Location: 6*09,185'S. 55*57,312'E
Hello, again, gals and pals! Today started early for our chefs, getting up at 10:00 to begin cooking sweet and savory crepes for all 31 aboard. Dylan, Cate, and Leoni cooked for over 3 hours to prepare the delicious meal, which can only be described as *chefs kiss*. This is also when we had the first unplanned fire drill of the day, as a cooking accident tripped the deafeningly loud system of alarms. To further prove the point, there is never a dull moment aboard. In the middle of our meal, a playful ( possible Minke ) whale started following the boat. Everyone ran on deck and watched as the whale swam within 40 meters of the boat, twisting and turning in the water. It swam with us for nearly 20 minutes before taking a dive and disappearing into the deep. Zach and I have decided to name the whale Forrest. The crew wishes Forrest safe travels.
And then sam came, and everything was better because I love sam and he is so darn cute. I’m sorry, folks, Sam hijacked this as I was writing, but I do love sam enough that I will leave it.
After we cleaned up lunch, the crew headed down for Oceanography and Leadership class. During which, we had our second unplanned fire drill when the galley had another cooking mishap. Once we sorted everything out, we had a wonderful class learning about waves with Leoni and Ethical leadership with Shona. The crew has been completing knowledge reviews for diving as we all work towards our advanced open water and rescue diver certifications. The chefs prepared pasta salad with garlic bread for dinner, and it was another amazing meal. Cate and Emily made a celebratory cake for Carly’s b-day today. Happy B-Day, Carly!
When dinner was finished, and we had squeeze (the question tonight was “describe your life in 6 words”), Tom announced our plan for the next few days. We will clear into the Seychelles early tomorrow morning and stay until next Sunday before we depart to South Africa. The plan currently includes lots of diving, shore time, a beach day, and even some hiking. The crew is getting increasingly excited as we get closer and closer to the Seychelles. Everyone has been finalizing their shopping lists (consisting mostly of snacks and candy) and talking about the activities they want to do while ashore (mainly eating snacks and candy). The other main excitement has been the possibility of getting new music. Since all of our Spotify accounts stopped working, we have been left with only our downloaded music. I never thought I’d say this, but thank you so much, Dad, for buying all that Italian opera music all those years ago. It has been a huge hit in watch team 2. Overall, we are doing very well and look forward to talking with all of our friends and family when we make anchor, assuming we have cell service.
We are currently trying to slow our approach to the Seychelles, which is why our path on the tracker might seem strange. We were originally going to get there at 2 am on the 31st of October, but now we are good to arrive in the daytime around 8 am.
Talk to everyone soon!
Finley