Location: Most likely the Atlantic Ocean
It has recently been sounding like there’s been a bird on the boat. Everywhere I go, there seems to be a sound being made. From where, it always seems to be a little different than the last time. A noise here, a noise there. What could possibly be making this noise? Well, it can be described simply as the loon call. About a week ago, while sitting in the salon, I decided to make this noise. Soon, everybody on Vela was also trying to make this noise. To make the sound, there are 3 EASY steps to follow. Make a cup with your hands, blow through your thumbs, and flap your backhand. The result is a beautiful loon call. Now, these three really EASY steps for some people are the three really HARD steps, which lead to a sound mimicking someone trying to blow out a campfire with their mouth (not good). Especially for Mac, who claims to have holes in his hands and, as a result, is unable to make the sound (he is not doing the step right). For the most part, everyone else has been able to make the famed loon call. (while writing this, Mac tried to make the loon call again and only succeeded in waking up Shelby). Now, today started nice and early at 3:30 amazing! The first 10 minutes I spent awake were focused on staring at a wall while trying to get my brain to turn on. Anda tried talking to me but the wall had my attention.
Climbing onto deck, my semi-new watch team (Me, Anda, Charlie, Nora, Mac, Dan) were greeted with the sun starting to rise. At 3:45? Odd. Anyway, I don’t mind, as the sun helps to keep me from nodding off in the dark. The rest of the watch was great with a good sunrise, good conversation, and most importantly a bowl of Reeces Puffs with NATE for breakfast (I receive a lot of hate for my passion of a daily bowl of the puffs but it will never stop me). After the early 4 hours, I decided to catch a couple more hours of Honk-Chooing (sleep). After a couple more hours of sleep, I woke up and had a lovely cup of joe to get going again.
Lunch followed soon after, which was a curry of sorts (there was a lot of stuff in it; I don’t remember it all, but it was pretty good). Today, we got back to our normal schedule after yesterday being a little different. We had two classes, first we had our last day of Nav Master where we learned yet another way to plot our position on chart. Our second class today was just for the 70-day folks, Oceanography, where we had our second quiz, which went pretty well for me and everyone. The rest of the class was spent studying for our first exam tomorrow (It will be light work) alongside my second cup of joe. When we were done with classes and came back on deck, the winds started to pick up, and we raised the main sail for the first time in a couple of days. A lot of people were happy to be sailing instead of motoring again. For dinner, we had chili with rice along with cornbread ( I had two slices). My squeeze question was if you were a folklore legend called the dancing man who came out of the middle of the woods at night and danced, what color pants would you wear? My choice was brown polka dot chainmail pants. Right as we finished, we got hit by the first squall in a couple of days, but luckily, I was able to escape to the courthouse to write this. Now it’s time to catch an hour or so of ZZZs before my next watch. P.S. Love you, Mom and family. Elizabeth, I think you should look into doing this. I think you’d love it! Tell everyone I have an absolute blast and love every second here! Coucou la mif, je vous fait des gros bisous depuis le milieu de lAtlantique. Le voyage se passe super bien! Jai eu le mal de mer que les deux premier jour aprs notre depart pour les Azores, je mentend bien avec tous le monde et le temps passe beaucoup trop vite. Chaque jour je me dit que le coucher de soleil ne pourra pas tre plus beau quhier, et chaque jour jai tord. Je vous aime trs fort, Lucie.