Goldie is coming into his 5th season in Niagara. He started off as an Able Seaman in 2008 and 2009. He came back in 2011 as a mate and engineer. He also has worked 3 winters here at the Erie Maritime Museum working in the Rig Shop building the Fore Shrouds, working at the shipyard and tackling many engineering projects.  This season he will be sharing Second Mate duties with Pat Crosby so both of them will be able to take care of their engineering or carpentry duties while the other one is standing the watch.  Goldie’s time in Niagara was had him taking part in all aspects of the operation.  He is both useful and competent in the rig or in the engine room and spends time doing both throughout the uprig period.  Last Winter/Spring he even joined the carpentry crew at the shipyard to get some exposure to the wood working aspect of the wooden sailing ship world.  Goldie is willing to work in any capacity to fulfill the needs of the ship and the ship is a better place for it.

     Goldie has been looking forward to the 2013 season since his return in 2011 and with his help it’s going to be a great summer.

     And in case you read his bio from 2009, he is still doing well holding up to the reputation of my childhood best friend who was a male golden retriever that I named Goldie.

     The crew has been fighting the elements to get the ship rigged so far.  The first and second weeks of rigging were held up due to snow and January like conditions but they have been gaining ground everyday that it has not been snowing or not below 20 degrees.  Once the winter cover came off we were able to get a crane to come in a week later to send up both topmasts and all of their associated rigging, both lower yards, the jibboom, the spanker boom, both anchors and all of the deck boxes.  The crane has helped us make up some time from all the bad weather.  The weather this week finally has temperatures in the 50′s and we should be outside everyday working so anyone who is interested in seeing how to put together brig come on down and we will put you to work.

  Over the course of the next few weeks I will post a bio of each of the seasonal crew that will be sailing with us this summer so all of you can get an idea of who your crew will be this year.

The students and crew appear in high spirits after several days of prime sailing. Tomorrow, I plan to sail for Devil’s Island, to send out the boats to row through the water-cut “sea” caves that line the shore of the island. We depart Bayfield around 10am tomorrow and will arrive in Duluth on the east wind, which is in the Wx forecast, on Thursday around 4pm.

For me, it does not matter what she is called. Niagara is a ship like no other. As a fairly large brig, she is one of, if not the largest square rigged sailing ship in the country, which regularly takes the public out sailing. The experience is not just educational, but it’s an adventure.

Right now, 16 very fortunate young people, four professors, and a few others who are sailing in Niagara as trainees and a very real part of the crew, are busy having the time of their lives. In historically traditional fashion, I am hove to and standing by with the ship, located 4.5 nautical miles southeast of Mott Island, which is part of the Isle Royale National Park on Lake Superior. I have the ship and about half of the professional crew standing by, holding station, and blockading Isle Royale, while the students, our ship’s doctor, and the rest of the crew are exploring one of the most beautiful wilderness preserves in the world.

 The shore party left the ship about two hours ago, and are expected to return in the ship’s boats about two hours from now. The three ship’s cutters are currently docked at Isle Royale and the crew and trainees are visiting with Rolf and Candy Peterson. They are a wonderful, if not perhaps a bit eccentric couple, that has devoted their lives to the study of the preditor/prey relationship between the wolf and moose populations on Isle Royale. Their study has been continuously ongoing for more than sixty years.

Isle Royale is an international biosphere and wilderness reserve. I chose to send the boats in rather than the ship, because of the risk of contaminating the biosphere with invasive aquatic species, which inhabit all of the Great Lakes, but have not yet become a serious issue on Isle Royale. According to Phyllis Green, the Superintendent of the Isle Royale National Park, the NPS has spent more than $150,000 over the last two years trying to eradicate zebra and quaugo mussels found on Isle Royale. They believe their efforts were successful and are continuing to work hard to prevent foreign invasive species from contaminating Isle Royale’s shores and adjacent waters.

