Location: Underway to Mauritius
Time Travel?? You may be asking yourself at this point. Alas, it’s only a jest, or rather a play on events, for today was another 15 degrees of longitude under the belt, which meant we set our clocks back another hour. This morning started as beautiful as I could ask for, though, as yesterday lacking when it comes to natural propulsion (wind of course!), so today was another day with the engine running. However, this also meant we were able to put up the cockpit tarp so we could eat breakfast and lunch out of the powerful Indian Ocean sun. Lunch itself (a delicious beef curry with cashews and rice) was whipped up by Siva, Sam, and Caroline, which we all enjoyed at noon (though we finished it at 11:15!). After lunch, we enjoyed three classes: first was MTE, where we started our unit on navigation, which will take us to the end of the trip for our big final; the second was SLS(leadership), where we sat on the foredeck of Argo, and each took turns reading Chinese proverbs on leadership, then discussing the movie Seven Years in Tibet which we had finished the other day (I thoroughly enjoyed it!); last, we learned about the physical properties of shorelines from Kimi in OCE (oceanography)(beaches, cliffs, and deltas). After classes, as per the norm, we had showers on deck, followed by free time for all but watch team one. I chose to spend this time studying for the PSCT Law exam coming up in a few days and finishing up the book I have been reading (An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Col. Chris Hadfield). During this downtime, the line that Bryant had let out caught a beautiful four-foot Mahi, which Teagan expertly cleaned with enough time for us to add to our dinner! There really is nothing quite as good as a freshly caught fish, let alone a Mahi! Siva, Sam, and Caroline then cooked up some spaghetti Alfredo with the Mahi as well as the planned canned tuna on the side. As I finish off this blog post, we approach the six-hour mark to our next waypoint, which is just a few miles off the northern point of Mauritius, which means we should be arriving at Port Louis just a few hours after that! Here is to another perfect day in paradise!!