Location: Bali
Good Morning from Bali (For the last time)!
This morning, I was awoken at 7:20 by Vivian, saying, “Margo, aren’t you the skipper today?” Shoutout to Viv for that and to everyone else on board- you’re welcome for the extra 20 minutes of sleep. Speaking of everyone on board, we are three people lighter. Bo, Sid, and Navarre departed at 3 am last night for their flight out to Thailand.
Best wishes to them!
The rest of us had a delicious breakfast of yogurt and granola and got started on Boat Appreciation (where we show Argo how much we love her by doing a deep scrub) and Passage Prep. We’re heading into the longest and most difficult passage of the trip. We expect to be at sea for 12 days in the windy, wavy Indian Ocean. So far, we’ve been mostly practicing our sail handling skills in calm water. Now, we’ll put them to the test in some more skilled waters.
This morning, I was on the on-deck team. We got the davits secured, attached the halyards to the sail heads, and sent Lolo up the mast to inspect the rigging (look at me and my fancy sailing words. Gabe, if you’re reading this, please factor this into my seamanship grade).
We also had some serious scrubbing going on down below. The chart house, salon, and galley were polished until they shone. We also said a final goodbye to the diving equipment and sent all of our tanks to be lashed belowdecks. By that time, we were all starving from our hard work and enjoyed our lunch of kale and spam salad.
After lunch, we got one final refuel and cranked out the passage prep. Sadly, we had to say goodbye to our dear friend Megatron- we deflated and stowed her today, where she will remain until Argo is back in business after her facelift this spring (for those who may be unfamiliar, Megatron is one of our dinghies). We also got everything 40/40’d (or secured to prepare for 40 degrees of heel and 40 knots of wind). This is super important because nobody wants to be woken up by all of your things flying across the room and hitting you in the face.
Once passage prep was over, we also got some time to work on our Group Research Projects for Oceanography. Our discussion drafts are due today- so naturally, most of us started them this afternoon. Blame the whitewater rafting. Most of the afternoon was spent deep in assorted schoolwork. To give you a taste of the type of work we’re doing, my group’s project was about the ratios of phytoplankton to zooplankton in different temperatures of water.
Eventually, we had to pause for dinner on a sparkly clean Argo. We enjoyed a beautiful sunset for our last night anchored in Indo and are looking forward to passage tomorrow!
Catch you on the flip side,
Margo
Photo Captions:
Ok, so I forgot to take pictures today. I’ll be honest. I was really busy, and it totally slipped my mind. So enjoy an assortment of my favorite pictures from the past week or so.
1.- The dishie pit! the daily backbone of Argo
2.- Argo from afar, in our Balian anchorage
3.- The sunset at dinner tonight
4.- A lizard I saw on the wall of the rafting place
5.- shenanigans in the port three-person cabin (featuring Rykleigh, Amelia, and Myself)
6.- More shenanigans- Tim and Sydnei carrying Lolo into the engine room
7.- Rykleigh getting very into some Nav Master practice
8.- Watch Team 2!! A.k.a. Two Seahorses in a Yin Yang Formation (A.k.a. the best watch team ever)