This is Niagara’s 2nd visit to Isle Royale under my command. Last year, I employed a team of 15 scuba divers to scrub, scrape, and completely remove all the marine growth, including several species of mussels that were clinging to Niagara’s bottom, with plans to go to Isle Royale. While the divers reported that all growth was removed, they actually missed an area that was about the size of two dollar bills, on the bottom of the ship’s keel. They also missed a few mussels that were wedged deeply between the crevices of Niagara’s rudder pintles & gudgeons (hinges). I know this, because the National Park Service rangers dove on the ship’s hull and scraped off a few of the critters while we were there last year. 

They were very concerned about the incident, and I was very unpleasantly surprised, discouraged, and ashamed to have (despite great efforts otherwise) inadvertently brought potential harm to the environment there. That said, between us, I would not have tried to disturb the mussels on our hull, as the NPS divers did, for fear of spreading reproductive matter during the process. However, fortunately they told me this morning that there was no evidence of any marine growth underwater at the dock where we tied up last year, so I am glad that we apparently did not actually cause Isle Royale any harm by our visit last year. At any rate, the whole ordeal was a learning experience for me, so this time, we have decided to approach the park in a very different way.

This is why we are currently hove to, standing 4.5 to six miles offshore, and sending boats in rather than the ship. On the east end of the island is a freighter lane. It’s a common path for the big ore carriers and other large cargo ships, which also carry invasive species including zebra and quaugo mussels. Their presence, passing just two miles away from the island must be of great concern to the NPS, as such ships are virtually guaranteed to carry billions of such critters, just waiting to jump off and drift in the current toward the island.

In an effort to do my part to help save Isle Royale from invasive species, I am telling this story to you and to any potential boaters who may consider bringing their boat to Isle Royale. If you do plan to sail here, make sure you haul your vessel out of the water before departure for cleaning, so you can guarantee the boat is clean and free of invasive species. Otherwise, stay at least 4.5 miles away from Isle Royale’s shores.

On that note, there is no such mention of Isle Royale’s status as an international biosphere, the NPS’s efforts to protect its shores from foreign invasive species, and the 4.5 mile restricted zone in commonly published maritime documents and charts. So today, I recommended to the Head Ranger here that the NPS communicate with NOAA and the USCG to publish notice of their mission and the environmental issues on Isle Royale in the US Coast Pilot, Volume 6 and on the local marine navigational charts that are printed by NOAA. This simple step will inform all mariners of the issues regarding the park and will significantly help the park to meet their mission. Also, this step will prompt the USCG to issue Local Notices to Mariners regarding the park’s environmental threats and their efforts to protect the island.

As for Niagara, we’ll have the boats back soon, and will be off for the Apostle Islands, with hopes of fetching Bayfield, WI for a quick grocery-run and maybe a bit of fuel. The students are all doing very well, having fun, and are a great bunch of kids, and I feel privileged to be entrusted with their care for the next two weeks and the remainder of what has thus far been a very exciting voyage.

 Yours,

Wesley W. Heerssen, Jr.

Captain, US Brig Niagara

Hove To- south side, east end of Isle Royale, off Mott Island.

14:57

My name is Luke Fakult, and I am a student going into the eleventh grade at University School in Hunting Valley, Ohio. This is our school’s first year in the tall ship program, but I hope I can do this for my next two summers of high school. I signed up for this experience because I have a great interest in the outdoors, the way things used to be, and a general want to explore the Great Lakes and arboreal forests. I also like working with my hands and exploring new things, so when our school presented this program I was the first to sign up.

For me, this whole program has been about firsts. Whether personal firsts or firsts for the crew, this experience has lead me to rethink the way I view people and to break ground I never thought I would break. Although originally I did not like how the program seemed to be more social than educational, I have learned to see people in different lights and have come to see that a strong bond between crewmembers yields quicker and better results on any necessary task. I have been nothing but lucky to get into a program like this, but on board this lucky streak has continued. On our first day of aloft training, I noticeably expressed an interest in going aloft, and I was then privileged to be one of the first trainees aloft, the first trainee on our voyage to set a royal (specialty sails hoisted up from the deck to the very top of the mast) and was allowed, based on demonstrated ability, to go aloft on the main top gallant yard (Main T’gallant yard as follows sailor lingo) for lookout (to see above an uncommonly low fog bank). I just wanted to share a little bit of this experience with the rest of you, who unfortunately could not accompany us on this voyage.

