Official Vessel of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
MembershipCalendarProgramsOutreachHistoryStatistics

Ernestina Logbook Page

Date: Tuesday, June 4, 2002
Dighton Middle School

At 0910 54 Students and chaperones joined us for a 4 hour daysail.Here is a description of the happenings from a few of today's students.

Navigation
Learned about buoys, charts, latitude and longitude, water depth, how to navigate

History
The boat, Morrissey, went to the Arctic to get animals for the Bronx Zoo, the boat got stuck on a lava shelf in Greenland, many songs written, one is "Lovely Ernestina"

Simple Machines
Some types are levers, pulleys, blocks(named because they were originally made from blocks of wood), The experiment with the pulley was fun

Bow Watch
It’s fun, a serious job, very important to the ship so they don’t hit anything, different hand signals

At the Helm
Is a big part of sailing, without it, the boat would not move, or would move and crash into things and sink

Plankton
Some types are: seaweed, krill, shrimp, and jellyfish

We took a long bus ride this morning not knowing what to expect. We walked across the plank to find that the Ernestina is a fun ship. She is a two-masted schooner, built in the 1890’s. While on the ship, we went to 5 educational stations, 3 before lunch and 2 after lunch. They were Navigation, History, Simple Machines, Bow Watch and Plankton. At Navigation, we learned about charts, buoys, latitude and longitude, water depth, and how to navigate. It was lots of fun. Next we went to History, where we learned about the Morrissey, now called the Ernestina. A few interesting facts are: the boat went to the Arctic to collect some animals for the Bronx Zoo and once, when it sailed to Greenland, it got stuck on a lava shelf. From there we went to Simple Machines. We learned about levers, pulleys, and blocks. Blocks are called blocks because they used to be made out of blocks of wood. We also played "Tug-Of-War" with two people pulling against 1 person pulling on a pulley. Guess who won? The one person pulling with the pulley did. That was also a lot of fun!

We went to the Bow Watch after we had lunch. We learned some hand signals for the different types of things in the water. We signaled to the helm, where some students were steering, so they knew what was in the water. After that we went to the Plankton Station where we learned some types of plankton. They are seaweed, krill, shrimp, and jellyfish. There are two types of plankton, zooplankton and phyitoplankton.

We had lots of fun on this ship, and we want to thank all of the crew for helping us out and teaching us something. The crewmembers included Gwen, Liz, Leda, Franco, Frankie, Maryhelen, and Jessica. We also want to thank our teacher Mrs. Parker. Thank-you for making our trip a success!

By, Seventh grade Dighton Middle School Students,
Vicki Pavao, Sarah Jefferson, Shawna Boucher, and Sam Benevides

Later in the day, a member sail took off from the pier from 5:30-8:30 pm with the New Bedford Harbor Sea Chantey Chorus aboard (bottom two photos)

Captain: Willi Bank
Program Coordinator: MaryHelen Gunn

We would like to thank Lotus and IBM for donation of software, hardware and funding to enable regular electronic updates from the ship.

NOAA Chart is provided courtesy of Maptech using Cruising Navigator 4.3 and grabbing the image using Grabit Pro 6.02.

 
Click on a month to view the complete schedule:
| April | May | June | July | August | September | October |November |

Copyright 1997-2002
Schooner Ernestina
89 North Water Street, P.O. Box 2010, New Bedford, MA 02741-2010
phone 508.992.4900 -- fax 508.984.7719
www.ernestina.org

produced by...