste in Movies; Zack is great at initiating us to clean the deck; Scott knows how to work the crowds; Katie is a good soccer player and is funny; Evan knows how to get the job done; and Abby is awesome, she gave us this opportunity.

Contributions by Kyle Murphy, Jason Ayala, Kimoy Christopher, and William Wampler

RESPECT
-being mindful of others
-no rude comments
-treating everyone well
-not disturbing others
-respecting yourself

TEAMWORK
-cooperation
-helping each other
-supporting each other

FRIENDSHIP
-forming new bonds

HONESTY
-not lying
-being truthful
-not gossiping
-giving your full effort

TRUST
-not letting each other down
-always giving your all
-being trustworthy
-not betraying the trust of others

COMMUNICATION
-being clear
-listening
-paying attention