Location: Underway to Tarragona
Made the mistake of promising today’s chefs that I would wake them up, so my day started at 5:45 a.m. Let me just say the galley was poppin’ all day. With head chef (of the day) Gordon blasting music below deck, boy, were they cookin’. They served up eggs and potatoes to prepare us for our longest passage yet to Spain! Goodbye Villafranche, you were beautiful, but we’ve got places to be. Immediately after breakfast, we started to prepare for passage. As skipper, I got the clipboard, which meant I delegated jobs and told everyone what to do while I sat back and watched the chaos ensue. Kidding. I helped, too, and we’re getting better and better at passage prep each time, really shaping up to be a real crew. Once we fired up the engine and got going, it was lunchtime. Our chefs, Gordon, Miles, and Hilary served up deli sandwiches (back home, I work at a deli and can’t seem to escape it, lol). This is around the time we saw dolphins swimming off the bow! Watch teams started after lunch, but so did classes, oceanography, and then seamanship. In seamanship, we learned a few knots (boline and square) and also the order of operations in sail raising/lowering. After that, some people worked on assignments, others took naps, and our chefs were back in the galley. Dinner was breakfast burritos, finishing off with 14 dozen eggs used today. I ended our dinner squeeze with the Macarena, and then we all cleaned up.
After cleanup, my watch team (watch team 1!!!) was on the 812 a.m. shift. Probably the best watch yet! The stars definitely stole the show, but the bioluminescence was a close second. There was no moon in the sky, so the stars were twinkling extra bright, the Milky Way was visible, and we actually saw Starlink (which felt a bit like Star Wars, queue the imperial march) traveling through the night sky. I pointed out the constellations to my team, as well as satellites and the space stations; we saw plenty of shooting stars, too. I got to be on the helm for a bit, which was awesome, using the stars as my guide! Overall it was a smooth watch. We ended it by singing happy birthday to Amanda when she came up on deck for her team’s watch, and afterward, a few of us stayed up to finish our fish ID books but quickly made our way to bed due to our 8 a.m.-12 p.m. watch shift the next morning. With every passage, we’re all getting more and more excited for the Atlantic crossing. Already, two days are messing with our heads. What will three weeks do?!! Well, that’s all for now, signing off -Chelsea A.