Location: International High Seas
Hello from the international high seas!! Since the last blog post, we have had a little bit more celestial navigation practice from a night of very bright stars, guitar tunes, and lots of laughs on the night watch. Today (or maybe it was yesterday; I have completely lost all track of regular time in the real world sense), we crossed over from Saint Helena territory into international high seas. We are true and thought back on the passage. We started off strong this morning with a new Helmsona! Olympus was steering Argo for four hours straight with watch team one on the 12 am to 4 am watch It was probably the hardest watch shift to face this feat thus far and also a very, very rainy one after such bright stars on the previous watch. I believe Olympus was the fourth one to gain this title after Isaac, Syvler, and Eli. She chose the name Helmlock for her title–the best part of this accomplishment. Then my watch team (watch team two) had a rather quiet watch as we got back into the groove of passage on day 3; that was until we started talking about ice cream and sandwiches and how much ice cream we would eat once we reached Barbados but after Fernando and Devil’s Island of course. And it’s a lot. You guys have no idea how badly we are all craving ice cream. This boat really has you appreciating the little things. I think collectively, as a boat, we could all eat at least 15 gallons. After that, watch team 3 took over operations on deck for the work watch from 8 am-12 pm. They managed to get some good scrubbing in, and Cecily was working away sewing our torn flying jib, which hopefully should be up and running soon! However, we might not need it anytime soon because Calum said that the wind is looking rather weak for this passage. Apparently the doldrums might have moved down closer to Fernando?! I didn’t even know they could do that. Anyway, Benny made us lunch with some help from Sylver and Kiki. They made BBQ chicken and chickpeas, and it was yummy and definitely a crowd-pleaser. It wasn’t looking so hot for a minute there, but Benny managed to pull it off quite nicely. After lunch, we had oceanography with Meg, where we had a short little quiz, and then seamanship, where we did a lines test. Essentially, we named every line aboard Argo. And if I’m not wrong, everyone did rather splendidly. Now, we can confidently go to any line on deck without wasting any time to get those sails going and happy. Watch team two, then take over again on the deck while the rest of the crew maybe took some very precious and seldom nap/study/chill time. In between then and dinner, Calum finished going over the Colregs section of PSCT class with Zac, Kiki, Ben, and me, very exciting stuff. Just now we finished up dinner of some chicken or veggie Pho and had our squeeze circle. That is after a Darien-organized dance part,y of course. We also had some great appreciations of the day and maybe some even better embarrassing stories shared that I wouldn’t dare to expose on this blog.
Overall, it was another great day on passage.
I don’t know if anyone else is confused about who is on what watch team, but my parents sure are, so to clarify:
Watch team 1 with Kacky Isaac, Zac, Olympus, Sylver, and Kara
Watch team 2 with Shane and Meg is Me, Darien, Eli, and Kiki
And last but not least, watch team 3 with Ben and Nicole, Cecily, Nini, Benny and Maddie
To mom: Miss and love you lots and lots. Thinking about you every day!!
To dad: Miss and love you! Give Luna a good pet for me 🙂 Thinking about eating some ice cream soon at home…
To mike: I am thinking about you every time someone mentions how much they love whales (which is quite a bit, believe it or not)
To Catherine: Here, I am quite pickle-deprived, so I am looking forward to those cucumbers you are pickling…
To my friends: MISS YOU GUYS! (lots)
To everyone: Love and miss you guys lots.