"Secure the gunports!"

Yesterday I stepped out into the shiphall after hours to go talk to Ole who was 'burning the midnight oil' in the conservation lab and noticed that something was different with Vasa. She didn't look right...The gunports were closed!

All of them, slammed shut. She looked so different, so sleek and streamlined--so peaceful.

But why?

Rounding the stern, my ear caught the whir of a vacuum cleaner. It was time to vacuum Vasa! I had heard of this two-day event. With thousands of visitors surging through the museum bringing in all manner of dust and dirt and shaking it about, the ship has to be cleaned fairly frequently. The decks are easy enough to vacuum, but the broadsides, sloping inboard and banded with heavy rubrails jutting out from her sides, are a little bit tougher to free of the piles of dust that collect there. For such obstacles, we turn to the crane.

Vasa Museet has a huge overhead crane that tracks along the ceiling over the ship. It can lift several tons and has a basket that can be lowered down for crews to perform work on the rigging or, as in this case, to vacuum the ship's sides.

Armed with respirators and a shop-vac, Ova and Mikael 'descend' on the wreck to begin sifting through the layers of settling particles that have accumulated on all the little lumps and ledges. It really is a bit reminiscent of the diving operations on the ship in the 1950s, especially with many of the museum lights turned off, leaving the ship in a dark void pierced only by a few spotlights, the cleaning crew descending from above with special breathing aparati to begin clearing the ship.

Adding to the mysterious appearance of the ship, the lights under the hull and cradle that have been switched on for another cleaning crew working beneath the ship. Here we are dead astern of Vasa's rudder.

It is an interesting place to run about, crouching under the massive hull planks of the 400 ton behemoth overhead. Then there is the fascinating details of the creadle construction and blocking, designs that have worked thus far but may soon be replaced for a more supportive system similar to Jylland's.

So...that's how we clean Vasa.