Location: UW Portovenere, Italy to Villefranche, France
It’s our last smidgen of time here in Porto Venere, waking up to a final chilly sunrise surrounded by the pastel Italian waterfront homes and the castle walls behind them. The students and staff finished putting away the last of our provisions this morning after breakfast, which usually ends up as a bizarre version of life-size-Tetris (LST for short). Post LST, the students had a Marine Biology class today before we began our passage preparations. Passage prep is always a bit of an undertaking though it gets smoother and faster every time we get to do it again! It’s a pretty extensive list, but some of the things we need to accomplish before we can depart include: removing the sail covers, rigging up halyards, securing loose items on deck, getting lines ready to run, running the jack lines, lifting both of the dinghies onto the deck, checking engine and generator fluids, securing down below (both the communal and personal spaces), and ensuring all the navigation instruments are on and functioning. We are currently underway at the port of Ville Franche, where we will take a train to get to Monaco the day after we arrive. This passage is another shorter one, ending somewhere around the 20ish-hour mark. Similar to our other short passages, it serves as another leg to prepare for our upcoming ocean crossing. It’s impressive to reflect on what we’ve accomplished and where we’ve been these last few weeks, but it’s even more exciting to think about what is yet to come.
“It’s good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” – Ernest Hemingway – Matt “Hollywood” Hollfelder.