This weekend I had the pleasure of experiencing Greenpeace’s newest ship, the new Rainbow Warrior, while it is docked in New York City for it’s first ever visit to the United States.  I was brought on board the brand new sailing vessel to help introduce her to the public. 

For two days I talked to hundreds of people from all walks of life.  I showed people the ship’s completely unique design, introduced guests to crewmembers, and told why our ships are so important to the work we do.  In many cases, I introduced children and adults alike to Greenpeace for the first time and got to explain how we go about defending the environment. 

One of my favorite moments of the weekend came half way through Sunday when I gave a tour to several parents with children between the ages of 6 and 12.  The kids looked around the boat in awe and scrambled to sit in the captain’s chair as the 3rd mate showed them how to navigate and sail.  As I explained one of the Rainbow Warriors small jet boats to the tour a little boy raised his hand to ask a question. 

“How many animals do you think you’ve saved?” he asked.  I thought about that for a second and the only answer I could come up with was “a lot.”  How do you help a child understand over fishing and deforestation, let alone climate change?  I told him that we work to save all sorts of animals in the oceans from being killed by bad fishing practices and that we’re trying to stop rainforests from being burned down so that the animals can continue to live in them. 

He listened intently and nodded as he considered what I was saying.  Then he looked up, smiled and said “awesome.”

The Rainbow Warrior III, Greenpeace’s newest ship, arrived in New York City Friday morning after an 18-day journey from Europe.   After the long trip the crew needed to replenish the food supplies on board so they called ahead to the 4th Street Food Co-op in Manhattan.  To their delight, the co-op teamed up with a Time’s Up! bike brigade to deliver the fresh produce when the ship arrived at Chelsea Piers!

Delicious fresh food is always a great way to start a stay in a new city, but having it delivered on bike trailers was an extra treat for the 15 crew members who have been living on board the ship.  Thanks 4th Street Food Co-op!

Check out the co-ops blog for more information and photos of this special delivery!

Photo from 4th Street Food Co-op.

This morning around 9 a.m., a newly christened Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior sailed in to New York, completing its maiden cross-Atlantic voyage from Europe. If you’re in or near New York City, head down to Chelsea Piers, Pier 59 at 23rd Street and the Hudson River to see her up close. Official public tours will be offered tomorrow, Saturday 28th and continue on Sunday 29th January between 10am and 4pm both days. Private tours for groups can be arranged through Friday*.

This is the third incarnation of our famous vessel (some say infamous, but we take that as a compliment). The first was bombed by the French Navy in 1985. The second was retired on August 16, 2011.

The Rainbow Warrior is the first ship to fly the Greenpeace flag that was not converted from another vessel. She’s entirely purpose-built, specific to our global scientific research and environmental issue-awareness needs. She’s 190 ft in length and one of the world’s greenest ships. At full sail of 13,500 sq ft and a giant 180ft “A Frame”, she can outrun larger conventionally powered ships under sail alone.

In a living tribute to Greenpeace’s continuity of mission, today’s Rainbow Warrior is captained by Peter Willcox, who was at the helm when the first Rainbow Warrior was attacked. After leaving New York, the Rainbow Warrior, Captain Wilcox will sail her down the East coast, visiting Baltimore, Southport, Fort Lauderdale  and St. Petersburg. From there, she’ll make her way to Brazil.

For more than four decades, Greenpeace ships have been both visible symbols of Greenpeace, and vital players in the pursuit of our campaigns. The Rainbow Warrior has blocked illegal timber shipments, confronted whalers, and hosted uncountable scientific experiments. She is in many ways both our most poetic symbol and our toughest front-line fighter.

We’re proud to know that her heroic legacy continues, and that the world’s oceans are once again home to the Rainbow Warrior.

*Please note that closed toed shoes are required aboard the ship and that, unfortunately, the vessel is not wheelchair accessible.

Shea Mke is a Greenpeace volunteer and current deckhand on the new Rainbow Warrior. She boarded when the ship began its trans-Atlantic journey to begin its maiden US voyage. Shea originally posted this on her blog.

It’s 20:15 and in twelve hours we’ll be arriving to our home for the next week at the Chelsea Pier slip #59 in Manhattan, NY. It’s been seventeen days at sea and while I have quite the adventure ahead of me still with going to the Amazon and all, I figured it was about time to describe what it’s been like on board, besides all the rainbows and whales that is.

So here’s my account of today, a day different than any other day we’ve had yet with a similar rhythm.

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7:30 — Wake-up knock at the door tears me from a dead sleep. I fight the urge to rest just one more minute knowing I’d without a doubt fall back to sleep. I get up, pull on my work clothes and in my groggy state at least remember that we passed the Gulf Stream the evening before and it’s going to be cold so I push my shorts and tank top aside and reluctantly put on pants and grab a hoodie. I stick bobby pins in my hair, brush my teeth and do the set up ten push-ups I resolved on New Year’s to do each time I brush my teeth (on a rolling ship it makes it interesting as sometimes gravity’s on your side and other times it feels like you’ve got bricks on your back).

7:40 — I head to the mess (what on land would be the dining room) and sit down with my bowl of granola and cup of black tea trying to keep my eyes open let alone socialize.

8:00 — With a heavy load of work on the docket, I step outside on the deck to watch the sun finish rising above the horizon before starting in on the day. Moments later Sophia instructs Sjourd, Penny and I who had also been hanging out near the deck workshop, that “we must come to the bow”.

Dolphins! We watch as eight dolphins jump, glide and dart mere feet in front of the bow, playing in the momentum of our forward motion and the early morning light. After ten minutes about twenty dolphins had rendezvoused at the bow while another dozen jumped in crescent shaped arches to our starboard. A beautiful sunrise, dolphins and sailing on the ocean–a pretty fantastic way to start the day!

