Location: East London, South Africa
Its hard to write something you dont feel inspired by. I know this feeling intimately – literature reviews, essays for extra credit, your final skipper blog – and find myself a bit in the dumps. There is a certain finality that colors everything we do now, for better and for worse. This could be our last passage prep, or well never be in this exact dishy pit again. The lovely Chef Amanda said herself, This is my last day as Head Chef! Met with the finish line, there is an urgency to do everything to every extent of ourselves. The nicest part is how easy it is to say yes.
Believe me, there is nothing inherently enjoyable about pumping out the engine bilge or showering in freezing cold head water. Only there are twelve days left to do it all. I want to raise every halyard, flake every sail, and helm every hour – would that I had more than two hands and more than twelve days? If you remember, I spent my first skipper day hunched over the cap rail, finding constellations in bioluminescence in between spurts of vomit. Everything was so overwhelmingly new and exciting that I became a bit numb to it. In hindsight, its hard to distinguish one day in Indonesia from another. Gabe will often say, Hey, remember [something we did this semester]? That was this semester!
Well, yes. I have only sailed an ocean once and have no other semesters to compare it to. I suppose this is what separates students from staff – for us, we only have three months. I wonder which is best. Hannahs playing Wish You Were Here over the salon (The Lounge) speakers, and my, isnt that just right?
Hold on – is this a blog or a journal entry? Its gotten a bit away from me, hasnt it? Heres a summary of today for all you stakeholders: we docked in East London after noon and enjoyed vegetarian hotdogs (oblong bread) courtesy of the chef. Leadership and Marine Biology followed, Megs lecture being a record 19 minutes; we were free the rest of the afternoon to catch up on the final season. Dinner, then squeeze: how has Argo changed you?
(Today, I appreciate Philips commitment to wording; for me, Argo is a proof of concept.)
Oh, also. The murder game is back and business. Today at lunch, I recycled the six survivors into their own circle, and by dinner, three of them were dead. Huzzah!
We ended the squeeze with a Huzzah in ZA. Plates were thrown. It was great.