Location: Underway To Richard’s Bay
Today, I shall start the blog with a funny story from yesterday! As Zeke was walking during our last shore time for a final stroll in the city, he foreshadowed the situation by saying, “Man, I really hate my crocs.”
“Why?” Jewel, Fin, Rai-Ching, and Maia asked.
“Because they never stay on my” *kicks his croc up and it comes off his foot and flies straight up to the ceiling *”FEET!”
And just like that, we lost another soldier: Zeke’s croc was stuck in the ceiling. He tried hitting it off by throwing his other croc up, but it got stuck, too. Now there are two crocs on the ceiling. Don’t worry, though! Zeke hopped on Fin’s shoulders, got a long broomstick from an amused mall security officer, and was able to get it out and back on his feet so he could continue hating them. (Picture included).
Anywho, to get back to today, I woke up with an iced coffee in my face from Maia! Maia, Fin, and Zeke had gone on a run and stopped to get their last shore-coffee and brought me back one, so the day started off great!
We proceeded to have a BLUE breakfast made by Thaxton, Perry, and Payton – our lovely chefs for today. There were BLOOBS, which are formerly known as blueberries (last night, Scarlette and I might have consumed a few bloobs as we were making cookies and they were preparing breakfast :)). There was also YOGURT! Our favorite for breakfast.
After breakfast, we finished up passage prep. I flushed the engine, and Henry told me he would stand close for moral support (he did a great job :). We also scrubbed our shoes off to prevent dirt and cockroaches from nesting in our boat. Once we finished, I was standing with Zoe, Kyler, and Emma, and we might have been slightly judging another boat docking, noting their questionable strategy and praising our wonderful skills. Somehow, when docking, they refused to actually get on the dock, reaching over to pull the line through the ring instead, whereas when we docked, Riley did an awesome jump to then catch lines thrown at him. We looked way cooler when docking 🙂
Then we had 2 hours of waiting around/free time. Today, people have been talking A TON about what they’re doing after the program, which is bittersweet, because it means this voyage is coming to an end, and we don’t want to leave, but we have to start thinking about life after Vela. People were changing South Africa flights after Cape Town so they could stay longer, and Fin and Zeke were looking into flights to New Zealand. It was crazy (cool and sad), but also super exciting.
Then we moved over to the commercial dock to fuel up and get cleared by customs. While Payton and I were on roaming fender duty with Globus (named by Maia, Destiny, Zoe, and me after we cleaned a few fenders during special projects passage prep yesterday), Wylie, Destiny, Rae-Ching, and Zoe were on the bow line. Wylie was teaching them yoga poses as we waited to set off. Then we moved into Oceanography and Leadership, and Alice and Maia received back their Law and Business exam, which they both passed with flying colors!
Then we walked Vela sort of like a dog on the dock. Or a like Gift Horse (don’t ask, I am equally confused about this ongoing joke about gift horses on Vela). Maia, Fin, Zeke, and Henry walked us all the way down the dock so that we could fuel up properly. We learned that the Mac’s boat, a cargo ship we had seen getting loaded with something, was being loaded with corn kernels, and a huge number of pigeons were swarming the commercial dock to eat loose corn kernels.
Speaking of Mac, he did some fun tricks on the cap rail (picture included). Then Zeke (as of yesterday, Sam’s self-proclaimed media intern), Keith, and I watched Sam film Fin and Maia for our YouTube video, which was funny because they kept having to re-do it. I guess “Indian Ocean” becomes hard to pronounce after a while, but they finally got it and did great! Zeke took some cool photos of people sitting on the boom during sunset and got a nice shot of Adda, Destiny, Maia, and me.
Then we had dinner with Payton’s bread rolls, which were great (editor Payton here: they were not good baking fail), but she described them as both underdone and overdone, which is a good description, I would say. Now we’re finally underway to Richard’s Bay! Everyone went up on deck and helped get the boat out of Mauritius! We cleaned the fenders, put up the staysails, and left Mauritius behind us. Now I’m headed to bed before the 00-04 watch shift with my new watch team, including Destiny, Hannah, Rai-Ching, Zeke, Perry, and Sam!
Till familjen: alskar er massor! Stora kramar!