Location: 38,48.41'N ; 043, 42.66'W
Hello dear parents and loved ones of those on this vessel (hi grandma!) Today was started about as well as possible with a pod of speckled dolphins swimming up to the bow of Vela and swimming alongside us for about a minute or so before eventually going their own way. Then about 90 minutes later, watch team 2 was recruited to help raise all the sails so we could hopefully put a stop to the long streak of days spent motoring and get back to sailing and preserve the poor ears of our lovely staff who get the brunt of the engine noises at all times of the day. We didn’t hit the 5 min deadline on raising the mainsail for ice cream from Tom onshore, but we did far better than when we started clocking in at 9 mins. It was not meant to be sad because after lunch and sometimes during classes, the wind died again, and Calum, Tom, Freddie, and Dylan had to take the sails down all over again. Meanwhile, we had another scheduling meeting in the salon with Tom to figure out what we wanted to do for classes, and it was a near-unanimous decision to try to take as many classes as we could on the rest of this and all remaining passages to make the most of our time onshore. Then after the classes for the day, we got the news we were allowed to take another ocean swim which had most people pretty excited (I personally took a nap to build a buffer for planned sleep deprivation tonight for the sake of movie night). Then to finish off the day, we had a wonderful veggie curry dinner made by Brianne, and I managed to get stuck in an uncomfortable standing position for squeeze for the umpteenth time this voyage! My question for the day was, “what were you looking forward to the most on this trip, and has that changed after some time has passed?” (try to guess who’s priorities changed). In the end, not the most eventful day we’ve had on Vela, but even the uneventful ones end up being memorable, especially with the days sort of blurring together on the passage, it manages to feel like an eternity and less than a week at the same time, hard to believe its been 4 weeks already!
Still waking up from his nap,
Amos
Photo 1: Screenshot of my video of the dolphins this morning.
Photo 2: Drone shot of the full sail raise. Credit: Case using Keally’s drone
Photo 3: Rocco, Spencer, and Paige setting up the jib.