Location: North Atlantic
It’s that time of the job wheel when the title of skipper lands on one particularly special person. The last time this person was skipper, the astral alignments granted her special powers with one simple sign: her skipper day landed on the same day of the week as her nickname: Wednesday.
(In case you haven’t figured it out, this person is me.)
(Obviously.)
Of course, the stars lining up is an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime miracle that shouldn’t be taken…
Wait… Oh my goodness, would you look at the stars? Can you imagine it’s Wednesday AGAIN?! (It’s almost like having 28 people on board means I’ll be skipper every four weeks to the day.) Since the stars have aligned so perfectly yet again, it’s only fitting my skipper title gets upgraded to Overlord. (It must be done. The stars say so.)
Let the Overlord Wednesday shenanigans commence!
The morning began bright and early, as it always does when we’re underway. My watch team had the 4 am – 8 am, my second favorite night watch. As other watch teams woke up, they were greeted with two pans of banana chocolate chip pancakes made by yours truly. Of course, I’m not head chef today, but as Overlord, I must always give reasons for my minions to believe they would be worse off without me.
Before long, it was noon and head chef Joe prepared Mexican rice bowls with his sous chefs, Stich and Caroline. Inherently, some people from the early morning watches were still sleeping. And, as skipper, it is my job to wake them. So, naturally, I woke everyone up with the help of a disembodied hand. Fortunately for my crew mates, I decided to use a fake one.
After lunch and clean-up, we moved into classes for lessons in Seamanship and Oceanography. In Seamanship, we’ve been doing our NavMaster unit. This has been my favorite unit by far. And some of the other students who were struggling with the concepts initially are now starting to enjoy the unit, as well. We also had a fun and easy lecture on Oceanography about tides. After classes, there were some students who still hadn’t turned in the Leadership essays, so they spent a little time before dinner finalizing and submitting their assignments.
(Side note: your Overlord will admit she is not perfect and was, in fact, one of the students who turned in a late essay).
Moving on…
Just when we thought the day couldn’t get any better, we had walking tacos for dinner! Let me specify: walking tacos with Doritos. At the squeeze, my squeeze question asked for everyone’s favorite character trait/ memory of our Captain, Calum. On this trip, all the other instructors have had or will have a birthday, except for Calum, which is a shame because he’s arguably one of the most important people on this boat. (Perhaps Calum or Amanda would be #1, but I AM Overlord.) Everyone went around and recalled their favorite Calum memories. And then the squeeze ended, and I made a special announcement…
Let me preface with this: as Overlord, I am in charge of the health and well-being of the crew on board. I’ve come to notice that, amongst all the emergency procedures, we are severely lacking in the area of pirate attacks. So, as Overlord, I will humbly offer up my years of Taekwondo experience for a brief Fighting 101 lesson on deck. My minions didn’t know it yet, but I was about to give them the power to potentially save the boat one day. So, after the squeeze, I made the executive order to delay clean-up by 15 minutes so we could get some much-needed pirate protocols in place. If pirates ever come aboard, consider that the pop quiz.
Now that I’ve successfully made a lasting impact on all future Argo protocols moving forward, it’s time for me to sign out on my (potentially) last day as Overlord Wednesday.
Don’t miss me too much!
– Overlord Wednesday Adams