Location: Elba
What up, guys? It’s my turn on ye old bloginator, and today was a picture-perfect day aboard Vela. The day started with a 7 am Bad to the Bone showing after some fire haircuts by Tom the last night. Head chef Amy made some bacon taters and a honeydew melon for breakfast. After cleanup, Mich did a lab for oceanography about seagrass, which was very interesting. It showed us how to use instruments like the Secchi disk, refractometers, YSI Probes, and colorimeters. After the lab, the boys and I got up to some shenanigans, trying (and succeeding) to catch a Mauve Jellyfish to add to our species logbooks for Marine Biology class.
A bit has been born today where everyone is trying to put clothes on people without them noticing, and I think Liam managed to get three on Dan before he noticed. Afterward, I went with Ben and the Advanced Diver class on their species Identification dive to practice being a Divemaster with my buddy Lillian. I got to bring my new dive knife with me today, which Boston used like a genius to sharpen his pencil underwater. Overall, it was a good dive for everyone, drawing fish and plant life we saw on slates to identify later in the debrief. Post dive was a classic moster+protien bar on the bowsprit in the sun, playing Bruce Springsteen while the open water students motored into the distance. Some people brought all of the garbage that was piling up on the bow because it started stinking up the whole boat. Around came lunchtime with some fantastic white chicken chili (again, thanks, Amy!), and before I could get back to sunbathing after my ocean shower, we had to start passage prep for the voyage to come. Fast forward to all the boring 40/40ing and coercing people to stop leaving things in the salon and move straight to dinner, which was bean burgers and crispy chicken bits with fries. For dessert, I shared a bag of the most valuable currency aboard Vela, Nutella biscuits, which in our local economy are worth more than their weight in gold. I’m uploading this next to Tom’s basil plant and showing it some Dire Straits while everyone else is picking up anchor at 8 pm so we can arrive in La Spetzia tomorrow afternoon. That’s about it, guys. That was a good talk. Shoutout to Mark Knopfler, Mom, Dad, Claire, Kara, my dogs Jessie and Dovey, as well as Steve Irwin for good measure. See y’alls in 31 days when I get skipper again!!