Location: Atlantic Ocean
Ahoy!
This is the fifth day out on the open ocean, and things are starting to get weird. We, for example, have a ghost onboard who loves stealing people’s things and then returning them a day later (*cough*). Other than that, we have mostly gotten into a routine now. The first few days, sleeping was hard with all the rocking and many (including me) were quite seasick. Now, we sleep like logs once we get off our night watch, and everyone has become used to the motions of the boat.
Today when looking out from the boat we have had nothing but slight waves and clear skies, unfortunately the very light wind means that we continue motoring rather than sailing. There has been a rumor going around that yesterday had one of the clearest, most beautiful starry skies (I was fast asleep and did sadly not witness this gorgeous sight, but nights before have not been bad either). In the middle of the Atlantic, with the nearest boat 70 nm away, there is almost no light pollution (except us), so you can see the whole Milky Way, a shooting star now and again, and I assume if you brought a telescope, even more, cool space stuff. While being off the grid with no service has been very good for me, who has been quite obsessed with social media (and I would say it has been good for others, too), it’s during times like night watch that I really miss being able to whip up my phone and use an app that you can hold up to the stars and see what constellations you’re looking at and if there is any planet around. I only know how to find Orion, and he is not that interesting, to be honest.
The light wind and clear skies meant that the blaring sun became unbarring at points. People seek shade, change into bikini-tops/shorts combos, or forgoing a shirt. Once everyone had eaten as much as they wanted from our delicious lunch, we headed down into the saloon for our first quiz (oceanography!). We continued with seamanship, doing some equations and figuring out how to read charts.
Wow, is the time really only two o’clock? Yes! We have left the South African time zone, and I am now experiencing the same time as my family and friends in Sweden 🙂 With our “extra” hour, we decided to take our first dip into the ocean. Once we turned the motor off, we could (with lifejackets) jump from the boat. Everyone had fun trying to get the biggest splash or seeing how deep we could dive. It was very refreshing, the water being the perfect temperature. Once Meg brought out her snorkeling gear, everyone got a chance to glance down into the blue abyss, continuing for hundreds to thousands of meters down. It felt quite surreal once you start thinking about it. We are in the middle of nowhere, swimming with nothing (that we can see) below us.
While on deck drying off and using the opportunity to sunbathe a bit and work on our tan lines (well, everyone except me, who is pale as a paper and really can’t get tan), Freddie yells, “Shark!”. Sure enough, around 30m on the port side, there is a fin sticking out from the ocean, swimming at a leisurely pace. We tried getting closer to it, but it soon disappeared from view and dove underwater before we could identify the type of shark and write about him and his species in our logbook for marine biology. The excitement from the shark slowly died, and people used their free time (if not on watch) to work on their autobiography for our leadership class or test each other on species for our quiz in marine biology tomorrow.
The day ended with a delicious dinner and a discussion about what superpower would be the coolest, most practical, and funniest to have.
That’s all for me, bye!!
(Saknar er dar hemma! Denna dumma dator kan inte skriva a, a eller o.)