THE EXPEDITION ARTIST of the Good Ship Phoenicia, Daniella Eubanks, is interviewed in the LA Weekly. Excerpt:

When the Phoenicia crosses the Suez Canal, Eubank and the rest of the crew will row the boat through — you can’t use a sail. Killer, but not so bad, considering that the ancient Phoenicians carried their vessels overland across the Suez, which hadn’t yet been carved through. From there, the ship will hug the east coast, round the Cape, then continue up the west coast through the Strait of Gibraltar. It will cross the Mediterranean to return home to Syria.

The crew is divided into two teams, which sleep in shifts. Pirates, being not so civilized, tend to strike at night. Eubank’s duties will include cooking and keeping watch for big tankers or strange floating objects with which the ship could collide. “We are such a tiny boat on the sea,” she says. “You know when you do something long enough that it feels like you haven’t done anything else? It was like, ‘I’m on this boat. This is my life. This is what I do.’”

Meals are her favorite times, when everybody gets together to talk and tell stories — the three guys from the tiny Mediterranean island who spoke no English, who had one TV set on the entire island. The several 20-something college students. The Swede, the Iranian photographer, the carpenter, the smattering of Brits and Aussies. What do you eat on a re-created ancient ship? On the Borobudur it was rice, fish and Navy beef, donated by the Indonesian government. Eubank made a Bolognese pasta, which the Indonesians refused to eat. “Yes, the rice did get weevils. We picked them out.” At port, they ordered pizza.

Mostly, Eubank drew and painted onboard. She painted the reflection of the purple striped sail in water, which seemed to resolve into eyes and faces and mouths agape. She painted the harbor lights glimmering on the black water at night, then the golden-yellow morning sun warming the ship’s large, arching bow, which curves up into an edged point like a scimitar. She painted the vessel’s belly. “The ship has a voluptuous curve right in the middle,” she says of the painting. “Difficult to capture.”

She also commented on the ship's anti-pirate strategy:

The pirate plan, as Danielle Eubank, expedition artist aboard the good ship Phoenicia, sees it, is to run like hell in case of attack and try to escape with her life. The pirates are real, mainly Somalian, but there are no guns aboard the Phoenicia — largely to reduce misunderstandings with potential attackers and to ensure that innocent people aren’t accidentally shot ...

Accurate as far as it goes, but I hear there's more.