Location: Antigua, Falmouth
Today started before today really started for most of Argo’s crew. Some of us woke up for anchor watch during the early morning, admiring the vague silhouettes of the hilly, cliffy seaside of Antigua’s southern coast. Then, at 7:00 am, the quiet halls of the cabin were infiltrated by the simple click of a computer pad, my computer pad, the start of a domino effect. After a few moments, the lyrics of Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun” were ending dreams from the night prior, awakening us to a new one, moving bodies that were once occupied by stillness to their feet. Sunscreen and toothpaste dropped down upon skin and toothbrushes as the crew slowly but steadily rose to the deck, greeted by the start of “Heart of Glass” by Blondie. The day now had truly begun.
Now the boat is rocking, and dinner is cooking. I am sitting in the chart house, the room where plots are charted, wind speeds are recorded, and radios are spoken into. In front of me is a small window where I can see the heads of those showering on deck. To my right, through another window, this time more of a rectangle despite its round corners, is a towel blowing in the wind, its moist nature now close to depleted by the power of the sun. Now I look again, and another towel sits beside it, just an infant in the experience of being dried, probably soaked with saltwater from the snorkeling that was wrapped up just a few minutes ago. Past the towels, there is the coast sitting under the sky and palm trees and houses and clouds and stone and rock and coral.
For me, many words are still a foreign language, and many knots are still testing the competency of my hand-eye coordination. It was only yesterday that we first took off our masks, yet it feels as though it has been that way forever. Each day has kind of been similar, until they all end, only to have gone by too fast–kind of the opposite of life in quarantine. Time is weird like that.
We had our first Leadership course earlier. Soon we will make a mission statement for our crew, but for now, Captain Tim asked us to list off some values we wanted to exhibit as a group. Among them were grit, compassion, humor, courage, and adventure. Just the fact that we are here makes it seem like we’ve all already got that stuff down, so I don’t think it’ll be too hard for us to manage going forward. I would even say we are already doing a pretty good job as one unit. I guess we’ll just have to see what happens.
Till next time…
P.S. Hi Millie! Hi Mom! Hi Dad! Hi Gracee! Sending love!