Location: Spanish Town
If you ever thought, “Nah, I won’t get seasick…” think again. I can assure you that as a seasoned road trip enthusiast, I have had my fair share of car sickness scares, but this was NOTHING compared to the life sailing the seven seas (or, in this case, a couple of miles to St. Barthelemy.) As we woke up this morning in Spanish Town, we made the preparations to 40/40 and became passage ready. This included checking each bunk of objects that would fall out during a 40-degree angle of tilting from the boat, tying and tethering in all items that could crash and become harmful to any crew during the voyage, and also raising the much-anticipated sails of our beloved S/Y Ocean Star.
As we set about our preparations, the excitement was high until we saw the rough journey ahead. Sea Legs were nothing compared to what we gained as a crew tonight. Imagine “The Deadliest Catch” on steroids… at least, that’s what it felt like to some of us. The sea fought us with fury as we set sail to our next stop. We traveled nonstop from 4 pm to 11:30 am with shifts of people to check the necessary parts of our ship and that they were all working. Each crew was on 3 hours and off 6 hours, during which you could TRY to sleep if you could bungee yourself into the bunks well enough. During the journey, we were also taught how to properly wear our PFDs (Personal Flotation Devices) and how to literally hook ourselves into the safety of the rocking ship. Essentially, it was falling in style, if you were lucky.
While doing the checks, we were taught how to steer the helm, check the horrible engine room for different pressures, plot our course on a map, and make sure we followed the compass all the way to safety. As I sat awake on my watch, steering the helm, I couldn’t think how completely amazing it would be to travel the world hundreds of years ago with only the stars and the possibility of an unknown world as your guide. My hat’s off to you, fellow explorers… I couldn’t have done it. As we finally made our way into the rising sun just over the island of St. Barthelemy, safety and, finally, some dry land was there to welcome us home.
P.S. If you need to toss your beloved cookies, do so overboard while sitting down, anchored to the stern… downwind. Oh. And Dramamine, I adore you. I really, really do.
P.S.S. This is a wildly dramatic interpretation of the above events… sorry, Mom. I’m dramatic.