To pick up from earlier

If anyone that reads this is actually interested in sailing with a ship, I highly recommend doing what I did. No, not giving a taxi card as a tip, that was an asshole move. I joined on with the ship during a big tour week, that's the only lesson you should take from me. You get to learn all about the ship, pretend you've known it all along, and tell little kids to refrain from falling into the water.

When the ship is in a port that isn't Erie, it typically goes like this. You wake up, have a good breakfast, and the day pans out in some combination of the following ways

1. You work maintenance, tarring aloft or any number of other projects. Tip: Be sure to wear your best attire, because the second you step off the deck, either aloft or into the headrigging, cameras will start clicking like your king kong swiping at aircraft.
2. You work tours, greeting tourists and answering their questions, making sure they have a good time. Tip: Brush your teeth well, and be glad that the camera can only see your teeth, and not smell your B.O., tourists, you're out of luck here, sorry.
3. You have the day off, go wander around aimlessly! Tip: Put on something besides your denim crew shirt, go out and window shop. Consider buying something, and then chuckle and realize you have no room to put it anywhere. Eat a greasy burger, and then find a coffee shop to check your e-mail at if thats your thing.

Overall, great choice. That way, when your out at sea, theres much less (still a lot) of asking what someone means by a phrase like, "We have some dead babies in those sails" (Hopefully though, your sails aren't furled if you're on the water though, am I right? am I right? You have no idea what I'm talking about, let's move on.)

For now, I am planning on leaving out most details about the cities unless they're relevant. If your interested in learning more about any of the cities I went to, I highly recommend visiting them in person (man I should get paid to promote these places.) or just use good old fashioned search engines.

Keeping in line with what I just said, after leaving Cleveland, we had to motor back to Erie thanks to the winds wanting to fight us the whole way. My summary of Erie goes something like this. The ship has lots of heavy stuff on it, and I got to move it back and forth for a week or two. However, the warm showers were nice. From there we went back out to sea, bound eventually for Duluth Minnesota.

I'm not sure if you get that, I mean I sure didn't, being from Arizona. The trip would take me from one side of Lake Erie, up the river past Lake Saint Claire, all the way across Lake Huron, AND all the way across Lake Superior. This is around 1000 miles. That is one miserable car ride, but on a ship lucky to be going 1/9th the speed? It's awesome. I went to bed knowing something great would happen.

© Kyle Packer