Location: Underway to St. Helena
Watch team 3’s day started off at 330 am when we were awoken for our 4-8 watch. For me, that meant a lovely head scratch from Allie, followed by a weather report and her best advice on how many layers I should come up on deck in. Its slowly but surely been getting a bit warmer at night underway as we get further and further north and away from Cape Town. The 4-8 watch is a historically good one. For me, I love having a little sleep, then watching, and then a little more sleep, but there’s some pretty hot ongoing debate on which watch is best. I don’t think this group of students has decided just yet, but I dabble back and forth with 4-8 or 12-4. Both get my preferred sleeps in, 12-4 has stars and 4-8 has sunrise, pretty tough to beat either honestly. But I digress. We got on deck at 355, ready to take over from watch team 2 at 4 am. We got some tunes going right away and talked about everything from the garlic dip from Dominos to Jake’s feelings. When the sun came up, it was time to drop the jib. Unfortunately, the wind has died off quite a bit, so we’re motoring for now, but fingers crossed, not for too long. After the jib was down, flaked, and lashed watch, team 1 was up on deck, ready for their 8-12 watch. We then went cross-over an episode and got to take the main sail down altogether before heading off for our baby sleeps from 8 ish to lunchtime.
Coming up for lunch, we found watch team 1 looking for treasure off the port side. And by treasure, I mean a floating gallon bottle of bleach in the middle of all of the blue. While sad to see, it is sometimes fun to get excited about silly things like that to break up the sometimes sameness of the blue ocean drifting by the side of the boat. Lunch today was in fact BRUNCH, which I am always a big fan of. Kip, Emma, and Frida whipped up some delicious chocolate chip pancakes. Following lunch, the students rolled into Marine Biology, where they learned about the basics of biology and the building blocks of life. Afterward, in Leadership with Allie, they finished the stories of their lives and spoke about the time from age 15 to now. All the while, Jake and I were on deck on watch, where we were joined by Freddie, Allie, and Nick. We got to watch Nick and Freddie jointly take the Wills Oceanography quiz that the students are taking tomorrow. They did quite well, earning an 11/15 on the quiz. I definitely had to control my face, though, when I knew they were picking the wrong answers a few times. Our watch team re-emerged from the saloon for a bit for some music and helming. They then retreated back down below for a group study sesh with thew aforementioned Will for the aforementioned OCE quiz tomorrow.
By the end of the watch, it was time for dinner, and again, the chefs whipped out a great one. Chicken pad thai, in a swap with my dinner for tomorrow. I am now making what they were going to make: crispy tofu tacos. This group is quite averse to tofu at the moment, so I am excited to cook it the right way for them and hopefully change their thinking about it. I, too, once was grossed out by tofu until having it cooked well on board here. Our squeeze tonight, as the title suggests, was show and tell, which is one of my recent favorites. I, as always, brought my stuffed squishmallow cow named Marvin. Others brought their own personal seasoned salt they brought all the way from home or proof of the advancing medical technology in the world. One of the crowd favorites was Conor, who said he doesn’t have too many sentimental objects and instead gave us a tour of all of the injuries he’s had that have resulted in scars throughout his life. That boy does get injured a lot. As i write this sitting on top of the chart table watch team 1 is listening to music together on watch and awaiting watch team 2 to relieve them while the sun goes down in front of them. As for myself, it is shower time and off to bed for my mini sleep before my 12-4 watch tonight, some might say the best watch there is?
Last but not least, because I will get in trouble if I don’t, hi Mom and Dad! And Hi Shaun! Lucky you guys that I ended up as a skipper way sooner into the program than I did last time. And yes, I made the wheel, but no, I didn’t do this on purpose. Talk to you guys in a week or so when we arrive in St Helena!