Location: Underway to Fortaleza
Today marks our first full day on passage to Fortaleza, Brazil. Like most mornings, they start at different times for people, the common hour of waking up usually being around lunchtime when we all congregate for reasons all relating to hunger. During this time, a monstrosity of a concoction was brought onto the deck of Argo by our dear friend Bryant. The concoction? Tuna fish milkshake with a sweaty mayonnaise rim, enough for everyone to scoff and question their appetite. Two fearless crew members, Josh and Smudge, collectively drank the messy, chunky, slightly chilled vomit comet of a beverage, and to that, we congratulate them.
Today was also greeted by a nice pod of dolphins off of our port bow; it’s rather amazing how easy it is to forget that there is life outside of the boat when you get so used to being confined to the ship. Having been on Argo for 39 days now, we have had ample amounts of time to study and learn how Argo ticks and how we, as crew members, are expected to have the knowledge necessary to sail a vessel of this kind. How do we test that? MTE Exam!!! Yes, yes, today was the day we all took our test to get our ICC Certificates. There wasn’t actually all that much tension in the air; with all of the time we spent studying for these exams, we all finished rather quickly and efficiently, all feeling very proud of the work we had done, feeling confident that we had answered all of the questions to the best of our knowledge and abilities.
With the test now being over, it will be quite a relief to no longer be woken up to the sound of people practicing their sound signals with each other. Most people already hate alarm clocks; try to imagine waking up to a human alarm clock. Day 39 marks the day the beeping died. The crew has all been noticing that the time is now just starting to fly by; now that we have really gotten into a schedule and our time management skills have finally adapted to the Argo schedule, we seem to forget that we are almost halfway through our journey a lot of the time, which can be looked at positively. No one is counting the days until we will no longer be together. Instead, we are all living in the moment and loving every day that comes at us, rain or shine, hot or cold. While it will be weird to one day no longer be aboard Argo, that’s a thought we can keep for a later date.