Location: Underway to Fernando
Oh, my days. Where do I even start, today was truly special as far as passage days go. From start to finish, today was packed with fun for everyone.
Starting with watch this morning or for us in watch team 1, work watch. Where we pretty much just cracked on with different jobs that needed to be done around the boat; after everyone grabbed some breakfast, we were all up and awake. Jobs started. Olympus was wrapping up her sewing project for the bucket cover. Sylver went off to finish the jib. Which he did, and then Olympus, Kackie, and he all put the jib back up. We’re SO BACK BABY.
Meanwhile, Isaac was down in the sauna (starboard six stack), counting and tallying up all the beans under his bed. Oh Lord, there was a load, like actually, (100+). During all of this, I was sat up on top of the boom doing a cheeky handy project fixing a new patch of leather onto the boom. This was protecting it from friction caused by the blocks on the topping lift scratching down the metal. After we’d been working away. Callum pops up, and we hear our general alarm of 7 short and one long, which means muster. But it was definitely a weird time to muster at peak hours of the day at around 11 am.
But the wind was around 4 knot,s and we were moving less than a knot. But this meant, as everyone mustered, Callum gave us the holy news that we could go for a swim. Like in the middle of nowhere. I days out from St. Helena and 3 days away from Fernando. This was truly a moment as it’s rare that the wind is low enough for the boat to be moving at less than a knot in neutral. But we get our debrief, and off we go. One after the other, just jumping into the 5500m deep blue water that was so warm. Then came the bow sprit fun.
Backflips, frontflips, penguins, the whole lot. Everyone was going crazy and having the time of their lives. Benny sent his first backflips off a boat, which was impressive. Kiki was going for everything and every time being so close to a flop, but it never happened. Isaac, poor chap, things were going so well until a nice man-o-war gave him a little kiss on his hand. But overall everyone had a great time and was blown away by where we were at and just swimming. No land in sight and no boats. Nothing but us and the deep blue. Following our swim fanatics came a lovely egg fried rice made by Shane and Sylver, which hit the spot after our nice swim. After a speedy cleanup, we had leadership where we made an Argo values contract, including what values we wanted on the boat and the things we certainly didn’t want.
Everyone signed it, and happy days. Nothing bad has happened yet, so let’s keep it up! (touch wood).
Now it’s time for some marine biology, where we learned all about sea slugs, which are super cool, nautilus, and squid/octopus. This got us pretty much up to dinner time, when we all got spoiled yet again by the Shane train. It was a lovely lentil soup with some focaccia. But it doesn’t end there. Our bread maker Darien had been baking away, and we had some splendid cake-type dishes (they were supposed to be muffins, but. We don’t have a muffin tray, so they were like little cakes. Again, truly delightful (thanks, Darien!) After a quick squeeze, as it was already late due to our activities earlier, everyone got ready to end the day and go off to bed. Watch team 2, and I had a quick vibe sesh, and then I left them to it and had a nice catch-up with Nini and Maddie before sleep.
What a day to be on this beautiful schooner we call home.
From Talia: Happy birthday, Dad!! Hope you had a good day 🙂