8:10 — Morning chores. All the deckhands are responsible for the daily cleaning on the ship. Each day consists of basically a choice between cleaning the 7 heads (toilets), the mess or the alleyways & companionways (hallways & stairwells).

9:00 — Deck wash begins. We bring out the water compressor, scrub brushes, degreaser and rags and go to work to make the ship sparkle for our entry into NYC.

10:00 — Smoko (coffee break!).

10:30 — More deck washing.

12:00 — Lunch.

13:00 — Finish the deck wash. I spent the whole hour and a half using degreaser coupled with elbow grease to scrub the area around the engine exhaust fans. The muscles on my right arm are already getting disproportionately stronger than my left.

14:30 — Smoko of tangerines and almonds.

15:00 — One of the projects given to me has been to replace the float and stainless steal eye on the painter line to one of our inflatable boats on board. I love rope work so I treated myself to a break from the deep cleaning and spliced the new float onto the line and also spliced a new eye onto the end, a feat that gave great satisfaction as I had never spliced eight-strand before and in fact, had only just learned to splice three-strand early on this crossing. I’m proud to report, they both look great and now I just whip them in a few places and they’ll be set.

Next up, finishing to clean the galley. Part of our anticipation of arriving in NYC tomorrow morning is the inspections by both customs and the Coast Guard. As a result, we’ve been really overhauling the ship getting ready for everything that there checklists advise they might require of us–things like an inventory of all food, feet of line (rope–so on a sailing ship, you can imagine that’s quite the chore to inventory!), liters of detergent, etc. Similarly, a deep clean was done of the entire galley and so I rounded out my workday in the cold of the walk-in cooler, finishing its cleaning with a thorough scrubbing, sweeping and mopping.

17:15 — Relaxation time. I took off my steal-toed boots and headed up to the lounge with the book I’ve been reading, Warriors of the Rainbow, a chronically of the Greenpeace movement from 1971 to 1979. I found it on the bookshelf one of the first days I was on board and figured it’d be good to learn about the early days of Greenpeace plus it was sure to be packed with some good adventure stories. And that it is!

We adjusted our clocks one last time before arriving in NY and so I had an extra hour between the end of the day and dinner to read and got to the part in the story where the crew tracks down a Russian whaling fleet for the first time off the coast of California and armed with three zodiac inflatables they intend to position themselves between the whales and the whalers harpoon. Reading the stories from these past “warriors” really makes me all the more proud and still somewhat in awe that I’m on board this beautiful, new schooner. And even though this Rainbow Warrior is new, it carries that history as its heartbeat.

17:30 — Headed up to see the sunset but was a bit too late and it was overcast and cold anyhow.

18:00 — Dinner time. With just cauliflowers, potatoes and peppers remaining for fresh vegetables, Wendy still manages to cook up another great meal.

19:25 — I write in my journal and check my email (and now of course, write this up).

22:00 — I’ll brush my teeth, do my ten push-ups, read some more and fall to sleep.

Tomorrow we’ve got a 6:30am wake-up call as we’ve got a lot to do before we get to Chelsea Pier, yet even on a normal day it’s easy to be in bed by ten. And that’s part of the beauty of the ship so far–each day is simple and filled with deep satisfaction from the hard work that leaves you exhausted to the brilliant sunsets and whale spotting to great camaraderie and story-telling.

So that’s it–a day in the life. NY will be totally different with the open ship days and the special events happening with the community. I’m excited!

Shea Mke is a Greenpeace volunteer and current deckhand on the new Rainbow Warrior. She boarded when the ship began its trans-Atlantic journey to begin its maiden US voyage. Shea originally posted this on her blog.

Unaware of the time change that had taken place, I thought it was nearing on 18:00 and time for the daily rendezvous and number of us have made habit of to watch the sunset from the bridge deck. Off by an hour but completely content to sit and watch the horizon turn into cotton candy puffs of pink and purple clouds, I was in the perfect place when Lila came out from the bridge pointing to port and exclaiming that there were whales.

Dan slowed the ship and made an announcement over the PA so the rest of the crew could partake in such a treasured and rare occasion. For the next twenty minutes or so we watched the whales occasionally surface and blow air creating huge swaths of glassing rings on the water in their wake. How beautiful and magnificent!

Surely inspired by the whales earlier, Pete, our Captain who’s been with Greenpeace since the early days, announced during dinner that he’d be hosting storytelling session of Whale Stories on the bridge at 19:30. I believe our whole crew of 16 packed into the bridge when the time rolled around, though it’s hard to be sure as all of the lights are off and my night vision isn’t quite honed yet. Regardless, there were a bunch of us packed into the bridge and for the next couple of hours we all sat and stood in the dark silence listening to Pete as he spun two great stories.

The first story was at the beginning of his career with Greenpeace and aboard the–at the time new–Rainbow Warrior I. Having quickly become the Captain of the ship, Pete told of one of the first anti-whaling actions he partook in which resulted in six people being left on the Soviet shore while the Soviet police tried to chase down the Rainbow Warrior via two military ships and a helicopter. They made it safely back to Alaska before being captured and were able to get the film they had shot of the illegal atrocities processed and publicized exposing the USSR for the illegal whaling that it had been conducting and also getting the 6 crew freed from jail. What a thriller!

The second story was one in which I’d heard bits and pieces of before, yet to hear the emotional story directly from someone who had been there, let alone the Captain, was pretty incredible. Pete shared the story of how the French government bombed the Rainbow Warrior I in a New Zealand port, killing one crew member on board and sinking the ship. Instead of retelling the story, I’ll urge you to watch this video and let Pete tell you himself: