Sunday, January 29, 2006

The Winds of Winter...


This week the winds of winter have indeed been blowing in Stockholm. Strong, steady, and bitter, it whips over the now-frozen harbor sending drifting snow across the ice in curling clouds. Onboard Sankt Erik the sounds of the ship and harbor change with the weather. The gentle slap of wavelets on the hull has been replaced by the menacing grinding of ice against the steel plating or just eerie silence. The chatter of propellers from the passing commuter ferries is nearly drowned out under the thumping and banging of broken ice against their thin hulls and the big cruise ships coming in from Finland and Estonia each morning fill Sankt Erik with the sounds of crushing ice, often booming and cracking with startling violence.

Yet, I enjoy every minute of it. There is something wonderful about being on an icebreaker in the worst winter weather--a sense of purpose and belonging that is embodied in the ship and survives despite her now-long-ago retirement. So, during the evening hours when I am back aboard the ship for the night and the snow has begun to sift down heavily I tend to find myself going on deck or up to the bridge to gaze about at the ship and the harbor lights.




It has been piling up in a gorgeous white blanket much of the week. This is the afterdeck.


Everyday elements of the ship take on a more unique appearance under the snow...

...A pair of bitts with a mooring line made fast to them.

...One of the ship's skylights.


The lightship Finngrundet frozen in the ice beside Sankt Erik.

Soaking up the Swedish winter and wishing you all well,
-Nat

The legendary ice-breaker bow

Frozen in.


Friday, January 20, 2006

Life afloat...

I find that I learn something new about shipboard-life every day on the Sankt Erik.
This morning I awoke to find my sink filled to the rim with water. I knew the leaky faucet was part of the problem and it looked as though an application of Drain-O might be in order. Then I happened to peer out my porthole and saw the whole harbor frozen over. Apparently the trickle of water from the leaky faucet had frozen solid in the drain. Hmmpf....

Welcome to the fleet!



Den artonde januari 2006, onsdag
(The 18th of Janaury, wednesday)

Hej, min vänner! (Hello, my friends)


A number of you have been demanding photos of my floating abode and the mighty Vasa. I am only too pleased to oblige. I’ve already gone through two sets of camera batteries so I think I can find something to show you. It is a good stormy day to assemble photos for you to see. The wind came in last night, howling across the harbor and screaming in Sankt Erik’s rigging. Snow flurries obscured the city lights, the harbor began to ice over, and so I retreated aboard for a little shelter and warmth. At times it blew so hard that I felt the mighty Sankt Erik heaving slightly to leeward under the belligerent gusts, the wardroom lanterns swinging gently with the motion. Down in my cabin I discovered a new sound, that of wind whistling up the drainpipe into my sink causing a nasty, cold, geyser of a draught out of the sink. Apparently the through-hull is well above the waterline. I put in the drain plug and stuffed the overflow drain with a handkerchief to keep out the cold. Then, with a hot cup of tea from the galley, I settled in to prepare what you are about to see. Where shall we begin this time? ……….Well, I suppose now that I am already writing about my floating home, Sankt Erik, I ought to continue from there.


Welcome to the Sankt Erik, the plucky little Swedish icebreaker that kept the hundreds of miles of approaches to Stockholm harbor open during more than 60 winters between 1915 and 1977. She is a fine ship measuring roughly 180ft long, 58ft wide and some 5 (enclosed) decks high. Being located in the center of the city, she is therefore the best apartment in Stockholm.




“Safety First!”


When I arrived, Stockholm had just completed nearly two weeks of snowfall, blanketing the entire ship in a lovely layer of fresh snow.

An enclosed pilothouse was not built on the bridge until the 1950s. For 40 years her officers handled the ship in the open air, exposed to the piercing winds that blew across the frozen border regions of the Baltic.



Two decks below and almost directly beneath the bridge is my cabin, starboard side, just forward of amidships. It has a small desk, a narrow bunk, a sink, a small bureau, and a lone porthole. Note that I always keep a photo of the Wawona in view.


The Swedes are a tall people and therefore they build their ships with longer bunks than those found on most other ships and for that I am most thankful.


When I open the door to my cabin (the super-bright room on the left) I step out into this large room amidships. Given its size it would be easy to get thrown about in there in rough weather…but I suppose the seas stay pretty calm when they are frozen solid. The coup de grace of this compartment is the ship’s “grand staircase” on the right (aft side of the room) which goes up to the main deck and the ever-so-important galley where I stockpile my food. The ‘grand staircase’ and all Sankt Erik’s brass-work really gives her a noble feel, as if she were a great liner like Lusitania or Titanic…well, my ‘grand staircase’ isn’t that ornate…



The fact that I bothered to photograph this will tell you how pleased I am with the ship’s traditional lighting. There is no attempt to make her feel like a hotel. Sankt Erik is a ship and proud of it. It brings out the rivet-heads well too.


