Location: Luaban Bajo
Hi everyone! We have made it to Komodo after five days of sailing! If you haven’t heard from your person aboard Argo in a while, it’s because most of us have not had service in 2 weeks! So, we are all very excited to get in touch with our loved ones once again. Expect calls! Maybe even in the middle of the night – as most of us have a 12-hour time change from our families at the moment.
To pick up where we last left off, Watch Teams 2 and 3 took down the fish (it’s the name of one of the sails) last night during our watch handover. Sail handling can be exhausting sometimes, especially at night when the previous watch team is waiting to get some shut-eye. But this time, taking down the fish was so much fun. It was most of our appreciation today. We screamed a lot, danced, shouted, “I believe that we will win” (win what? I’m not sure), and made measurements in terms of hotdog dimensions. It was filled with laughs all around and really put into perspective for me all that we have accomplished this semester. When students first join Argo, many have no sailing experience at all. Any kind of sail handling can seem very intimidating and filled with lots of guidance and direction from staff. At this point in the semester, the students are confident in sail handling and are able to fully enjoy the process. With only two weeks left, the 20 of us on Argo work alongside each other as crew rather than as students vs staff. Even after the fish was down and watch was long over, my watch team stayed up to spend time star gazing and listening to country music with Watch Team 3.
We have thoroughly enjoyed the last six days at sea. We are saddened to realize that long passages are over for this trip and that the program is almost over. For many of us, the simplicity of passage life provides relief from a world of text messages, emails, the news, college, and the “real world” as a whole. I will miss each and every person aboard Argo this semester, but they will always be part of the Argo family.
To commemorate the amazing two watch teams I have led this program, I embroidered two sail ties to be used on Argo (hopefully forever) with the initials of my watch team members and an inside joke. For my first watch team (Austin, Lexy, Lainey, Spencer, and Elanore), the sail tie reads “F’ing Crab!” which is a quote from one of Spencer’s infamous stories. For my second watch team (Anabelle, Beck, Iain, and Sidney), the tie reads “Bad Watch!” – to remember all the misbehavior I totally DID NOT encourage during watch.
Anyway, this morning and evening, we had a beautiful sunrise and sunset! We ate matcha cookies and curryit was awesome! And then we saw a water snake!
And AND Steph finished her CIRCUMNAVIGATION TODAY! She SAILED all the way around the WORLD!!! Go Steph!!!
Also, shout out to Gram Gram! We are so excited to hear you have been keeping up with all our adventures. Argo loves you (especially Kelsey!).
To anyone in my life who’s been reading these, I love you and miss you!
Cheers!
Love,
Kackie / Kackoonya / Bu / Beastie or whatever other names you all have been calling me all these years.
That was our squeeze question tonight- what are your nicknames back home?