Location: Underway to Devils Island
Hey Blog! Happy 16 days since we last got to chat. Just like my last blog, and the one before that we’re on passage! We’re currently about a day and a half out of Devil’s Island. Sailing has been absolutely spectacular the last few days. Yesterday I had probably my favorite hour of helming of my whole life. We hit 10.9 knots!!! But anywho let’s talk about today!
March 8th anyone know what’s special about today? I’ve been counting down the days to this day. Why, you may ask? Today is International Women’s Day!! In my brain, every day is International Women’s Day, but TODAY we celebrate.
Watch team 3 (myself, Perry, Nashota, Henry, and Camilla) had the 12-4 watch. Perfect. Maximum time to celebrate this spectacular day. We had a very eventful watch, full of seeing all aspects of a cargo ship in passing (YAY COLREGS!!), PB & J sandwiches, the lucky last pack of saltine crackers, and sailing SUPPA fast!
Before lunch, I came up on deck to find Vittoria completing a (what turned into) 5-HOUR AND 10-MINUTE HELM!! She’s badass it was awesome talk about a cool way to spend the epic day that today is.
Have you guys ever heard the song New Year’s Day by Taylor Swift? If not, the first line of that song is “there’s glitter on the floor after the party,” and I’ll just say that’s vela right now we crossed the equator the other day, and now there’s glitter everywhere. I kinda love it.
Anywhoooo.
Head chef today (Alexa!) made us a yummy lunch of tacos! Alexa really knows how to cook up something yummy in the galley. Shoutout to her family for teaching her well! After lunch, the students had oceanography class with Kyler and then Leadership with me! In leadership class, Vittoria did her destination presentation on Devil’s Island, and Reed and Grant did their chapter presentation! Both were awesome and led to some super great conversations about conflict in relation to change!
After class, it was all about the deck walks! All semester so far, everyone has been studying the lines and rigging on deck in order to pass what we call their “Deck Walk.” Today, Sam went one by one through every student to test if they knew their stuff and they did!!! Yay everyone! I was cheering my watch team on big time when it was their time to go!
Dinner tonight was a new fan favorite spaghetti and meatballs!! We don’t know what Alexa did to these (nor do we need to), but hooolllyyyy moolllyyyy they were delicious!!! Shout out to Alexa again for that one.
The squeeze question tonight, in honor of the special day that today is, was “who is a woman in your life that inspires you/made you who you are today, and why?” I’ll just say, if you’re reading this as someone’s mom you’re appreciated more than you’ll ever know. The squeeze basically just turned into all of us just talking about how much we admire and love our moms. To the point that we ended squeeze by yelling “YAY MOMS!!”
To everyone back home (especially all the empowering, wonderful women), you are all so appreciated, loved, and inspiring.
To my mom, I love you more than you know, and you inspire me to be the greatest version of myself every day.
To my whooooole family I love and miss you all so much, and I can’t wait to see you not too long!!
Until we meet again probably in 16 days if I had to guess.
All my love,
Emma