Location: Nevis
Way, hey, and away we go. We’re riding on a donkey.” While we do not sing sea shanties on the Ocean Star, last night/this morning’s choppy passage certainly reminded me of this one I heard elsewhere. Yesterday, we left the BVIs and started a 24-hour trip down to Nevis, working in three watch groups that each took turns working for 3 hours and being off for 6. The layer of salt encrusting my entire self gives you a pretty good idea of how wet things were getting, either from the intermittent rain or constant spray. While on watch, there are three main positions: bow watch, helm, and boat checks every hour. Sitting up on a bow watch, one has to keep an eye out for boats and things, and in the process, it ends up soaking wet, with each wave illuminated as the bow juts down and shines its running lights into the sea. Helm steers are pretty straightforward (hah), and boat checks happen every hour to make sure everything is working properly and to plot our position on the chart. While this may all sound damp and dreary, it is exactly what I came for: the exhilaration of our tiny selves in our own oceanic infinity. Like in the poem “Sea Fever,” which one of our staff read for us before departing, “all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by/ the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sails racing/ and the flung spray and the blown spume and the seagulls crying.” Even off hours are exciting as no one can escape the pitching of the boat, particularly those of us up in the foc’sle (the forwardmost bunks).
All in all, the passage went very well. No one was terribly sick, catastrophe did not strike, and though we motored for most of it (since the course was upwind), we did get some sailing in at the end. After a wonderful dinner of chicken salad and risotto, we are about to take the first of several Hibiclens showers, fully clean ourselves of any funk, and spruce up the boat in case customs decides. To drop in. yeah!