Location: St. Lucia
We departed from Bequia last night around 9, and my watch team was the first on watch. We had watch from 9 to midnight. It wasn’t all that bad, even though it rained for the first 40 minutes. I was on bow watch for the first hour and a half. It was a beautiful night with a warm breeze and so many stars in the sky. Sam and I had a great talk about basically everything. After watch, it was time to get some shut-eye. However, sleeping in the fo’c’s’l (forecastle) is like sleeping on a rollercoaster during the passage. For the majority of my six hours off, I was trying to keep myself in my bunk instead of actually sleeping. After about a half-hour of sleep, it was once again my turn to be on watch. It went by rather fast because we were busy putting in preventers and trimming our sails. When we weren’t busy fixing our sails, we caught a glimpse of an epic sunrise on the ocean. For everyone back at home, you should be very jealous. After watch, most of my team went to catch up on some much-needed sleep while I slaved away on my SLD paper that is due today. Let me tell you, studying in the Caribbean is not easy with all these distractions. We arrived in St. Lucia around 10 am and took the sails down. Once we got hooked onto the mooring ball, we went right into our BA, which included flaking the sails, wax on and wax offing, a full deck wash, and rust busting.
After the BA, we ate lunch- deli sandwiches, chips, and pickles. After lunch, we had a quick lecture about reef checks because while we were in St. Lucia, we would be helping out the SMMA with checking their reefs. Then we headed over to Argo, Seamester’s Cinderella ship, to have another lecture on reef checks. Argo is a much bigger ship than Oceanstar, with a lot more room on deck and below deck. Every shipmate from Oceanstar fell in love with Argo. The people on board were awesome, and it was great to hang out with them! After the lecture, we went on deck, where some people chilled out, and some had a pull-up challenge. All 45 of us had dinner aboard Argo of three different kinds of Chili (spicy, sweet, and veggie), cornbread, salad, and apple crisp. It was very delicious. Once clean-up was finished, the crew of Oceanstar headed back home. We had a very constructive SLD class, and now I am going to the fo’c’s’l, where all the girls are meeting to say goodbye to two of our friends who are heading home tomorrow. It is going to be a long, sad, sleepless night. Byeeeee.