Location: Gibraltar
Day 44 and our last full day of passage as we sail from the Azores to Gibraltar! Being on passage means that Vela is humming with life at all hours of the day, and boy do we feel it! Exhaustion aside, there is always something interesting happening, and there’s always work to be done. My day began, as it apparently always does, whenever I have the good misfortune (waking people up and moving them around when they’re exhausted and in a nice, comfy, QUIET! bed) of being a skipper under the harsh glow of the red lights at 11:30 pm as I got ready to start my 12-4 am watch. This passage, now that I already have practice from our voyage to the Azores, I’ve really found myself enjoying that awkward, middle-of-the-night’ star watch’ as we call it. For starters, it is peaceful. This is the quietest time on Vela, where I know that we are the only ones still awake, and we’re all just huddled around the helm, many of us still trying to wake up. There’s not much noise to distract from the gentle, snoring roll of the water and the muted moaning and groaning of the rigging as Vela lets us know just how much work she’s doing for us. It makes it really easy to meditate and reflect on everything inside your head or to empty it and enjoy the mental silence.
It is also such an enjoyable time, especially after spending all of my life surrounded by desert and light pollution. I find so much joy and contentment sitting at the stern with a warm half cup of hot chocolate running down the legs of my foulies as I give into the rogue waves that flood the cockpit and my deck boots and just stare up at the sky and see the millions and billions of stars that I realize all of my ancestors and everybody throughout history also looked up and saw. It helps me to feel really connected to my family and loved ones back home and abroad. Sometimes in the quiet, I delight in scouring the constellations for the satellites, which reminded me of days spent around the campfire with my cousins where we’d make a competition out of being the first to spot one. It’s also fascinating to learn the different constellations too. I can pretty consistently see the giant Scorpio, as well as Cygnus, Cassiopeia, Delphinus, and both dippers. It’s even cooler. I think to be able to say that I’ve navigated by them more than once, as they, along with Jupiter and Mars, help me to keep my bearing whenever the waves pick up. When I’m not enjoying some time to think and meditate, I’ve been able to have some really great conversations with everybody on my watch team. Today, Dylan and I spent almost an hour talking about bread and beer! He talked me through the process of making a Levain and all the different uses for the ‘throwaway bread’ such as turning it into a cinnamon raisin loaf, pancakes, or a nice, simple crusty bread. In turn, I shared with him everything I’ve learned about brewing beer and how I’m really excited to experiment with a guava-fruited sour and a chai-milk stout. What was most exciting, though, was the idea of mixing bread making with beer brewing and talking about what might happen if we were to make bread with brewers yeast and any other brewing crossover techniques we could come up with. It sure did make me miss my kitchen! I’m just glad on land. I can cook without the worry of waves picking up and throwing everything around.
Speaking of waves picking up, boy, did they start to pick up. This passage started with seas so glassy we weren’t allowed to throw orange peels overboard lest it shatters into a million pieces, and over the course of the night, picked up into some rough seas with winds gusting to almost 40 knots! Not quite the worst the Vela crew has been through this voyage, but it was quite the contrast to the start of this passage. Along with the bigger waves came the addition of stowaways on board. Right before Natalie, Kayla, Zoe, Jack, Gigi, and I relieved watch team 3, a squid flung itself out of the water and attached itself to Max’s tether while he and the rest of watch team 3 did some work trimming our sails. He and Haley then had a blast dissecting it in the cockpit and hosting an impromptu lesson in marine biology! Daniel was there to get plenty of pictures for research and documentation. While watch team 1 didn’t have any surprise visitors join us, we did get to do a little sail work as well to wake us up. We enjoyed a healthy amount of sea spray and waves crashing over the stern and racing throughout the stern, flooding the foulies of all of us who dumbly sat with our backs to our port side. We won’t be making that mistake again! At least that morning… Our lessons learned didn’t carry over through lunch.
With more ocean motion comes a whole bunch more rocking and rolling on Vela. Doors are suddenly our worst nightmare, especially our super large, super heavy, watertight steel doors that compartmentalize Vela. What’s more, things like having a happy little cuppa coffee or a hot chocolate are suddenly life-threatening battles. Not our actual lives, but the lives of our foul weather gear. That half cup of hot chocolate I mentioned? Guess where the other half went, all over the chart house. Talk about embarrassing. Not only did I spill it once, but I also spilled it twice. While braced against the wall. Fives points of contact. I should have been rock solid. Now? My foulies look like they’ve seen the trenches. I wasn’t the only one the rocking got to, though. Today I think we set the record for most liquid spilled aboard Vela. Some other notable contenders are Abigal with her first and second coffees of the day (third time’s the charm, hey) and the galley crew under the watchful eye of Chansky with the balsamic vinegar and Captain Tom’s Chicken sauce as their casualties of choice. My heart really went out to Abigal with that one. If I lost even half of my first coffee, my day would be over. I am also very much dreading cleaning the bilge… Yikes.
Another first for some of the Vela crew was the welcome(?) sound of cans rolling beneath bunks last night. We’ve finally made enough of a dent in our canned chicken to set the whole batch loose. It sounds like. The jury is still out on whether it’s worse than clucks. However, now that we’re beginning our entry into the Strait of Gibraltar, I just finished helping watch team 1 lower the main sail, raise the mainstay sail, and get the engine on, which should drown out any possible noise you could ever hear in the cabins.
A couple of highlights from today: Daniel learned how to play guitar, nothing broke in the galley, and our AIS screen has been blowing up with boats. It feels unreal seeing all of the boats as blue blips on the screen after almost a month of being the only boat in existence in our little world on the water. Along with it comes the knowledge that we are just hours away from many of us sailing across an entire ocean for the first time in our lives!
Today was also a big day for Tom and Calum, our captain and first mate. Today was their last full day of passage of their second Atlantic crossing together! It was a really heartfelt and sweet moment for both of them, and all of us really appreciate their experience and effort towards everything on Vela.
After I had gone back to bed at 4 am, I slept soundly through an opportunity to learn some cool skills. Heather taught Max, Zoe, Haley, and a few others how to use masks and oxygen tanks in an emergency first responder setting. They all had a blast and feel super confident in their ability to help save lives going forward!
With the conclusion of that lesson, we all gathered on deck for a lunch of french toast and bacon and a little fresh air and time in the sun before cleaning up and heading back belowdecks for class. Those of us on the 70-day voyage studied chemical oceanography with Amanda, and then all of us reconvened in the salon for a much-needed study hall period to catch up on classwork or enjoy watching Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I’m glad we were able to make it up to the deck for lunch because that was not the case for dinner. The wind had really picked up, the sea was moving, and in the interest of keeping our silverware and bowls out of the ocean, the executive decision was made to eat in the salon, a very rare occurrence for us.
Once dinner was all eaten, we gathered again in the cockpit for squeeze, where I asked everybody what they would name a restaurant and what sort of food they would serve. Then again, we went back to cleaning up before my watch team had to pop back up on deck for some sunset sail handling. We had a beautiful, clear sunset tonight that was gorgeously red and hazy. I overheard some saying it was like a scene from the Lion King, but I felt that it was better suited to the green flash moment from the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
Now, it’s back to watch for me until midnight, then hopefully (Emphasis. See title) a good night’s sleep before we arrive in Gib tomorrow afternoon.
This is Duncan Goodman, the Vela Galley Goblin and today’s skipper signing out.
1st Picture) Calum and Tom at the helm
2nd Picture) Max’s pet squid
3rd Picture) Our Navigation Screen. See if you can find Vela! It’s like a game of where’s Waldo.