Location: Underway to Nuka Hiva
Hello everyone, back on land! Today is day 4? of our passage to Nuka Hiva. The last couple of days have been full of on and off rain and motoring, BUT TODAY the wind decided to be our bestie, and we got to throw the main and flying jib up! As Im writing this, we currently have four sails up and were going over 9 knots! Pop of Vela. Anywho, this morning my watch team and I had the 4-8 am watch (my favorite of the three night watches). We started our watch playing some games such as contact (a game where you try and guess the word that someone is thinking by only knowing one letter at a time) its honestly a really hard game to describe, you kind of just have to play it lol. We also played this game that we created on our passage to Galapagos called Enough is Enough. Its a game where you go around in a circle and everyone adds to the story that the first person starts, but the first word of the sentence you add has to be in order of the alphabet. The trick is that whoever sends up with the letter e has to say enough is enough, followed by a complete subject change. Weve been laughing hysterically at the stories weve been coming up with for weeks now.
At the end of our watch, we were greeted by a beautiful sunrise, and Mac told us it was time to put on the main. Graham, Morgan G, Caro, and Jake hopped on the main halyard and started sweating the main up. They got it up quick! Watch team 1 on the 8-12 watch sheeted out the stay sails and tossed up the flying jib to give us the perfect sail trim for our course.
For lunch, Caro and Maya L cheffed up some buffalo chicken style wraps. Those combined with the leftovers from Jays epic meals he made yesterday made for a delicious lunch full of color!
This afternoon we had Leadership and Oceanography. In leadership, we did an activity where we placed out a bunch of black and white postcards with all different kinds of photographs on them, and everyone had to pick cards based on different questions I asked them. We then had a discussion on values and regrets. In oceanography, Brooke taught the students about ocean currents/tides and how different types of sediments form from different currents.
My watch team and I were on the 2-6 watch this afternoon, and we had heaps of fun. We played music (shout out Caro on the aux), we did some deck walks to help everyone learn all the lines, and we had some weird snacks such as olives dipped in Tajin seasoning (a watch team three staple)
Dinner tonight was a delicious chicken and rice dish, maybe by Henry and his sous chefs (Maya L and Caro). My squeeze question for the night was Tell us a moment in your life that you were really proud of yourself. Weve done a lot of silly squeeze questions recently, so I wanted to make tonights a bit deeper. We got some really awesome answers, such as when Harry saved a baby sheep from dying, Claire when she knit her first sweater, and James when he finished his senior year woodworking project, which made his teacher cry over how amazing it was. We ended the squeeze with my favorite a rock, paper, scissors battle. Sam came out on top and decided she wanted to change her squeeze answer to that moment being her most proud one (haha).
And that was the day! Another day out in the Pacific with 21 pretty epic people. Shout-out to all the families and friends back home who are reading this. We love you!
Mom, Dad, Will, BET! And all my family back home I LOVE YOU SO MUCH and I cant wait to see you all in May!
James says Happy Birthday to his Mom!!!
Hugs on hugs on hugs,
Emma