This morning, alpha watch (my watch) stood from 0700 to 1300 as our rotating schedule dictated. However, this was a rather different type of watch. We just entered Lake Superior, and as is typical of the lake in this time of year the water is very cold (38 degrees Fahrenheit) and the air from the south is very warm and very humid, causing dense fog. However, this was not the strangest part. Although Lake Superior is the deepest of the Great Lakes (1,333 feet) and we were in water around 960 feet, the depth gauge only read about 18-22 feet deep due to erratic readings. The ship’s fathometer is designed to read depth of 250 feet or less, and the ship was “off of soundings”.

 The second odd climatic event involving thermal layers took place in the air this morning. Over the past few days we’ve gotten to see the Great Lakes with no wind and the lake surface as smooth as glass. Usually when the water was smooth, this meant no wind, which means we had to motor to keep schedule. However, this morning we were sailing fast under full sail without the twin diesels, but the lake had only ripples. This was because a colder, denser body of air blanketed the lake for about 80 feet upward, preventing wind from penetrating and churning up the surface. So while the ship was moving at seven knots (one knot is 1.15 mph), and the wind aloft was at twenty knots, the wind on deck only felt like five or six knots. Also, the air aloft was approximately ten degrees warmer than the air on deck, because the rule “warm air rises” applies in the atmosphere as well. I thought this was really neat, and certainly something I’d never seen or even heard of before.

So here we were, in the middle of Superior, blanketed in the densest fog I’ve ever seen (I could see fog from the height of my head to the ground) with slow moving surface wind. Then, all of a sudden over the starboard bow (right if you’re at the rudder) comes a long, low blast of a Great Lakes ore carrier. Two, in fact. Radar (a rather contemporaneous device) showed the two ships were at six and twelve nautical miles away, but nevertheless it was a race for the lookouts to glimpse the ships and get a lock on their positions. However, due to the fog, visibility was only 200 feet or so. So as the modified saying goes, ‘Can’t go under it, can’t go around it, you gotta go over it!’ and when the con (person in control of the deck) looked for hands to go aloft, he trusted me with the honor. Climbing the shrouds (ropes from the cap rail to the mast that serve as mast supports and ladders), I’ve never felt more excited and more scared in my life. While climbing, you’re not clipped in, and as I mentioned, the winds were whipping at twenty knots, making the mast sway as the ship rolled gently in the seas. I scurried up as quickly and safely as possible, until I got to the third mast platform (the crosstrees) where I took up my lookout position and clipped-in my safety harness. It was interesting that as I climbed, temperature and humidity became progressively more pronounced, so that I could feel the sun on my skin and see the water in the air. After climbing the final rope ladder shroud (tapering from eighteen to four inches), I broke out from behind the sail onto the top with a feeling like no other I’d felt. It was like Jake Sully seeing Pandora for the first time or Bilbo Baggins climbing the tallest tree in Murkwood Forest to find a sky filled with butterflies. The wind was coursing against my face, rocking me back and forth gently. I looked down and the sun being right behind me, I saw a full spectrum rainbow in the mist, centering on my head. There was a complete, 360 degree panoramic view, but there is something about being above fog, greater than nature almost, that intensifies the feeling of success and astonishment to another level. For an hour and a half I was aloft, taking in my surroundings, and I was so consumed with it all that I almost forgot I had to keep lookout. All too soon though, our watch ended and it was time to come back down to earth.

Although it was relatively short lived, this was an experience I will never forget. I’ve learned many things about myself and about my fellow people that I could learn nowhere else. Everything about going aloft today, from the trust in me by myself and others, to the beauty of the natural world, to the engineering feat it was to make brigs like this in 1813, proved myself still astonished at this world. After only sixteen years of being in it, I now only expect for more to come throughout the rest of my as yet unlived life. On the sixth of twenty days, this opportunity has already proved itself instrumental to me as to how I know and understand God’s green Earth and everything in it, and I only look forward to the rest of this voyage and the rest of my life to try to figure out the vast amount I have yet to learn.

Luke Fakult

 Trainee, Sailing School Vessel Niagara Sailing

Fast and Northward in Southeastern Lake Superior!”

1841 hours

I am a member of the Alpha Watch on the Brig Niagara. It is our second full day out on the Great Lakes. We have learned a lot in this short amount of time about the sails, lines, knots, and orders. My hands have already become callused from tugging on the manila ropes during our watch. Today started with a shift beginning at 11 o’clock last night and ended around three in the morning. We motored through the St. Clair River and into Lake Huron around two. I was ordered on watch while passing through St. Clair. The river was surprisingly hectic with fishermen and other vessels passing by along the shoreline. Other fishermen weren’t so anxious to get out of the way of the massive Niagara and refused to give up their fishing spots. Captain Wes halted the boat to a stop and burst out a loud five horns from the bow of the boat. The fisherman still trolled along at a slow pace. Another five horns and a call to the Coast Guard made sure those fishermen were out of our path. We reached into the darkness of Huron and were quickly far away from shore once again. When the sun came up I fell fast asleep in my hammock and was only awake for breakfast and lunch. Then another Alpha watch began after lunch. In the midst of the heat of the afternoon, Captain Wes called an all hands on deck and ordered a swim call! We swam and showered in the crisp, cold waters of Huron. Not a boat or piece of land around. The water was so clear with a deep blue to the color. The visibility was unbelievable. We then finished off our watch and had dinner. I write with my free time and sleep when I can. It has been only two days, but feels like a whole summer! Can’t wait for more adventures ahead!

- Brooks Pinnick “

So the schedule and syllabus for this winter’s sail training is ready to go.  This is a great opportunity for everyone that stares at pictures of Niagara all over town thinking how much fun it would be to sail and work on that ship.  Our goal is to train new volunteers to help us sail the ship during the coming sailing season for both day sails in Erie and in passage.  The Niagara volunteers are the only way that a ship like this can be taken care of to the high standard that she is.

The program starts with and orientation to the ship and the museum on either Saturday Jan 8th or Saturday Jan 15th at 0900.  The training classes start on Saturday Jan 22nd and run every other week until April 16th.  The classes start at 0830 and end at 1230. 

Our sail training program won the American Sail Training Association’s “Sail Training Program of the Year” for 2010 and we are lead by Captain Wesley Heerssen who is the American Sail Training Association’s “Sail Trainer of the Year” for 2010.

Come on down and be a part of it.

We have a schedule that we can publish for everyone!!!  The day sails are pretty much locked in so you can sign up for those whenever you would like.  The only changes that may be made would be in the ports we are going to this summer and I will make sure that the schedule is updated as soon as I know there is a change.  Please let me know if there is any problems with viewing the schedule.  I believe you will have to rotate it once you open the pdf to view it in landscape.  If you have any questions send me a message or comment on the blog.  Let’s go Sailing!!!

Captain Wesley Heerssen has been awarded the American Sail Traning Association’s Sail Trainer of the Year Award.  This is a big deal.  Of all the tall ship sailors in the country ASTA has chosen Wes to be the best of 2010.  This is a huge honor for him and we should all be proud to have such a Captain on our ship. 

     This is well deserved award.  Wes has been tireless in his dedication and work for this ship and ultimately the trainees that sail on board her.  He is a patient teacher that does not get frustrated or upset with the people around him and creates an environment that is incredibly conducive to learning.  He uses positive reinforcement to get the most out of people and in so doing he gets everything that they can give him.  Captain Heerssen also leads by example to create a work ethic on board that is unstoppable.  He possesses a wealth a knowledge concerning sailing on board a tall ship and is passionate about sharing that knowledge with all that sail with him.