Location: Orange Bay, Statia
Here we go again. It’s Sara and Clara sneaking into the chart house to write the skipper blog for the day and avoid provisioning. As I arose this morning to wake up my fellow peers for the last time, I was met with the most interesting morning that one could ever have. While waking up some of my peers, I was greeted by Casey’s foot shooing me away to tell me he was awake. I had Katie (in a little sleepy morning gremlin voice) tell me that she was already awake [as she shut the little curtain that she created and fell right back asleep], I also jumped into Clara’s bed to wake her up, and she told me that I reminded her of how her dog would jump in her bed in the mornings. The moral of the story is there, is a super interesting way to start off the day as the skeward (yes, that would be skipper and steward combined, in case no one caught you guys up on that). After breakfast, we had a lovely leadership class that was led by Eva and Grace. We all wrote down various constraining internal beliefs that we have, and then we folded them up and put them into a bowl. After that, we shuffled them around and picked out random ones, and we talked about it as a group and ways that we could improve on that constraining internal belief and turn it into a positive thing. After leadership, the chefs departed and began cooking a scrumptious meal for lunch. “What is the difference between dark and light” my morbid and dark sidekick questioned as she peered off into the distance dramatically, lost in the deep dark depths of her thoughts that floated around like gray clouds in the summer sky. This afternoon, Nick explained Star Wars to Clara and Katie as they chopped onions and brussel sprouts for dinner. In the episode, they watched Count Doko as he lost himself to anger and left the Jedi for the dark side. Clara and Sara decided they were one in the dark. Anger simmers perennially beneath the surface on the Ocean Star. These are the things that we put up with today:
– The uneven lines and the ghost points (such as note J which even Nick himself can’t find) that we can never locate on our navigation chart). The jib sheets we had to reflake (it took four people), and even then, we ended up flaking the jib upside down, so we all had to maneuver it around in order to keep our lovely flakes. We had to deal with trying to learn how to chart and learning that this entire time (mind you, the exam is tomorrow), we have been drawing the lines wrong… yeah… who would’ve thought that it would be so hard to draw a line, right?
Anyways, back to our random Star Wars dispute– we have resolved that there is no difference between dark and light. Both are powerful forces. The things that frustrate us about Ocean Star are also the things that we love the most about her. Overall this trip has taught us some amazing life lessons that we will carry alongside us throughout the future years. Being on ocean star has been full of boatloads of hard work, sweat, and over-tiredness, but it has also been the place where we have formed the closest bonds with others and where we have all experienced something so unforgettable and unimaginable together.
Sara wants a purple lightsaber. Clara wants an invisible lightsaber. Together we will be the most powerful Jedi. We don’t know who the most powerful person is in the Star Wars realm… anyways. It’s getting late, and we have a nice long day full of shore time and our lovely nav master exam tomorrow, so we best be off to bed now. Peace out, party people. I am definitely going to miss this boat and the lovely family that we have all formed on this boat.
Signing off
-Sara