Location: Off the Coast of the Arquipelago Dos Açores
I’m back again to tell you more about our lives on the beautiful ship we call home! Santana, Sammy, Cate, Maya, Will, and I started out our mornings at 6 am. Santana and I were on a mission to have one last sacred dock shower with warm water. Sammy attempted to get a pastry at his favorite cafe but ended up getting there a little too early. He instead enjoyed one last walk around town, Cate and Maya started on breakfast, and Will was finishing up our dock mural of Argo. Everyone else’s mornings started at 7:15 am, waking up to the theme song to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, chosen by yours truly. While breakfast was cooking in the oven, we finished passage prep and added our initials to the dock mural. Calum found the old Argo mural at the other end of the dock, so a few of us walked down there to look at the past crews’ contributions. After our bunks were “40/40” ed and we were stuffed with Maya’s amazing sheet-pan pancakes, we put on our PFDs again, said our goodbyes to Carson and Emma, and Eddie threw us our dock lines one last time.
At last, we were taking Argo back out to where she belongs. We deflated fenders and put them back in the anchor locker, pulled up Nopadone and put her to sleep, and fell back into the routine of watch teams, complete with boat checks and helming. Maya attempted and succeeded by 1000% in recreating Cate’s buffalo tofu sliders. Guys, this meal is delicious, and I couldn’t think of a better way to start our week-long passage. Following clean-up, we had oceanography and seamanship, where we learned more about seawater and the information we needed for our ICC exam, respectively. Because the past week has been so exciting, several people had the same idea and took much-needed naps while others took the downtime to work on assignments, hang out, or stand on watch. Our second wake-ups of the day were at 5:30 pm, just as dinner was coming out of the oven. I managed to pull everyone out of bed, and we were all able to immerse ourselves in Maya’s last meal of the day: Lasagna and salad. While we can still see land, it’s nice to be back out in the ocean, and I can’t wait to see the beautiful sunsets and sparkles, both above and below. Stay tuned to read about our second passage!