Location: Underway to Dominica
Whats up, outside world! Today was a pretty chill day, if you consider chill to be sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. My day started at midnight when my watch team had the 12-4 watch. If you didnt know already, the 12-4 is widely considered the best watch because you can get the maximum amount of sleep possible. Our watch was pretty quiet considering we still had no engine running, but I wasnt one to complain, as silence is hard to find out here on Argo. The stars were amazing, some of the best so far. One of my favorite pastimes on watch is pulling out a stargazing app and finding all the constellations we can see that are almost impossible to find at home. Jem, Oscar, Fish, and I ended our watch with a couple rounds of 20 questions, which turned out to be a really entertaining game when youre a little sleep-deprived.
When I woke up in the morning, we were still happily sailing along, holding about 5-6 knots, which was impressive considering we only had about 10-15 knots of wind. I had a lovely breakfast of oats, although every time I eat oats now, I think about the millions of pounds of oats I helped put away when we provisioned for this crossing. I never truly appreciated the oat until I saw so many of them in one place (youll understand if youve read Aidans blog post from a couple of weeks ago). After my breakfast, I headed down to the salon to join the several people locked in on the nav master studying. Amelia, Chloe, and Liv were hard at work making our lunch, which was some of the best falafel I have ever had in my life. After lunch, Nick informed us we were all told we have a serious case of get-there-itis and that we need to really appreciate the fact that we are doing a really cool thing right now. Then, now these are his words not mine, he said that when we get home we are going to be the coolest people in our friend groups because who do you know whos crossed an ocean before! After lunch, we had marine bio on deck, followed by (for some of us) the dreaded nav master exam. Hailey, Alexa, Fish, Samantha, Teo, Chloe, Emily, Bryson, Matt, Cameron, and I poured over our exams and charts for an hour and a half until it was all over. It was a real relief when I handed in my test and knew that I never had to know how to find an estimated position or a dead reckoning or know where the Y NCA whl 6 sec bouy (or whatever it was called) was on the chart. About halfway through the exam, we all got a big surprise when we heard the engine rumble up. Nick had successfully fixed the shaft problem! As much as I am excited to be in the Caribbean, I did really enjoy the sailing over the past 2 days without the engine. As we had more west, we were supposed to hit some stronger wind and be back sailing!!
(Editor note: Watch team 3 is currently having a mandatory Zootopia viewing in the salon, off-watch obviously. Yay, watch team 3 bonding!)
To my family – I miss you all so much! Just to let you know, my helmsona name is Helmy McHelm-face in honor of Boaty McBoat-face (I thought that would make you all laugh). Make sure to pick up when a random number calls you in a week, so I can tell you about all the crazy things that happened in the middle of the ocean!! Love you all so much!