Location: Martinique
We’ve made it to Martinique! Today’s foolish day started bright and early with 6 am wakeups and all hands on deck to sail off our anchor at Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, and set off to Martinique. We sped through, raising our sails while our neighbor’s super yacht, Dragonfly, coincidentally set off right before us (too bad they couldn’t see how cool we looked). I had the privilege to helm while we were sailing past the point of Pigeon Island with tons of wind! After we were underway, we had a lovely breakfast made by Nicole and Maddy of coffee cake, yoghurt, granola, and cereal. We were expecting a 5-6 hour passage to get here around early afternoon, but instead we absolutely sped and arrived a bit after 10 am. The day felt so long already before lunch! We reached at least 10 knots while I was helming, which was pretty exciting, though it did bring back an unwelcome bout of seasickness for much of our crew. During our passage, we intended to watch the movie Endurance as part of Leadership class, but experienced some technical difficulties, so we ended up having a brief moment of free time before it was time to drop sails since we’d already arrived. We sped through the boat to bed, getting sail covers on and halyards off before the anchor was even fully down. Then it was time for lunch, which consisted of caprese sandwiches. We’ve been putting our food in the cockpit or at mid-ships while the grab rails on top of the chart house are getting revarnished, which makes for an interesting deckie-ing situation. After the clean-up, we had a marine biology lecture from Ben on fisheries management. It was another one of his famous 2-hour-long lectures, which, while it was interesting, there must’ve been something in the air since almost every student (as well as Ben himself) took a fat nap afterwards and woke up completely discombobulated and thinking it was morning. Right before dinner, Meg gave us a quick class on using an emergency oxygen tank for diving, which the Rescue Divers practiced setting up. Then, we had dinner of veggie stew to wrap up the day.
For my squeeze question, we played a little personality test game where I had everyone think of the first three animals that came to mind. Then I told them what the meaning is: the first animal is what you see yourself as, the second animal is what others see you as, and the third animal is what you actually are. To end the squeeze, we played a game of down-by-the-banks and discovered some of our regional variations in the lyrics. We then prepped for our VHF seamanship class, which will happen soon after cleanup, by practicing the alphabet. Here it is (a bonus opportunity for me to practice right now): alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, echo, foxtrot, golf, hotel, india, juliet, kilo, lima, mike, november, oscar, papa, quebec, romeo, sierra, tango, uniform, victor, whiskey, x-ray, yankee, zulu. I hope none of those are wrong. Otherwise, that would be really embarrassing. Overall, it’s been a pretty chill day, a little sleepy seasickness, a bit of cramming for our research projects due tomorrow, excitement over visiting a new (French!!) island. We know passage prep and boat to bed like the backs of our hands these days! And not too many pranks or jokes… as far as I know. Maybe the joke’s on me.