Location: Underway to Palau
What is up again? This is Romeo coming to you live from the South Pacific, and I’m going to give all of our faithful listeners a little update on our travels across the Pacific *airhorn* *autotune voice: “Radio Vela”*. It’s raining, it’s pouring, and half the crew wish to be snoring; today was a very, very rainy day. These past few days on our voyage to Palau, we have run into squall after squall after squall, and there is no end in sight. Well… there is an end in sight, and that, of course, is Palau, which is now currently 330 NAUTICAL MILES AWAY *even more airhorns*!!! That is some very exciting news because that means we have almost completed our three-week-long passage. Don’t get me wrong, the passage is a lot of fun, but I think I speak for the entire crew when I say we are very excited to get to Palau and go diving. Anyway, that’s enough about our future adventures in Palau; we still got to talk about today!
So, today was another fantastic day aboard Vela. Many of the students woke early this morning and camped out in a saloon to get some homework done before their watch. I’d like to say that the rough sea state added to the experience of studying, as it did result in both Dray and I spilling our freshly made coffees across the saloon. Despite the spilled coffee, we all had a nice morning study to churn out some homework before our classes and watch schedules. This morning we also got back our Marine Bio exams we took yesterday; we all huddled around the saloon with our noses in our graded tests and quietly asked each other, “What did ya get?”. To my knowledge, we all did pretty well, so go us! For lunch, Heloise presented us with felafel and naan bread (this is the third time this week we have had felafel and naan, but hey, I’m not complaining). After our delicious lunch, we raised the main sail in the rainy weather and continued our course to Palau. After our rainy sail handling, we sat down in the saloon for our classes, but instead of our normal lecture, this oceanography class featured a movie, which of course, raised some spirits from the rainy weather! A couple of us wanted to watch Taken, but Heather already chose an educational film on coral bleaching and ocean acidification. The film was really well done and informative, and it definitely had an impact on the students and our feelings for environmental protection, especially the protection of coral. As the movie played below deck, the rain on deck got heavy, which resulted in us having a below-deck dinner! Tonight’s dinner was a chicken lo mein with a variety of chocolate naan bread with caramel and bananas. Dinner was excellent, and it was really nice to stay dry below deck.
And now I have to finish up my little broadcast; I have to be on watch in 15 minutes. I hope all of you listeners at home enjoyed our little radio show and are staying warm and dry. Quick shout out to my brother, parents, and girlfriend; I love you all.
This is Romeo signing off!