Location: Underway to St Helena
Welcome to Day 10 of passage!!! Throughout my time at Sea|Mester, Ive
experienced many Day 10s of passage. The average Day 10 typically feels a
little tired, sorta smelly, bored of routine, and an unmatched craving for ice
cream and a dip in the ocean. I am happy to report that the so-called mid-
cruise blues have not yet hit the crew of Argo, and I dont think they will as we
begin to approach the homestretch of this passage. Everyone appears to remain
full of energy, lust for sailing, and excitement as we get closer and closer to St.
Helena even despite all our middle-of-the-night sail-handling last night! Special
shoutout to Watch Team 3 (Nicole, Ben, Cecily, Benny, Maddy, and Nini) for all
staying up an hour and a half past the end of their 8-12 watch to help my watch
team (Isaac, Sylver, Olympus, Zac, and Kara) as we took down the main sail. We
have ocially entered the tropics now – one of many milestones for Argo this
semester – which means the weather is a bit less predictable. We are now met
by light winds for the next few days, which unfortunately means we had to turn
the engine back on in order to maintain our speed and schedule.
Lucky for us, the chef of the day today was Dave, who takes a lot of pride in
making the best meals possible for the crew. Dave started up in the galley
around 7:30 this morning, preparing braised beef and refried kidney beans for a
burrito bowl lunch. His sous chefs (Nini and Maddy) and bread maker (Cecily)
joined the party a bit later on to help with lunch and make burger buns for dinner
tonight.
After lunch, I practiced my secret handshake with Talia. Im really bad at it, but
practice will make perfect eventually. Then, we broke into classes. Meg taught
oceanography and I taught the next lesson in navigation. In the last class, we
practiced plotting coordinates, measuring distances, and determining courses.
Today, we looked at the eects of variation and deviation on the compass and
how that may aect passage planning. We combined all of this knowledge into a
challenge to determine when we would arrive in St. Helena. The parameters of
the challenge were intentionally left a bit vague in order to challenge the
students to use all of their resources and make as many considerations as
possible. I was so impressed by what they came up with. One team looked
through all of our hourly logs for the past 10 days to correlate boat speed with
wind speed, then looked at the wind speed for the next coming days to
determine Argos predicted speed until arrival in St. Helena. Another group
measured the distance of our plotted path from Cape Town to our current
location and then compared that distance with our trip reading (the actual
amount of miles we have traveled) to determine our percent error in staying on
course. They then applied this percent error to the amount of miles remaining
in order to get a more accurate distance remaining until St. Helena. This group
calculated a 10% helmsman error, meaning for every 100 miles, we are typically
sailing 110 miles as we weave around a bit o course. 10% is pretty good for
new sailors! Its very dicult to remain exactly on route, but I am confident we
will be able to reduce this error on coming passages.
Ultimately, each of the three teams predicted a February 10th arrival – by my
estimations, this seems maybe a day too hopeful, but theres always potential!
Zac, Isaac, Benny, and Nini calculated 8 am. Maddy, Eli, Darien, Talia, and Kara
estimated 11 am. Kiki, Olympus, Sylver, and Cecily calculated an 11 pm arrival.
This raised the final question – will we choose to anchor at night? Or slow
down to anchor in the day time? There are endless variabilities to account for
when planning and executing a passage.
Most of the Sea|Mester trips Ive done have had longer passages closer to the
end of the trip, meaning the expected learning curve is a bit more gradual.
Having a long passage start just a week after arrival really threw everyone in the
deep end. Yet, the crew of Argo rose to the challenge. I am extremely proud of
everyones desire to learn and commitment to each other to get this boat across
the Atlantic!
As the game of Assassin continues, the stakes grow higher. Eli is asking the big
questions- where does the dishy pit end and begin? Will Darien trade a beloved
and rare Sprite for answers?
Tonight at the Squeeze, I asked everyone to describe their best friend in 3 words.
So, with that, shoutout, Tess, if you make time to read these blogs on the subway.
Talk to you soon!
Other Shoutouts:
Happy birthday, Uncle Zul! I love you, Page, and family!- Kiki
Hi, family and friends! Love and miss everyone. To Maisy- keep recording those
vlogs! – Talia