Bart Bear's Blog

Scruffy and I were always ready to help the crew of the "James Craig". Up to the time things got rough anyway. Here we are standing by some ropes as the ship is getting ready to leave the wharf at the National Maritime Museum in Sydney. Actually, we weren't sure just what these ropes did, but we were ready to haul them in or let them loose whenever we got the command. The big wheely-thing behind us is one of the pumps. If water starts to come into the ship, sailors slip handles onto the square ends of the axle and turn them as fast as they can manage. The heavy wheels store energy and keep spinning during the short times that sailors are changing over. We didn't have to do that during our trip, but there were times when huge waves looked like they were coming over the deck so it was good to know that the pumps were ready. How did Scruff and I cope with the big waves? We settled down in Dad's backpack and let him worry about them.

Labels: boats, New South Wales, Sydney