Day One Done!
Location: Cape Town, South Africa
Hello, lovely people, and welcome to Vela’s Cape Town to Antigua trip blog!!! So exciting! Today was quite low-key; many of us dropped our bags off at the boat this morning, grabbed breakfast or a coffee, and returned at noon once we were allowed on board. The staff (Mac, Sam, Zoe, Kyler, Emma, and Perry) were happy to see us, and Vela was sparkling clean and ready for a new semester. Shoutout to the staff for all the hard work they did during the interim to make her perfect :)
Once we were onboard, met the staff, and said hi to the other students, we got our cabin assignments and started the slightly difficult task of Tetris-ing all our belongings into our bunks and cubbies. It was so great to meet our new roommates and shipmates! After we unpacked, Sam made a delicious pink sauce pasta with kale Caesar salad for dinner. We had a lovely first meal together in the cockpit, which concluded with our first squeeze. Squeeze is a fantastic (only slightly culty) seamester tradition that involves everyone holding hands and the skipper asking a question of the day. The skipper passes on the question by squeezing the hand of the person to their right or left. For my question today, I went with “would you rather eat a man-sized bean, or a bean-sized man?” As we went around the circle, we all shared our names, why we chose seamester, our appreciation for the day, and our answer to the squeeze question. The overwhelming majority chose man-sized bean; a few brave (possibly bean-hating) individuals chose bean-sized man. It was so great to hear everyone’s stories of how they ended up on Vela and what they liked most about today.
Afterwards, Mac (our captain) explained the job wheel and what goes into different roles. We split up into our jobs for the evening, and as I sit in the salon writing this, it’s so wonderful to see everyone settling into our new lives on Vela! After we finish jobs, Mac and the staff will give us a ‘how to survive through the night’ chat, with more boat orientation to come tomorrow. I’m sure we are all going to sleep great tonight!
Sending love to my people at home and all the other students’ families and friends reading this!
-Hannah Y.