Location: UW to St. Barth's
Unlike the past days, we all woke up at various times this morning as we had 3-hour watches during the night. Split into three different watch teams, we take turns doing boat checks, steering the boat, and keeping watch on deck the whole time we are underway. Meaning 3 hours on watch, then 6 hours off the whole time we are moving. Breakfast was just cereal whenever you wanted it, as everyone was sleeping at different times. Went to sleep last night under the impression that we would arrive at St. Barthes between 2 and 6 pm today. Due to the fact that the wind is coming directly from where we need to go, this ETA changed to 10 to 11 pm today this morninghad BLTs for lunch for those of us that could stomach it. A lot of people are feeling really seasick and or homesick todaypretty uneventful afternoon sailing. Most of the day was spent without sight of land or any other ships, just us and the endless ocean in every direction. Pretty cool to experience but also a bit unsettling. Dinner was beef stroganoff. Huge shoutout to the chefs for today. Really rough to cook while underway.
Around dinner time, we hit a random fishing net floating in the ocean, wrapping our propeller and completely stopping the engine. Due to the lack of an engine and the fact that sailing directly into the wind does not work very well, we last minute rerouted to anchor at St Martin rather than going all the way to St Barth’s tonight. This required dropping anchor from sailing at night, a fairly complicated move, especially for a crew that had never even dropped the sails at all before. Dropping anchor from sail took a lot of teamwork, precision, and timing, but under the guidance of our wonderful crew, we were able to step up and make it happen. When the anchor was dropped, the anchor brake broke, just another thing to complicate the task, but everything worked out fine. After anchoring, most of us jumped in the water for a midnight swim and a deck shower as everyone was feeling very gross and sweaty from the last day spent underway, a good end to a long day and a much-needed moral boost. Definitely not what was planned for and definitely not ideal, but we made it work, and our spirits remain high.