Location: Las Palmas, Gran Caneria
We started this crisp Atlantic day with some sadness. Since we reached the halfway point, we had to switch our watch teams from our original ones. For me, that meant switching from the fabled club 3 to a fresh start on watch team 2 (probably kinda, maybe- we are solidifying it soon). To ring in this switch, we had one last passage with our original teams, which was sad for a lot of us as we had grown accustomed to seeing the same faces during the odd hours of the night. For club 3, it was bittersweet as we danced throughout the night and jammed to our anthem, Dixieland Delight. Watch team 1 ended off the passage by docking us at the port in Gran Canarias. With Allie as head chef, the rest of us awoke to a delicious lunch of oven-baked Mac and cheese and green beans. Classes started with marine bio and then leadership. With our beloved Ash gone, Calum took over the leadership class and started us off with making a playlist that combined a song from each of us, we only got through 10 songs, but we are going to continue working on it when we have class. It was a lit exercise and seeing how each song totally matched the person who chose it was cool. It was also cool to hear a song that didnt mean much to me, but that meant a lot to my friends. After class, we put Vela to sleep and gave her a good salt-away scrub to clean the spray off her.
It was another one of those days that are full of actions but lacking epiphanies, and that is a good reminder that were here to stick it through tough days and exciting days.
But if you want some excitement- LET ME TELL YOU ALL about a new clean, crisp, crunky new feature of the boat: the dinghy elevator. Now, if youre thinking vertically, youre not in the right headspace.
See, as we docked today, we realized we dont have a set of stairs down to the dock level, and whats more, the marina also is lacking in that at the current moment. The solution? A dinghy thats weighted perfectly so that you can pull it to the dock, and it returns to the boat hands-free. When I first saw Asa yanking the dinghy to the dock, I laughed- and then promptly had my mouth hanging open in amazement and hilarity of watching him stand there like an NPC as he was dragged back to the port side at midships. Outstanding truly.
Love you, grandma and papa, + the rest of the fam