Location: Atlantic Ocean
I am currently standing in the salon, a day late, writing this blog, and already sweating profusely from the intense morning sun. Yesterday my day started off with sleeping in until around 11:00, then walking into the salon to find Clara and co. franticly cooking what turned out to be a delicious Asian pasta dish for lunch. I escaped the heat of the salon/sauna and headed up on deck before watch. The rest of watch team two eventually congregated as well, and we went aft to relieve watch team one from their 8-12 watch. Once 12:15 rolled around, we started to wonder about how late lunch was going to be, only for me to remember seconds late that I was skipper. Meaning that it was me who hadn’t yet checked in with the chefs, nor had I woken people up and gotten them on deck. I then ran downstairs and woke up everyone who wasn’t already awake and told them it was time to get on deck. Although most were sluggish, we were able to muster before too long and dig in. Once we did get to eating, the food was a hit. Everyone really appreciated all the extra work done by Clara and her sous chefs.
After everyone was done eating, we got right into navigation work. We have now been split into three groups in preparation for our nav master exam. I was put in the third group, so I had most of the afternoon to work on fish id’s and other upcoming assignments before I had to torture myself with more nav work. (It’s really cool material, I’m just very bad at it) In that window beforehand, I was able to finish my fish IDs, start my leadership essay, and study the phonetic alphabet with Shona and Bubba, who was attempting to spell everything he could see in the cockpit for the better part of an hour. We had dinner shortly after seamanship. The chefs prepared lentil tacos which were great. Once everyone had finished eating, I asked the group to tell us a made-up fun fact about the person to their left. Their answers were really entertaining and made my night.
We then did our nightly clean-up before getting back on deck to drop the jibs and start up the engine. It really feels like we can see the light at the end of the tunnel now, and everyone is vying to be the first one to see land.
picture one: Our current location, which we check constantly
Picture two: We finally crossed the 5000mile mark last night!!! (now we can all get swallow tattoos)
Picture three: Tyler is hard at work studying in the salon
Picture four: Another day, another wave