Make sail!

 My recent reading of the book All Hands On Deck has me thinking of my own experience aboard a square rigged tall ship.  To be more precise, a three masted sailing barque named the USCGC Eagle (WIX-327).  As a cadet at the US Coast Guard Academy in the mid 1980s, I spent several weeks in the summer of 1984 as a training crewmember on the Eagle.  Many experiences Will Sofrin describes in his book were familiar to me: climbing ratlines, laying out on a yard, furling and setting large squaresails, and so many other aspects of life at sea on a square rigger.  Some of it wasn't so glamorous: washing dishes, polishing brass, and standing tedious watch in a hot, noisy engine room.  But years later, I look on my experience with fondness.  Balancing on a footline on a yard 100 feet above the ocean surface in a stiff breeze and a choppy sea, the ship rolling back and forth, is not something many people get to experience.  And thanks to the obliviousness of youth, I never worried about the danger.  Today, as an old man, I could never imagine doing such things.  In those days before cell phones, I still came away with many photos, including the one below as I perched at the tip of the bowsprit as Eagle raced along under full sail.

My Coast Guard career was to be short lived, as it turns out.  At that stage of my life, I was slow to catch on to the social networking and relationship skills necessary in military organizations.  So after a couple years, I washed out of the academy and returned to my original life plan of being a scientist.  About half my academy class eventually did the same, leaving before graduation.  But those remarkable individuals who went on to make a long career as Coast Guard officers will always hold my deep admiration.  In fact, not one but two of my classmates would go on to eventually serve in succession as Captain of the Eagle.  And another classmate became the top guy running the Coast Guard Academy.  I am glad to have briefly known those impressive men and women, my classmates who served our country as members of the country's oldest military branch.  '87 Sir!!