Across that large room with the ‘grand staircase’ on the ships port side is the head….bathroom for you lubbers. It has a shower too, but as you can see, the bare steel hull that forms one side of the room is an enormous heat-sink, giving away any warmth granted by the radiator to the frigid waters of the harbor.


Leaving the head and winding up the ‘grand staircase’ one finds the wardroom. This is the luxury space for the officers to dine and to entertain guests, a practice that the museum still continues in this space come summer. In the interim, it has become my study—a place to read and listen to music and soak in the atmosphere of the rich woodwork.


I know this place is nice, but shall we continue the tour?



Going aft from the wardroom on the main deck level you pass through this narrow corridor past the boiler room (right bulkhead) to the galley. Don’t worry, the passage is quite ‘homey’ with counters and portholes all the way down the left side (starboard side­­—‘left’ because we are going aft).


In the galley we find the massive coal-fired stove, a sink, and all the restoration crews’ vital coffee gear. Can you tell me what is wrong with this photo?


Aft of the galley is the restoration crews’ dayroom where live-aboards like me are also welcome to hang out. This is also where the only working refrigerator onboard is located. Likewise, it also contains the ship’s only TV, a device that is becoming essential to my study of the Swedish language…so far through cartoons.



In the dayroom hangs this pennant made from a scrap of canvas commemorating Sankt Erik’s—a.k.a Isbrytaren II (Icebreaker II) —working days in 1915 when she led convoys through the ice to and from Stockholm.


Well, enough of the crew spaces—although, there is much more back aft. Sankt Erik is a ‘living’ ship and thus we need to visit her steel and iron innards, see where her heart is, where the real soul of the ship lies…..the engine room.


The main engine, standing nearly three stories tall, is a sight to be had. Her four cylinders—each larger than the previous as she has a triple-expansion steam engine—are impressive to say the least. The low-pressure cylinder is nearly six feet in diameter. Compare that to a Honda. Then again, compare Sankt Erik’s 2,800 shaft horsepower to a Honda.



Taking to the maze of steel ladders and deck gratings, let’s descend two decks to the chief engineer’s level where the monstrous engine’s control levers and valves are located. Just grasping one of the brass handles, you can imagine the searing heat, the persistent hissing, and the gentle throbbing of the big engine….



…or hear the ring of the telegraph bell as an order comes down from the bridge demanding “Full Ahead” (or rather, “Full Framåt”) to drive against the ice…



And if this ship’s engines were not working pieces of equipment, I would be most tempted to ease open the throttle valve and imagine the pressure gauges jumping to attention.


The engine needs to be fed her steam from somewhere, so taking hold of a flashlight, we wriggle through a small hatch into the boiler room. It is icy cold today, but in her operating days the temperature in here would have been well over 100º F. The sheer size of these boilers indicates how much power this icebreaker had. Above, you can only see one-third of the No. 2 boiler. There are 3 other boilers in this space, each of massive proportions. So this entire photo really only shows one-twelfth of Sankt Erik’s boiler capacity.



Crawling further forward through the innards of the Sankt Erik, we reach the forward engine room. This comparatively smaller engine (1200shp) drives a propeller under the bow that is used to flush the broken ice aft along the hull as the ship creeps ahead. Just in case you are starting to feel at all claustrophobic, I suppose we ought to return to the deck.


Being nearly 60 feet wide (= to 1/3rd of her length), Sankt Erik has an enormous amount of deck space that, I am told, lends itself very well to summer barbeques and harbor watching.



Well, that about completes our tour of the Sankt Erik—and that is a good thing because I have so much more to show all of you!

Sankt Erik breaking ice in 1976.


Regelskeppet Vasa

(The Royal Ship Vasa)


For those of you who’ve never seen the majesty of the Vasa, look now. The preservation of this ship during her 333 years on the harbor bottom is utterly astounding. She is a ghostship from the past, resurrected to stand before us in all—well, half—her former grandeur. There are not words for this ship, for seeing her standing here with her massive bulk and towering décor. There is an impenetrable solidness in her construction that seems as if it would repel any shot the Danes could have fired at her, yet in her rapidly ascending stern, she has a delicate elegance that only befits ships of fantasy. Her design is so utterly out of this world, from a time so far in our past that she seems unreal, that she could not possibly have been intended for war, and quite rightly that she could not possibly have floated and sailed.



