Location: Underway to Fernando de Noronha
Day 31!
We started off the day with a midnight sail raise by watch teams 2 and 3. Darian did a 4-hour helming session and earned her helmsona of “Hellman of Troy,” big congrats!! The lack of the constant brmrmrmrmrmrmrmrmmr of the engine was very welcome when my watch team (team 1) came onto watch from 8 am-12 pm. During our watch, the AC went on, giving our slumbering mates sleep that was not only quiet but blessedly cool. While almost everyone was sleeping, we saw Talia hard at work studying in the galley for her PSCT retake exam. The wind was looking good, so we did something we had never done before — sailing wing on wing!! We had our main sail up AND our main staysail up in the opposite direction, flying down the wind! Unfortunately, all great things come to an end. We discovered a downside of wing-on-wing sailing — if you crash jibe and go too far away the wrong way, the sails end up counteracting each other, and then you get into a situation of backwinded sails. We had some fun moments of sailing directly backward, where our stern became our bow, and our captain Calum was splashed about on the helm. We ended up having the center line the stay-sail once again and return to just sailing with the main sail. But we were still sailing! We opened up the day with a lovely lunch of black bean burgers with homemade buns, potatoes, and slaw made by our head chef, Nicole, and her sous chefs, Meg and Maddy. After lunch, we had our Oceanography class all about the tides and how they work, how they change, and why they matter to us. After that was seamanship, which was a movie day today!!!!! We watched the movie White Squall, which was about a group of students on a voyage not too dissimilar to our own. We enjoyed pointing out how much like us the characters in the movie were, until…. *SPOILER ALERT* things took a very dark turn, which left half of our crew mates crying before dinner and feeling thankful for our dedication to safety and wearing our PFDs (which no one in the movie wore). Also, in the afternoon, Talia (absolute rock star) passed her PSCT colregs exam!!! Congrats to all the hardworking PSCT-ers for getting that behind them. We had a delicious dinner of beef, vegetable stir-fry, and rice and wished we could be climbing up the sails as we saw the crew do in White Squall. I wrapped up the day with a wholesome squeeze question about what we admire about the people around us as we enjoyed a lovely sunset!