Location: Underway to Tahiti
What a day, let me tell you, folks. But first off, let’s start with a welcome back to my third blog as me being skipper, and sadly my last because today is day 72, meaning there are only 18 days left on our trip. I’m doing my best to make each day count, and today was definitely a good day. My day started off with being on watch from 4-8, and even though that watch can be a bit much since it’s the middle of the night to the morning, that doesn’t mean we didn’t have a good time. Some highlights were the beautiful amount of stars there were; I’m talking about the whole sky filled with little specks of light. Having no light pollution for miles is an amazing treat which I’ll definitely miss once I’m back home. You could also see the milky way and the two parts of it, which Miles described as a chromosome, to which Skyler replied, like a double helix. There was a bit of confusion for a second, and it took even longer for Skyler to find the split in the milky way, but a funny moment nonetheless. We also had a bit of slumpage on that watch, myself included, but once the sun came up and made a beautiful announcement with its presence behind some clouds, we all felt a lot more awake. Toria, our lovely head chef of the day, started a bit of work on her dough for her breakfast which was a smart move on her call. Eventually, the time came when watch team 2 relieved us, and I went straight back to bed.
I woke up to my alarm I’d set for 11:15 to make sure that I’d be up in time to do full boat wake-ups if that was needed at 11:30. I entered the galley to see Toria and Daphne hard at work finishing up a lunch of blackberry hand pies. They were very well made and smelled even better. We also had the luxury of having not just blackberry as a filling but also some with pineapple and others with peaches. I ended up trying all three over the course of lunch, along with having some extra filling as a dressing as well as some yogurt and granola. An amazing way to start off the day, in my opinion. They were all demolished, no shock there, and after clean up, we had our normal schedule of classes. Before classes started up, though, we had clean up as usual. As skipper, I didn’t have a clean-up job, so I was just hanging out in the salon, trying to help out with galley cleanup to pass the time. Elise was our galley gremlin of the day, and in doing so, she noticed our small fridge was leaking, which obviously isn’t good. She hopped up on our big main fridge and was trying to put the leftovers away, but with the water dripping everywhere and Vela rocking back and forth, this was a recipe for disaster. I thankfully ended up being there to catch Elise from sliding completely off the fridge, and I also helped her with putting away everything that kept sliding out of the fridge. A stressful but funny experience, that’s for sure. Thankfully we were able to put most of the stuff back in the mini-fridge and then put the rest in the big fridge. Eventually, clean up finished up, and it was class time.
Today we had oceanography and leadership. We had a quiz to start off oceanography, which we’ve already gotten our grades back for, and it seems everyone did quite well, which is always good to see. After our quiz, we had another lecture, which will then lead up to another quiz in our next class in 2 days. Lots of stuff to cram into the end of the trip, that’s for sure. For leadership, we all filled out these sorts of crew evaluation things, as in we wrote down what we do to feel better when we feel down, how we like to be approached when there’s a problem, what we’ve appreciated, like little things, so far over the trip, along the lines of that. All that is going to be discussed in our next class, though, so once we filled out our papers, we had free time. I ended up having the 2-6 watch, so I wasn’t able to go work on homework or nap, but I still really appreciated that watch.
In that time, a few of the students who are now leaders for the student-led passage were briefed and walked through the information they needed to know for their job. I’m very excited about this student-led passage. Even though I didn’t run for any position, that’ll be a good opportunity for everyone to be even more hands-on than beforea good way to spend the rest of this passage to Tahiti. During my watch, I ended up just working on some friendship bracelets that I’d started earlier today for some of my friends. I love making them, and being on watch is the perfect time for me to be able to knock a lot of those out. Eventually, the time came though for us to be relieved, but thankfully dinner was ready right on time, so we didn’t have to wait around a lot for that.
Dinner this evening was one of my favorites, an amazing meal. What Toria and her sous chefs cooked up was spam musubi, which is pretty much some cooked-up spam with sides of rice, veggies, and a pineapple coleslaw, which Toria had no recollection of putting on her meal, but turned out amazing nonetheless. The amount of pineapple we consume on this boat is crazy, but I’m not complaining in the slightest because I love pineapple. There’s also the amount of spam Toria cooked up, 112 slices, to be precise. I’ve never had nor cooked spam before, but her just telling me that gave me a new appreciation for the head chefs. The spam slices also were flavored with either teriyaki or soy sauce, and I tried both since I might as well since this was my first time trying spam, and both were very good. Again, the overall meal was delicious, and I went back for a large heaping of seconds as well. As I started writing this, Steph was going around as leftovers offering up the last few pieces of spam for people to finish up, and I had even one more piece. So good. Another fun thing involving spam was that for dinner, Alexis was wearing her Spam shirt at the time. I don’t think her shirt is actually for the kind of spam we ate, but still a fun little fact.
For squeeze this evening, I asked the question, what’s one weird food combo that you really like but other people would normally say is weird. I started off with the combo of applesauce and cottage cheese with cinnamon sugar on top, which is something my mom and I have had while I grew up, and it’s very good, trust me. Some other answers were pineapple on pizza by Charlie, which I personally also really enjoy, Takis and cream cheese by Ula and Skyler, cinnamon rolls (with the glaze still) and chili by Alexis, cheese, and Nutella by Owen, fries dipped in Coke by William, and probably one of the strangest ones is by Ben who says he eats lemons straight up, like an apple, rind and all. That’s a new one for me, to be honest. Not the weirdest, just the most out there, to be honest.
The plan for this evening now is to watch more of the Hunger Games which we’d started up yesterday. Also, my first time watching or really consuming any kind of Hunger Games material, but I really liked it so far, so I’m excited to see the rest. I also have a quick message from Fargo wishing his dog Lady a Happy Late Birthday, so Happy Birthday Lady! A couple more remarks for the end of my blog. As it’s slightly known, at least to me, that the past two times I’ve been skipper and it’s coincidentally landed on a holiday, but sadly today is not any big holiday, or really any holiday that I know of, so I’ve decided to make my own holiday for this lovely April 17th. I’m making it National Weird Food Combos Day to go with my squeeze question of today. I just think that’s a fun fact to always learn about someone, especially since no one had any idea about the whole lemon consumption that Ben apparently does.
This now brings the day to a close, and now my powers as skipper will be passed onto Alexis for her to lead us through an amazing day tomorrow. Now onto another 18 days with the best people I could’ve asked for to be stuck on a boat with. 🙂