Location: Underway to the Azores
Tina’s Birthday. That was the overarching theme of today. Well, that, minus the bird that we caught. We sang happy birthday on every possible occasion; unfortunately, we did not sing it 31 times. However, we did have one of the more important things that people have on birthdays: brownies– lots of delicious brownies, which made Tina very excited. Without her knowing, at least we think, we all signed a card for her and gave it to her just before the squeeze, accompanied by another round of happy birthday.
Without too much emphasis on the birthday girl (by the way, everybody was excited), we also had a rad class session today. We tied knots. Lots of knots. Different kinds of knots. Most importantly, we learned when and where to use said knots. Cool right? Really there are only five knots that we need to sail Argo, which is a little mind-blowing.
Oh right, before/during class, we spotted a squall. It loomed over the horizon in front of us, so we prepared to get rained on. But, it never came. It just slipped to the side of us. No rain today, folks. Since we are on weather, the wind was pretty light, so we ended up taking down the flying jib and mainsail. Sad. But we should get more wind sooner rather than later. Exciting. We are all looking forward to genuinely sailing without the additional use of the motor.
The last highlight of the day was the before-mentioned bird. We have three fishing lines off the back of the boat, and an unfortunate booby bird got tangled in one of the lures. No worries, though. The bird was safely pulled in and untangled. Although, its feathers were quite ruffled. The bird was placed on the deck so that it could fly away. It did not. Instead, it sat there looking somewhat bewildered for a good portion of the time. Eventually, it opened its wings and accidentally caught the wind, and promptly fell over the side of the boat. It then flew up and flew off safely into the sunset.
-Tori