Not only do words fail to grasp the visage of the Vasa, but so do photographs. It is impossible to do her justice without coming and paying tribute to her in person. Her size for her era is stunning, her ornate decoration breathtaking, and her overall strident form simply stupefying.






A hapless-fisherman’s-eye view of the indomitable Vasa’s prow—bulbous and un-streamlined— but solid and formidably strong. The light in her gunports indicates that the conservators are onboard today, checking over the carefully marked areas where they are conducting treatment experiments on the destructive sulphur outbreaks.



Two of hundreds of wooden blocks (pulleys) found around the wrecksite—all beautifully preserved and many containing samples of Vasa’s ropes in their shivs. Speaking with Ole Magnus (a Danish man who is the world’s expert in handmade rope and is currently onboard the Sankt Erik with me) I learned that samples of virtually every gauge of rope used on the Vasa has survived. Ole is currently sorting through the dozens of 2 meter sections of Vasa’s anchor line.



This is the remarkably preserved remains of the carpenter's tool chest.


This is one of dozens of casks filled with lead musket shot. Vasa was sailing to war.


An old steel-hulled square-rigger tied up at the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm. She is a youth hostel now.


This is the graving dock (drydock built into the land. The gates are closed and the water pumped out) where Vasa was first hauled out in 1961. She floated in here on her own, being nudged along by a few tugs. Today the shipyard is still hosting the Swedish Navy.


The yard crew evidently has a sense of humor as they have two of these ‘giraffe’ cranes on site.



'Okej', I had to put this in. This is a bicycle some fool left under a downspout where melting snow poured on to his bike and then froze again. It was pretty cool.



Well, I should stop there. It is time for me to go to my office and continue with redesigning the “Skepp I strid” (Ship in battle) exhibit. I am sure I will have more photos of interest for you later. But for now,

fair winds & hejdå,

-Nat

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

"Hej-hej!! Jag är här i Sverige nu!"

This is a long one, get comfy,

Hej-hej!
(I found out "hey-hey!" wasn't just my typical greeting. Everyone says it here in Sweden, they just spell it differently. On that note, please pardon any typo's. I am trying to learn to use a Swedish keyboard. The Swedish language has 3 extra vowels, ö, ä, and å. I know they look like they are just accented letters, but they're not. Then there are all these other wierd symbols I've never seen befoer like ¤. I don't even know if your computers will display that. Looks like tilted cross-hairs in a rifle scope...sort of. ...No idea...)

Anway, enough of that. I just got wired up today with e-mail and a computer. Hence the teething period of öåäoa etc. and the resurgence of correspondence.

I am not sure where to begin, I really can't articulate (certainly not in Swedish...yet) how stunningly amazing this place is and wonderful the people are. Where to begin.....the city? the Sankt Erik? the architecture here? the shipping? "The Bastards" (I'll explain)? the dogs? the Vasa...ja-hå!!
THE VASA, of course.......but it will make more sense if I introduce Fred Hocker first.
For the last year or so I have been corresponding regularly with the Head of Vasa Research (Vasas huvudförskare) in the Vasa Unit (Vasaenhaten), the department I am officially attached to. Betweeen him, Williams-Mystic, people at the Wawona Conference, etc I found out he is quite an accomplished guy in the field--I dare say he is very close to the top, globally. He is a Williams-Mystic S'82 alum, SEA alum, Texas A&M Institute of Marine Archeology alum and former professor, naval architect, former Danish National Maritime Museum research somthing-or-other, etc., etc.) and as luck would have it (or rather, as Leif Malmberg, Fred, and I decided to have it), he is my advisor. That means he gets me keys and contacts to various people....and gives me a sizable corner in his office. (I have keys everywhere!! It is a little intimidating).

Fred and I hit it off immediately when I arrived. He's a sailor, I'm a sailor; he's a tea-drinker, I am a tea-drinker; he's a woodworker, I would like to be a better woodworker, he's a blackpowder muzzleloader man, I'm a bird hunter. It goes on and on and our personalities match better than i could have anticipated. I think we must have some genetic material in common. I came into the office this morning and found him poking about online looking at photos of model airplanes. I blurted out somethign about a Grumman F9F Tigercat and he asked me "Model airplane nerd?" --ja-hå.

