Aloft!

My first visit to the tops'l yard was deliciously uneventful, in that I came back down without much crashing or screaming. Nate (our acting bosun) took us last two volunteers up for aloft training, and "Scary" has now been officially redefined for me. Spiders, Deadlines, IRS, Avian Bird Flu.. eh. That's mildly alarming. Getting up the futtocks the first time is scary. To clarify, to get from the Main-Course/Crowjack (lowest) yard to the Tops'l (middle) yard, you need to climb up the shrouds to a wooden platform (the main-top, right?), and then *out* around the main-top in order to run up the next level of shrouds. And by out, I mean about 6-8' at an angle of 45-degrees away from the mast. With nothing below you except sea, a hard rail, or if you're lucky, some crunchy channels below to break your fall. And from there, you can't see the next set of shrouds leading up. The ones you need to frantically grab when pulling yourself over. And all this happens what.. 30' above the deck? Which is hard and wood. Far harder than my soft-pink landsman's body. Or my brittle little white bones. And it's not just me.. Forester's Hornblower crawled up into a fetal position and wept like a schoolboy his first time, too. And *he* had a Lubber's Hole to sneak through when nobody was looking!

Anyway, with a lot of patience from Nate (who was standing ON the Crowjack while I was clinging to the futtocks and pondering the afterlife), I got up and over. Afterwards, he was even decent enough to show me the safety-line I could have clipped onto!

The going was a bit tougher for Julia (the other new volunteer), though. She's sized a little closer to the sailors of yore (4'-something). She couldn't reach over the main-top at all, and could only cling below it. So after much coaching from Nate (and clipping into the safety line I didn't know about), she took the "normal" approach of running up the futtock shrouds, flinging herself out into the air as she reached the Main-Top, and catching hold of the next set of shrouds before falling. Leap of Faith. After seeing that, my route was cake.

After that was a quick dash to the tops'l yard, a bit of looking down and getting quesy, and then a run back down in time for lunch. Ah, sweet merciful deck!!