Day 13 – Aboard the Tallship Alabama

After our relatively short trip from the day before I was finding my sea legs again. I think we all know that I have had some really bad experiences on boats! However I was about to take another voyage in order to get back to the mainland from where we had been and back to the bikes that I sorely wanted to ride-these extreme frontiers were too far for the bike, I cannot tell you how much that pained me. But we must persevere and if this was the only way for me to get back on to the bike then so be it.

We were setting of on a traditional Tall ship, the Alabama, to be specific. It was an incredible sight seeing all the masts and rigging that had gone in to her and even after all the years she had been on the salty sea she looked in good condition. So I thought. Pulling up the sails on the old ropes was an experience to say the least. The amount of effort and abuse that you have to take from these old ships is quite staggering. After only sailing for a few hours I could start to feel the burn across my hands. There was only a small crew to help us but as we all chipped in, the extreme frontiers crew as well, suddenly the wind picked up and we were sailing towards glory.

As night was falling, Russ and I decided to row to shore with the crew and we went a cooked our own food on a fire we built. Such an incredible scene and nothing is more rewarding than cooking in the open wilderness like that. Time flew by and before we had time to digest we were headed back to big ol’ Alabama and prepared for another day of sailing. We just had to get through the night as we heard a storm was coming.