September 21st - 27th

Friday, September 21st

The students had a field trip to a naval training school, lunch and then an overnight visit to host families. We?ll see them back tomorrow mid-morning.
Instead of taking the naval school trip I bought an hour and a half of internet time at a 7-11 (and a bottomless coffee cup), and caught up on some things. Then it was off to the Canadian Embassy where I was able to use their good offices for a (taped) phone interview with Don Connolly. The embassy folk also let me use their phone to call Claudia (who was in Halifax with Barna, Maya and Sophia), and to wish Maya a
happy third birthday.

In the evening several of the instructors went to a blues club in Old Town, a short walk from the ship. It was great music. The vocalist would do all the introductions in Swedish of course, then switch to BB King, or Stevie Ray Vaughan English once the music started.

Saturday, September 22nd
Several of us walked to the Vasa Museum, a building dedicated to the display of a completely recovered and restored warship from 1628. The Vasa capsized and sunk on its maiden voyage within sight of its launch position and with the horrified king and queen of Sweden watching. Fifty or so sailors were lost. The ship architect had apparently acceded to the ship owner's request and had added a second deck of cannon. This might well have worked to the good had he remembered to increase the ballast in the hold. With the first breath of air in the sails, the ship keeled over and sank. Tragic though it was, the coincidence of brackish water (low in salt) and soft tidal mud flats, together with the pristine condition of the ship, presented ideal preservative conditions (much like the Mary Rose's fate in England). It is a delight to view this battle ship 379 years later.

Sunday, September 23rd
A group of us went to the Aquarium this morning. While not as extensive as say the Boston Aquarium, it was well worth the half-hour walk in the fall sunlight. Earlier in the morning, we had been invited to tour a large Swedish navy supply ship berthed next to us. (It should be noted that while I have taken on this sailing adventure, and have demonstrated a liking of water conveyances over the years, I find modern navy ships to be little more than propelled computer centers. Whatever one might say on moral grounds about the legitimacy of war ships, the 17th century versions (for all their primitiveness) have a swashbuckling romance about them that is entirely lost in their modern counterparts.)

Our location here in Stockholm is the Halifax equivalent of Historic Properties and there is a constant stream of pedestrians making their way by. This is especially the case today, a Sunday. Three cross harbour ferries are also in the immediate vicinity, and two cruise ships and a car ferry from one of the outer islands have arrived in the past couple of hours.

Tomorrow morning we set sail for Bornholm, another Danish port, popular we have been told with the Copenhagen summer holiday makers. In any event it feels right to return to the sea. We will arrive on Thursday and depart again on Saturday for Lubeck, Germany.

Monday and Tuesday, September 24th and 25th.
Oh, those ocean swells! The wind has been in our teeth the past two days so we have been under power (versus sail) for the most part, and stomachs have been upset. The sea route from Stockholm to Bornholm requires some backtracking. A look at the map will show the necessity of going northeast, then southeast, before getting clear of Swedish coastal islands, at which point we made southwest and the "fun" really began. I wasn?t physically ill, but didn?t enjoy those two days much, sleeping (or lying down at least) between classes.

Wednesday, September 26th
During the night a band of showers passed through, the winds dropped, and the fog settled in. I was awakened in the wee hours by our ship's fog horn, a blast repeated every couple of minutes, designed to warn small craft (principally) of our whereabouts. The sun is attempting to make an appearance but to little avail. To everyone's relief the visibility has improved enough to dispense with the fog horn!

Classes are going well. We are at the halfway point of the university term as far as coverage is concerned. Remember, I teach two "one-term" courses from our departure until Dublin (October 26th), then teach another two ?one-term? courses from that point to the conclusion of my sailing journey in Las Palmas (the Canary Islands) December 15th. While at sea I have four classes in each course in every three-day
cycle, versus the Acadia land-based format of three classes a week. (There are no weekends as we conventionally know them in our schedule. Particularly at sea I often am unaware of the particular day of the week.)

Jan the cook has come up with several great meals of late. Yesterday we had fresh bread, soup, and an orange for lunch, and lamb with "real" potatoes and broccoli for dinner. I am missing Stirling's pie, and deserts generally. Let's have lots in London Claudia!

We had a "Coffee House" this evening, coffee and birthday cake (not for me just yet), and a number of musical numbers and skits. I participated in two ?numbers?, one a musical offering by the teachers collectively, one a skit in which I played Boris (opposite an Olga), in the format of a blind date, on a quiz show. I won't be giving up my "day job" just yet!

Thursday, September 27th

9:00 A.M. We are entering Bornholm harbour. Classes will end at lunch time and we will have shore leave for the rest of the day and tomorrow.