So, anyway, we have a good thing going here which brings us to the mighty royal warship, Vasa. For those of you that have't remembered every knothole in every timber in her hull like Fred has, Vasa was built by order of the Swedish King in 1628 here in Stockholm Harbor. She was the largest warship on the Baltic and would give the Danes a real run for their kronor. She was over 400 tons and embodied the new and daring innovation of having three gundecks. Most of her cannon were the hefty, short range batteries, the infamous 24-pounders--the cannonball, not the cannon. Each cannon is almost 3 tons, bronze barrel and carriage combined. Anyway, she was built to be the biggest, most powerful gunplatform in the Baltic or on the Danish Straits and indeed she was. Above her guns she is monumental in every dimension from her 70cm-thick deckbeams to her enormous 3-masted rig, to the bewlideringly ostentatious gallery, aftercastle, and raised poop on the stern, all decorated with 700+ sculptures.
Well, on a fine August day in 1628, this grand ship sailed over to the king's armory to take on all the cannon, and then sailed toward the harbormouth with a moderately sized crew to provision at a fort closer to the Baltic. However, she never made it. She sailed less than half a mile when she caught a gust of wind and given her toweringdesign , and topheavy three decks of cannon, she heeled over to port, burying her open lowergundeck gunports. Within a minute or two, she was gone.

Some 300 years later she was rediscovered and raised in 1961. The preservation on the harbor bottom had been so superb that she floated on her own once she was pumped out. Now she's a museum ship here in Stockholm not far from where she was built. Somehow, this total engineering disaster that managed to travel just under 1 measley mile in her 330 years has become an icon of Swedish pride. Go figure.


In fact, the Vasa museum is responsible for attracting a full half of all of Stockholm's tourist volume. This week it is all Russians. It is Christmas time according to the Gregorian Calendar so the tourguides are struggling to get through the week with what little Russian they know. Likewise, I am struggling to get through the week with what little svenska I know. It wouldn't be a challenge if I were not trying to learn it; everyone here speaks english including cabbies and carpenters. Thankfully my learning curve is skyrocketing, partly because of the immersion, partly because of kind, considerate people like "The Bastards." But I digress...

Back to the Vasa. Fred took me on the grand tour my first day at the museum. We went through the entire facility; exhibits spaces, collections storage, exhibit production shops...eveywhere...including ONBOARD the Vasa! Remember, that means walking the decks of a 375 year-old shipwreck, one that came up with practically everything--wood, leather, cloth, and even the bodies of some of the crew. She is a resurrected coffin with an indescribably powerful presence just in her form. As Tom Jackson said to me at the Wawona Confernce a month ago, "I've been aboard a lot of historic ships, but this is the first one that made me shudder." She is amazing, utterly amazing. The afterdeck and raised poop are so inordinately tall it boggles your mind...and blatantly points out why she capsized after sailing less than a half mile. She is so utterly ostentatious, so mammoth......and so black with polyethalineglycol PEG (conservation measure), she's a ghost ship if I ever saw one. For you "Pirates of the Caribbean" fans, imagine the Black Pearl and you have her to a letter...in fact, the Black Pearl in the upcoming movie was built using the Vasa's lines. The boards have shrunk and worn a bit, the corking slipped out, and everywhere she is blackened giving her a deadened, skeletal look. Yet, when you stand back and look at her broadsides you cannot visualize a sturdier ship. Aside form the insanely elaborate gallery (decorative portion around the stern) with its 400+ sculptures, she looks indestructable...and in fact, maybe that's part of why we have her today after 330 years on the bottom of the harbor. I can't possibly describe how utterly stunning it is to be aboard, walking over that still-strong oak frame, ...you all must come...and I may be able to take 'special visitors' aboard depending on how the current sulpher treatments go.

All right, I'll leave it at that, I'll have to send photos to even get close to telling you what it is like to go below decks on the Vasa.So, Sankt Erik--my other ship. I have settled into my quarters aboard the icebreaker Sankt Erik tied up at the museum's pier, not more than 100 yards from the Vasa inside the museum. Sankt Erik is a sizable ship; five decks high, over 180 feet long with a broad 60 foot beam. I am fairly sure I have the largest apartment in Stockholm...and I don't even have to pay rent!
Since I came aboard Thursday I've spent a good chunk of time settling into my 3m x 2.5m cabin and exploring Sankt Eriks decks and inner recesses. The cabin is really quite nice; a bunk, a writing desk, a small bureau, a sink, and a really choice radiator--the warmest on the ship. The cabin is well insulated save for my lone porthole which affords me a good vierw of the Viking Line cruiseships coming into the harbor. My door is labeled "2e Styrman" or, 2nd helmsman/steersman. I guess that's me now.

