The Springfield resident — who’s taken a leave of absence from her job as a computer programmer to embark on a months-long voyage to the South Pacific — recently bashed her mouth on the ship’s windlass, the device that raises the anchor.
And, to think, she’s paying really good money to toil aboard the 180-foot-long Canadian barque known as the Picton Castle.
“I’d call it an experience. It’s not really a vacation,” explained Leed, 40. “It’s not always a bed of roses, but it’s an experience like none I’ve ever had before.”
“Oh, and I lost a couple of toenails,” she added nonchalantly. “Something must’ve landed on my foot.”
In other words, this is no pleasure cruise — unless, of course, Royal Caribbean is now making its guests literally swab the deck every morning.
“I guess I wanted to go have an adventure,” Leed said. “People don’t get to have adventures anymore.”
Her husband of 15 years and her job at LexisNexis in Dayton will be left behind for a year as Leed has the kind of adventure Robert Louis Stevenson would be proud of.
“It was really on my bucket list to sail around the world,” she said, “but in a half-joking sort of way.”
The Picton Castle — which trains aspiring sailors in all aspects of seamanship, from knotting ropes and celestial navigation to making sure the toilets are cleaned a precise way — is making it possible.
“It is the only ship that exists that you can walk on knowing nothing,” she said.
Right now, the ship, which served during World War II as a minesweeper for the British Royal Navy, is sailing up and down the Atlantic to participate in events commemorating the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812.
But in October, the ship sets sail for the South Pacific.
The eight-month trek will take the ship and her crew to the Galapagos Islands, Tahiti, Bora Bora, the Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga, among other islands.
“There’s a Mark Twain quote,” Leed said. “ ‘In 20 years, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do far more than the things you did.’ ”
Leed fell in love with sailing three years ago after taking a schooner cruise in Maine.
“It was the most amazing feeling,” she said of climbing aloft into the rigging. “You could feel the wind in the rigging. It was really scary and yet really exhilarating. You felt really close to nature.
“I felt part of me relax that I didn’t even know was tense.”
Her husband, Ernie Husted, had one question before this trip began — why now?
She wanted to still be young and strong enough for the physical demands of working on a ship.
“She’s worn out and has black-and-blue marks and new calluses,” Husted said, “but how many times these days do you get to have a dream and do it?
“I’m proud of her.”
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