Yes! Of course I’ll be able to sail her! I had been sailing and racing yachts most of my life in Auckland, I wasn’t too keen on going up onto the yards to release the sails, but if someone else did that I would be fine! HA! WHAT A JOKE!

We were living on board the 140 foot Brigantine “Esther Lohse” built in 1949 in Denmark, one of the last Baltic Traders still sailing.

She had been restored to her former glory and was known mostly at the time (mid 1970’s) as the “Charlotte Rhodes” from the hugely successful BBC Television show The Onedin Line.

Anyway, it was hard enough getting on board. Climbing up a rope ladder from an old clinker built dinghy was easy, but when we came back from having dinner ashore in the old eighteenth century town of Milfordhaven in Wales, the tide had dropped and instead of stepping straight on to the gunwale with plenty to hang on to, the nearest part of the ship to the wharf was the ratlines – a wide rope ladder that goes from the deck up to the mast.

The crew were just launching themselves from the wharf at the ratlines and then grabbing them, climbing down and heading down below to their cabins.

I can’t jump that far. What if I fall down between the ship and the wharf?

The trouble is, the ratlines start at the outside of the hull of the ship and then narrow into the mast where the square rigging starts. So if the tide has dropped say ten feet and the hull is still way down low against the piles under the wharf, at ground (wharf) level they are about ten feet away.

Embarrassingly, someone eventually called me all sorts of unseamanship like things and put a plank from the wharf to the ratlines for me.

I felt as if I was walking the plank……

photo credit: anoldent from Asheville