Location: Underway to the Caribbean
What’s up, blog readers? It’s Max on the blog again. This morning was pretty eventful as we got waves crashing over the bow on our 4-8 watch. One of the ratchet straps holding the prop shaft failed, so we had to drop the flying jib to put on a new ratchet. As Ben and Theo go up onto the martingale to tie down the jib, as Eliza and I sweat the forward staysail preventer just behind them, I feel the boat fly up 20 feet off the crest of a wave and pause for about a half-second. I can see that we are lined up perfectly with the next wave to get sent straight to Splash Mountain, and Eliza and I are like, fuuuuuuuuu. About five inches of water stays on the bow, slowly draining out of the scuppers. (it was pleasant other than the fact that I was going to bed in thirty minutes covered in salt) The four of us come back to midships to regroup, sopping wet, although Theo and Ben had it worse. Then Tom fixed the prop shaft, the end.
In other news, our chefs, Amy, Grace C., and Brendan, got to work on lunch at 10 to make us some ham and cheese paninis. Meanwhile, Boston and I cracked open the last can of pineapple on the bow for a snack, which is really unfortunate because they were freaking delicious, and now we have to resort to a fruit cocktail (blah). After lunch, we had a really fast oceanography class on aquaculture and then watched white squally after for seamanship class, which was fun because there was no concept of safety back in the ’60s. And then, it finally happened. WE DID 5 THOUSAND NAUTICAL MILES WOOOO. Now we can all get swallow tattoos on our foreheads! (jk mom) it feels like we’re so so so close, but that might just be the heat down below. Emma came up to the cockpit to plan for provisioning, and I signed up to make my dad’s bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers as well as mac n cheese for Thanksgiving, which I’m so excited about. Dinner today was a surprise: hamburgers, which I hadn’t heard of before, but they are basically burgers wrapped in a bun. That’s pretty much it today. I gotta go take a shower and study for a bio test tomorrow. CYA
Miss you, Mom, Dad, Claire. Can’t wait to call when i get to land.
Happy birthday, big dawg! -Jesse