Location: Underway to Tahiti!
Today I started the day with the 00:00 – 04:00 watch with watch team 3. As we get further into the ocean, the convocations and time spent awake at night get progressively weirder. This morning we discussed our biggest regrets and what we thought our character flaws were, which was followed by an hour and a half of group singing with no backing music. While this was going on, Carla was attempting to make bread. Apparently, they don’t have yeast in Greenland, so this was a bit of a learning curve at 2 o’clock in the morning.
The next time we were up was lunch. As we were doing one of the daily count-offs, there was a massive series of dark clouds just upwind of us, which looked like rain. Having been sailing around the equator for a few weeks now, having some rain and a cool breeze seemed very exciting. One of the theories of how this rain was caused is a conspiracy theory that whenever someone makes soup onboard, rain and cold weather are never far behind. There are lots of benefits to rain, but the best is having the perfect equilibrium where it is filling your bowl as fast as you can eat the soup… endless, unlimited, infinite soup! However, the negatives are to avoid the freshly baked bread from becoming soggy. You have to stop eating and start inhaling. The other problem with big raindrops is that they hit the soup in the unlimited soup bowl is the major splashback. Soup rain is the arch nemesis of the white deck paint.
While the students were doing a marine biology exam, a few staff were left on deck. Unfortunately, the rain had sucked away all our favorable wind for sailing, so this meant some staff sail drops in the rain, which is always fun. After all the sails were dropped, I had a water party with Smash. This was pretty much where I would helm the boat and dance while Smash threw water over my head from the 32 water bottles which were on deck. Maybe this could be incorporated into a live music venue with a dance floor and a fire hose.
The second-afternoon class was seamanship. This was held on deck where all the students came on deck, and they pretty much instantly went down to fill their now empty water bottles… who knows where that went? Today’s seamanship challenge was to work in watch teams to raise and drop the main staysail. This was a challenge because the watch teams raced for time of the raise/drop and neatness of the infamous sail flaking skill. Working in watch teams of 8, you would assume, could put in some pretty competitive times, which is also what the students thought until Tom, the Captain, beat the best team’s score solo by 3 mins.
Finally, we ate dinner under another beautiful sunset over the Pacific Ocean.
Shout out to Skye Wright, my younger sister who loves a good blog read!
P.S. Happy Birthday mom! Love you <3 Morana