Location: Underway to Palau
I’m driving down the road, one hand on the steering wheel, my dog in the passenger seat. I look over at my dog Moon. Suddenly, I hear the words “hazzah” in the background. Weird, the words continue to get louder after every “hazzah”. Then it gets really loud. “HAZZAH, HAZZAH, HAZZAH.” I open my eyes, and of course. It’s Ryan. He wakes me up every day to the same words and doesn’t leave until I repeat the phrase with him. I grab his arm and we both recite “3 cheers to Captain Tom. Hazzah, Hazzah, Hazzah”.
Today, my watch team had the 8-12 AM watch. We go up the companionway to get our pre-watch briefing. As soon as I stuck my head out of the companionway, I was greeted by a nice breeze followed by a strong overcast. Passage can be very repetitiv,e and the Pacific is consistently hot. Immediately, I knew for sure it was going to be a special day.
I get posted up with Noa on bow watch to look out for any potential hazardsbig logs, sheets of metal, anything that could harm our vessel. What I love about bow watch is that it’s the only one-on-one time you get with your peers, which is rare in a crowded boat like Vela. We spent a solid hour talking about our deep love for our grandparents, food, and countries as we stared into the horizon. Noa eventually gets replaced by Drew, and we spend another hour talking about our gratitude towards the world and plans to give back to those in need. Eventually, I get summoned to helm the boat, because obviously I’m the best helm in the Pacific. We spend the rest of the time playing verbal games, and before you know it. It was time for lunch.
For lunch, we had baked ziti, cooked with passion by our dearest Armenian Goat(Jackson). We enjoyed our meal and then started cleaning up. Our day goes on normally, like it does every day. A couple of us took our NAVMASTER exam, others worked on their charting skills, and some gathered in the cockpit and shared laughs. I noticed Arden doing bow watch alone. I joined him, and immediately I heard Bob Marley and the Wailers playing through his phone. We proceed to chat about our passion for Raggae and the good man Bob Marley truly was. We ended up being relieved by Maddy and Ansley. I start walking towards midships, and I see Josh waiting for me to work out with him, and lemme tell you nothing beats working out, getting a tan, and listening to reggae at the same time. I look around. We’ve got people doing laundry, others chatting, Jackson is messing around with his lacrosse stick, until suddenly we see a ton of splashing. Everybody musters on deck, and Mac pulls his drone out. It is exactly what we think it is. A ton of tuna a a bunch of whales. We stop the boat and watch these whales for a solid hour. We get our fishing lines out, and we don’t only get one but two bites. Unfortunately, we STILL don’t have any tuna.
We get the boat moving again, and the day moves on. Arden and I get back to chilling once again, but under the main staysail this time with all the shade we can get. The views are great, the weather is beautiful, and the birds are hunting. It was as nice a day as we could’ve gotten.
Dinner comes around, I gather everyone up, and food starts disappearing pretty fast. Before you know it, dinner was over, and it was now time for a Squeeze. The squeeze all 29 of us into the cockpit, and we all lock hands. My question of the day was, “What kind of parent would the person to your right be?” I thought about this question for about a solid week before my time to become a skipper. I was worried people could get their feelings hurt, but the pros were that people could feel great.
I decided to stick with it, and man, it turned out perfect. It was the most amount of smiles I’ve seen during squeeze, we were pretty loud and many, many, many laughs were shared. In my opinion, it was one of the greatest Squeezes, if not the greatest squeeze, we’ve had yet.