Location: Underway to Tahiti!
Today started and ended up being all about Matt. Let me give you some context, I am a member of watch team 1 currently, and we have the pleasure of relieving watch team 3 every time we switch watches. Matt is one of the staff that is on watch team 3. The rule for relieving the watch team before yours is that the watch team leader on your team has to meet with the staff on their watch team and the watch team leader from the previous group in the cockpit 15 minutes before watch. So if you are the watch team leader for the 12-4 watch, which was our watch last night, you have to meet at 11:45 in the cockpit to do this. After this, the watch team leader comes back to midships at 11:50 in this case, where the rest of the team should be waiting (This doesn’t always happen as some people, including myself, have trouble getting up). If you’re going strictly by the rules, your watch team can relieve the previous one up until 12 and still be on time. However, nobody does this, and we all generally will relieve each other early as a sign of respect and understanding as to how hard it can be to get through watch sometimes. Trust me, being relieved 5 minutes early after a long watch is always appreciated. Anyway, I tell you all of this because last night we did not relieve watch team 3 early, on purpose. We were told to wait by Smash and Dylan and try to relieve watch team 3 as close to 12 as possible. This was, of course, because it’s Matts birthday. The goal was to stall until 12 and then start suddenly singing happy birthday to Matt. Gabby volunteered to take the helm from the previous watch team. This is important because the person who takes the helm from the previous watch team has the power to relieve them whenever they feel comfortable with the helm. This was crucial in our stalling process. When we came to the cockpit at 11:55 (again, later than usual), we all put on our poker faces as Gabby put on a hilarious performance to stall for time. She took incredibly long to actually get to the helm, and when she did, she intentionally would get distracted and get thrown off course, thus preventing her from relieving watch team 3. Anyway, after a long and hilarious 5 minutes of stalling, Gabby started us off by singing Happy Birthday to Matt, who was very surprised. He was appreciative and found it hilarious once he realized this was all premeditated. We wished Matt Happy Birthday and said goodnight to watch team 3.
After all of this, we had our best and funniest watch as watch team 1 yet. It was thoroughly enjoyable. Everyone was awake, talking, and laughing almost the whole time. The funniest part, in my opinion, was a bit that we had where the F’oc’sile dwellers discussed jumping William and hibicleansing his entire body if they couldn’t fall asleep (This was a joke, of course). The reasoning for this is that out of the six guys in the F’oc’sile, 4 of them are on watch team 1 (Fargo, Kirby, Cosmo, and Charlie). This means that when we get relieved from watch every night, it’s the four watch team 1 guy and William, who is on watch team 3. The watch team 1 guys were worried that because of the amount that we had been rolling that it would be hard to sleep, so they decided that if that were the case, they would take out their anger and frustration on the closest person around them, poor innocent William. Anyway, the jokes about this kept evolving, and it was really funny and entertaining. There were tons of other hilarious things that happened as well, but I feel like I needed to move on, so I skipped ahead to the afternoon when we all gathered in the cockpit for lunch.
I found out that the boys in the F’oc’sile actually slept very well, so William was spared… for now. Lunch was great to head chef Miles made “PCP casserole,” which is not what it sounds like for any alarmed parents reading. PCP, in this instance, stood for “Pesto Chicken Pasta,” but of course, everyone found the name funny, and we all acted as if we got drugged after eating it. After lunch, we sang happy birthday to Matt twice for some reason and began clean up. During this time, however, Allie, Tom, and Skyler formulated a plan and told everyone that when we heard the words “Alastair Bisley’s Bees” (That’s Tom’s dad, by the way, and I’m not sure if I spelled his name right), that we would have to start singing happy birthday to Matt on the spot. There was a catch to this. However, Allie decided that it would be funny to sing the entirety of “Bohemian Rhapsody” instead during one of these random fits of song, but we’ll get to that later. After we cleaned lunch up, we had Marine Biology in the blistering heat of the saloon. So fun! We learned about intertidal zones today, which would have been way more interesting if the temperature was 20 degrees cooler (F). My shirt was literally soaked through with sweat after both of our classes today after Marine Bio.
We took a short break to cool off and then had our first VHF class. This was actually really interesting. We learned a lot about the intricacies of making distress calls on the VHF radio in emergency situations and the different kinds of situations that warrant the different levels of distress calls. We also did practice distress calls where we made up a boat name and its details/description. My group’s boat was named “Monkey Nuts” and had an MMSI number of 696969420… very mature. Drew, who was teaching the class, said in a joking manner that he was glad to see that we were taking the survival of everyone on board so seriously. It was a fun way to learn all of this information, though. After class, we split off, with watch team 2 on watch and the rest of us having some time to chill. Watch team 2 wanted me to include that they saw a big pod of dolphins jumping really high out of the water in the blog.
After cooling off in our bunk with our fans for a couple of hours, everyone gathered together in the cockpit once again for dinner. Miles said that He and Toria had a hell of a time making what were supposed to be bean burgers, but ended up being a pan filled with ingredients from the sad attempt at bean burgers that resulted. To be fair to the chefs, though, it actually tasted really good, and everyone enjoyed it, aside from the fact that it wasn’t in its intended form. My squeeze question tonight was, “What is your top bucket list item?”. We had a lot of different answers to that one, including some generic ones like “Going skydiving,” but we also had answers like “Going to all American National Parks” or “Seeing all seven species of sea turtle out in the wild,” which I thought was cool. Now to get back to Allie’s “Alastair Bisley’s Bees” bit from earlier. After we finished the squeeze, she said it, and we all immediately burst into song, singing happy birthday for a 4th time to Matt. A popular bit on this boat is beating a joke into the ground until it isn’t funny anymore, then slightly changing it suddenly, which makes it hilarious. This is a prime example. Allie then said “Alastair Bisley’s Bees” again, and you could see the “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me” look on Matt’s face, but to his surprise, it wasn’t a happy birthday that came bellowing out this time, but the legendary “Bohemian Rhapsody.” This got him, and as we all belted out a pretty solid rendition of Queen’s most popular song, he started laughing hysterically. It was great.
The staff always told us our blogs could use more creative thinking, so I went hard on this one. You’re welcome. I also don’t really know how to end it, so I guess I’ll end it with this…
“Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Matt,
Happy Birthday to you!”
For the 5th time today now.