The head is opposite my cabin on the port side (babord sida). It has a working toilet and shower connected sto shoreside plumbing, but it lacks any insulation against the hull. It is just bare steel studded with rivets and being only an inch or so thick, it gets mighty cold against the icy harbor waters.Directly above is a very lovely ward room all dec'd out in ornate lace, lanterns, and leather couches. That's my study now. Going aft, the galley is semi-operational right now, but if I had the fuel and 4 hours it takes to fire up the gigantic stove, I could feed an army....or a fleet, I suppose.

Exploring further aft and deeper in the ship, there is a wonderfully complex engine room full of twisting pipes, massive cylinder heads(think, dinner table size), more pipes, fuse boxes, oil cans, and valves galore. Twisting around and going forward again there is the boiler room. I've never seen such an array of boilers! This ship must have more power than Mt. Pinatubo (present tense because she is operational and will probably show off around the bay come summer...really useful time for an icebreaker). She is a powerhouse, though. She has 2800shp on the main engine, 1200 on the forward engine (I tell you, no apartment can compare) and these engines were built with the ship in 1915!Sankt Erik was one of the first purpose-built icebreakers with the overhanging bow and secondary powerplant and prop up forward for flushing broken ice back along the hull. She did some WWI icebreaking convoy escort work, then settled in to keeping Sweden's harbors and Baltic sealanes open. Now she's a museum ship undergoing restoration and providing me with a place to live.

She must have made an awful racket in her working days. Her thin steel hull transmits sound superbly. That's how I know when it is 0600 without checking my clock. Right on the hour, a little commuter ferry gets going and chuggs by, the raspy, cracking of its propeller clearly audible in my big, floating, steel drum. Anyway, between that and the amount of grinding from the little bit of ice in this part of the harbor I can tell it must have been noisy work crashing through the thick ice. But as it is...frankly... I like it.

All right, I suppose you all want to hear about culture shock. Well, shock might not be the word for it in Sweden. This is the land of six-meals-a-day, land of the sauna, the heaven with 6 weeks of mandatory paid vacation, and the surreal reality where all your biggest expenses are paid for life. You can imagine how much lower the stress level is here. Coffee and tea breaks sometimes last up to an hour (none of this drinking caffine at your desk), dogs are encouraged to come to work meaning there is always someone wanting a belly-rub or a scratch behind the ear as you go down the hall. And that isn't the end of it.
The Vasa museum (like many companies/instiutions/facilities in Sweden) provides its employees with a critical space required for the maintenance of an age-old Nordic custom, the sauna. I experienced this phenomena just yesterday and it was fabulous. The heat is absolutely searing--for goodness sake, don't touch your hair or you'll burn your hand--but oddly soothing even though you sweat a river. The custom does have a few guidelines which must be observed.

First, it must be kept in mind that a sauna is a group activity intended to further the fields of philosophy and ethics. Lenghty, in-depth, and thoughful discussion is mandatory.
Second; there is a dress code...it is a small towel and may only be worn as far as the door to the actual sauna chamber. Beyond that, pray that you are near-sighted.
Third; no one shall be allowed in the sauna without a beer---and if you want any of it, you had better drink fast because the bottle neck quickly heats up enough to burn your lips.

I was provided this exceptional opportunity by a small group including my advisor, Fred Hocker, that refer to themselves as "The Bastards." The moniker's origins are not so lewd as they may seem. The Swedish word for a sauna is en bastu--literally, a "baster." Rather like a Thanksgiving Turkey. The verb and past tense forms are quite similar such that "Vi bastera i bastar och nu vi är bastard." --literally, 'we baste in the baster and no we are basted.' Being basted makes us "Bastards" hence the odd little five man entourage that has now taken on a mission to train one of its members in the language of Swedish.

As I have already written a great deal and I need to return to my office shortly, I'll stop here and update you later should anything particularly amusing occurr.I have not yet begun the masters program at Stockholms Universitet so I cannot report on that. It begins next week. Other than that, I've got a place aboard the museum's 17th century replica mail boat for the annual open-boat mail race to the offshore islands come June. It ought to be cold and one heck of a rip-roaring ride from the tales I hear.

Hejdå,-Nat

P.S. Williams-Mystic folk, remember there is a possible impromptu European Gam coming up this summer.

P.P.S. Ya know, I never had a cell phone before and they are hard to learn when everything is in Swedish......