May 28, 2000

hi gang, opsail here in san juan ends tomorrow with the big parade of sail along the coast, little taio tucked in amongst the big guys. there are 12 class a, the big tall ships here.

we,ve had to dress up as best we can for gala receptions at the coast guard and the governor,s. everybody,s wearing flawless dress white uniforms with gold braid all over the place. i don,t even have real shoes, but i do put socks on under my tevas in honour of these occasions.

last night was more our kind of party, with the crews instead of captain and all the teenage volunteers. we were dancing barefoot on the grounds of fort morrow. tons of fun.

we got the real tour of eagle the other day and carol got the captain to autograph her copy of the eagle seamanship manual. then she and ellen off grand deli ran into him in old san juan and hung out and chatted.

grand deli (nellie) has been a real cool spot for a lot of people. brainkillers at sundown cannon every night, free sails for some of the volunteers and others.

last night we were hanging out with 3 guys from the chilean ship. it,s amazing how much good will flows through the language barrier. the organizers of the next opsail event in miami are trying to talk us into going but i think we,ll skip it and head north. we,re sure this will be the best opsail event, simply because puerto ricans are such great people. we have had a blast here. love to all, john and carol

May 31, 2000

hi gang wed may 31 we,re out at sea about 12 miles north of san juan, on our way to new york, or maybe bermuda if it turns out that way.

a couple of days before we left, the chief bosun,s mate on eagle came over and spent a few hours doing fancy rope work on taio. real nice guy. he was going to do a whole bunch of stuff but ran out of time.

forgot to tell you earlier, there were six crazy (in a nice way) czechs who had built a replica of magellan,s victoria which they sailed across the atlantic. very authentic, engineless, wood burning stove. wild and crazy guys (and one girl) for sure

the last night of opsail, oosterschelde, a dutch training ship, held a fabulous dinner for the captains and officers on the non-military vessels. it,s a beautiful ship, built in 1918, sort of a half scale peking for you tall ship fans. the crew are great too. we had a wonderful time and stayed much too late even though we had to get up at 5am for the parade of sail.

i was a little concerned about doing the parade because a tropical wave was going through with possible heavy rain and reduced visibility. without radar i was nervous about being out there in the midst of all those ships and boats but we decided to do it anyway. good thing, except for a brief, heavy shower it was a perfect day.

our spot in the parade was astern of the canadian school ship, concordia and ahead of hms rose. we decided to do the whole parade under square alone just for the heck of it and almost managed to keep up to concordia. we sailed along the coast for a few miles then passed right by fort morro and got a one gun salute. concordia stopped and got all her kids lined up to give us a cheer but we were threading our way through spectator boats under square and couldn,t get over to her. too bad.

we hung around in the harbour entrance and watched rose, our buddies on kathryn b, eagle and grand nellie go by. needing to catch up on our rest, we anchored just inside the entrance. later, the brand new and very beautiful brazilian ship, cisne branco, came back into harbour and gave us four blasts on her horn as she passed us. of course, we answered with our little human powered horn. cool how the big guys recognize the little guys.

the organizers of opsail in miami where a lot of the ships are now headed, tried hard to get us to go to miami but we decided it was better for us to get north.

we had a great time in san juan, loved the puerto rican people for their warmth and friendliness and had a wonderful time meeting and hanging out with the people from the other vessels.

Go to June 2000