Location: Underway to Mauritius
Watch team 3, consisting of myself, Jake, Finn, Siena, Kasey, Lucia, Allie, and Nico, got the joy of being awake from midnight to midnight today. Our day started at 12am this morning with our 12-4 watch. Watch flew by with hilarious stories, questions, and lots of laughs. It all came to a head around 315 in the morning when Finn started playing a song that only had weird random noises that started to freak Jake out. When Jake asked Finn how long the song was, and he responded with “23 minutes,” Jake absolutely lost it. He loudly cackled, louder than I had ever heard him laugh before, which subsequently woke up Allie, who was attempting to sleep in the cabin nearby. Fortunately, after Jake’s apology, Allie was able to get back to sleep and watch team 3 finish up their watch and got snuggled in for their big sleep of the night. The 8-hour sleep after the 12-4 watch is arguably the best sleep you get on the passage here, which we were all looking forward to. While we slept, watch team 1 watched Ava dance to the sunrise, and watch team 2 saw Jackson and Finn doing a couples workout just before lunch. Watch team 3 was awoken for lunch, a chicken Caesar salad wrap lunch made by Ava and her sous chefs Ben and Tom. Following lunch, all the students collected in the saloon for marine bio class with me. This is the start of the hardest section of the class, but Margaret was “in a mood to learn” and super enjoyed learning about sponges, cnidarians, and ctenophores for our first big taxonomy lecture. Next up on the class schedule was Navmaster with Tom, where the students learned how to make a 3-point, which would be impossible with our 360 views of the ocean that we have now but will be useful as we go down the eastern coast of Africa in a few weeks. They can use different landmarks to figure out our position on the charts. After classes were over, everyone broke out into different activities: some took naps to prepare for their 8-12 watch tonight, some practiced on the charts in the saloon, I graded essays and exams, and Jake and Allie finished watching Chef. Then it came time for dinner, which was chicken teriyaki, nommed up by everyone. Cleanup is going on around me as I type the blog. People are washing dishes, smashing cans, and scrubbing the cockpit so everyone will have a squeaky clean place to be during their watches tonight.
We’re all about to roll into our second round of the watch schedule, which means that we’ve all sat every watch on the wheel and are about to repeat our first watches again. This is usually the time that everyone starts to adjust to the mildly weird sleep schedule and settles into the rhythm of passage. We’ve got probably around two weeks to go, but the time will slowly start falling away, and the time will start to pass faster than we can catch it. Before we know it, we’ll be pulling up to Mauritius, a new country to almost everyone on board, including myself, so we are all very excited. I’ve got my fingers crossed for some big and alive sightings over the next two weeks. Now I’m off to pull out another chocolate bar from under my bunk and up onto watch from 8-12 to finish out our day of midnight to midnight.
Hi Mom and Dad! Hi Shaun! Sorry for the lack of comms since Christmas Island, but alas, there was no service or wifi in Cocos Keeling. Hope you guys are doing well. I miss you all and can’t wait to talk to you in Mauritius. Also, Shaun, I can’t believe you talked to Tom about chess and didn’t mention or ask a single thing about me. I’m not mad; I’m just disappointed l o l. 😂 Love you guys! <3