Location: Statia
Hello again! A little Buddhist koan to start off this blog post: Passing a turtle along the road, a pupil once remarked to Master Daiku how wonderful he felt turtles were. He asked Master Daiku why it was that no other animal was smart enough to cover itself with a shell as protection. Master Daiku responded by taking off his shoe and covering the turtle with it. Have fun with that one. Today was a pretty calm day. We left St. Barth’s this morning and sailed into Statia this afternoon. After we arrived in Statia, we anchored, made Ocean Star nice and tidy, and studied plankton under microscopes during OCE class. Dinner was a delicious shepherd’s pie brought to us by our chefs for the evening, Al and Andrew. The evening consisted of a short MTE class on electronic navigation. Now that the details of the day are done, I’d like to share with you some of my personal philosophy on living aboard Ocean Star. As our time here begins to dwindle away, I’ve been thinking about what it’ll be like when I return home. I’m really not one for missing people or places or things, but I can tell that Ocean Star and her crew are going to be an exception. What I’ll miss most, though, is how humbling every moment I spend here is and what this kind of freedom feels like. I’m not really sure how to describe either of these things, but I know that they don’t come around very often, if at all, and definitely not to such a degree. Ocean Star now feels like home, and I know that the next nine days are going to be bittersweet but beautiful. From a tiny little blob on an overwhelmingly vast ocean, Melissa.