Location: Machico, Madeira
Babushkad, under layers of blankets, watch team alpha huddled together as we listened to Emy recite the Odyssey and bore witness to Mia’s fake arms. Like, they are not hers; I don’t know where they came from. We then sailed into the sunrise as the strong winds pushed us forward. The chef team prepared some gorgeous nachos that Mia somehow made with her fake arms. Although there was lots of confusion about where we were going to eat, we gathered into the cockpit, hearing lovely shouts of “scoot out of the way”. After lunch, Allie and I serenaded the boat with “Madeira, Madeira” to the tune of Shakira’s hips don’t lie while we were fulfilling our jobs of intimidating bouncers. The day was filled with lots of sail raises and strikes and screams every time we were covered with sea spray. We are a salty crew currently. The wind was super strong today, and we even sailed 9.7 knots and had a low of only eight yukes from resident vomer Spews, aka Lindsay. It was an incredible day of sailing with crazy weather. I was constantly in and out of my foulies. The King of Time, Calum, came out again, and now we’re only 4 hours ahead of the east coast, but only after we heard the song by Johnny Clegg. Then, after five days of sailing, we reached Madeira. As we anchored, we had leadership class where Joel and John taught us all about how they would report us if they were our RAs. We then scrambled up on deck to see the gorgeous yet intimidating cliffs of Madeira. A bunch of us immediately rushed to jump into the water, even though it was frigid. We hucked some gnarly backies off the bowie as per ushe.
I then got to say hi to Joel’s mom and shout out to Ms. Gibson. Dinner was then served as we ate under the cotton candy clouds. We then finished the day off with some snickerdoodle cookies. Thanks, Maya, and squeeze. Ash might make a good pirate, but Emy wouldn’t because she would be writing everything down for her thesis, and apparently, Allie would be the worst pirate. The passage definitely did not feel like five days; it felt so much shorter. Maybe I’m sleep-deprived or going crazy like Mia. It is nice to be back at anchor, though, as I won’t get my life jacket butt straps caught on the six-stack door anymore. We’re all getting ready for a night swim and to finish the outlines we forgot are due tomorrow, and all super excited to go canyoning soon.