Location: Underway to Tarragona
If anyone was ever wondering, the 12 am-4 am is the best watch. The stars, the moon, the bioluminescence, the weird 2:30 am talks-it is a blast! Last night was no different. Watch team 3 took over at 12am and celebrated the start of Maria Fe’s birthday by wishing on shooting stars before she went to bed. We then started our attempt at a spooky watch, which really just turned into storytelling and boat-watching for the first couple of hours. Around 2 am, I sadly had to pull Calum out of his dreams to crush his dream of keeping up all of the sails through the night-they were just not happy. As a result, in the last hour and half of our watch, we dropped a couple of sails, trimmed the rest, and got back on a course that was head into the wind, all under the moonlight. All in all, your favorite primary sail handler watch team (our jobs during emergencies) had a grand ole time and were very ready for bed at 4 am-but not before having a snack of peanut butter cookies made by Santana.
Sometimes on the 8 am-12 pm watch with watch team 2, the wind veered favorably, the engine got shut down, and Argo got to cruise through the water fully under sail power! Unfortunately..fortunately? She was moving too fast, and our arrival time to Tarragona was projected to, yet again, be in the early morning hours, so Calum decided that we needed to instead slow down. To do so, we heaved to for the afternoon and brought our speed down to about 1kt. This sail trim makes for a fun afternoon because no one needs to be on the helm, just around keeping an eye on things. This brings me to the title of this blog, who was driving Argo today? the answer? A sail tie-who kept our helm hard over. This made for calmer conditions for a sneaky nav master exam and oceanography class with me! Today, we focused on waves and tides-very applicable to our everyday life. We also got to learn about Barcelona from Claire!
The meals today were brought to you by Gabe, Calum, and Sammy and were amazingly flavourful! A full Shabbat dinner, complete with homemade challah! For squeeze, I switched things up for maybe the first time in Sea|mester history, but I had a promise to keep. Before our beloved Cate left in Gibraltar, she submitted her final leadership essay and did not follow a single aspect of the rubric. Instead, she wrote her “Ode to Argo,” which highlighted the individual leadership qualities of every person on board. She asked me to read it to the crew after she left so that everyone knew how much she saw, valued, and cared for everyone. So, after going around saying our appreciation, I read her paper, and Cate, if you’re reading this, there was not a dry eye in the cockpit! Thank you for your words, your light, and your love <3 We miss you so so much!
We ended the day singing happy birthday to Maria and eating some delicious cake!
We are about 12 hrs out from Tarragona-that is if we ever start moving again. So we will talk with you all soon! Sending our love and good vibes 🙂