Location: St. Barths
Who doesn’t love to wake up to music and the smell of veggie egg scramble on the stove? Today, head chef Zoe made a lovely breakfast to fuel everyone for their VHF certification exam in seamanship class. Breakfast chatter consisted of a lot of stories about some guy named Romeo going to meet Foxtrot in Lima. I must have missed out on the film. (haha — phonetic alphabet jokes) I have a good feeling about a lot of certified VHF users on board Ostar very soon. 🙂 Next up was the verrrrry last marine bio lecture! I think we more often talk about the massive change in skill set in the sailing realm, but what is underrated and equally cool is how awesome these students have gotten at casually naming all the fish they see on dives (and laughing at our species-specific parrot fish jokes when we have rainbow zinc sunscreen on for rescue diving). I think if everyone had a little bit of the insight into the marine world that these folks have gained this semester, it would be quite an amazing thing for our oceans– so please, ask all of your fish questions to your local marine expert seamester alum this summer!
Mac and cheese bake for lunch was a fan favorite, served up by Zoe with some sous chef assistance from Nick and Ella. It led us into passage prep, which was a thorough yet swift process, maybe in part due to anticipation for the BOOOM SWING that was to follow. With final presentations on group research projects in my class tomorrow and a bio exam, the afternoon today was largely dedicated to study and collaboration time, but we have to add the appropriate amount of fun here… so we took the mainsail boom and prevented it way out off the port side and hoisted it far up into the air. The end result can be seen in the photos, but it became a giant rope swing. Turns out we have a lot of talent here when it comes to backflips. Alev also showed us some crazy skills and climbed from the waterline all the way to the top. Amongst all the fun, staff Ben had to be a bit clumsy and lead us into an EFR scenario. Just when everyone’s guard was down, he was spitting ketchup (blood) with some sharpie (swelling) on his stomach. Thankfully, this team quickly uncovered the (fake)injuries and got him all the help they could. All in all, another beautiful day out on the water.