Programs Blog
Calm Seas, Exciting Days
August 22, 2025
Location (Lat and Long): 31 01’.88 N 156 45’.99
Ship Speed: 8
Log (nm): 696.9nm
Weather/Wind/Sail Plan: No wind and no weather
The past two days sadly have not been the best weather for sailing, as the wind has started to die down. Which though sad it has been pretty amazing to see the expanse of the Pacific in glassy still waters. It makes you recognize how far out we really are. But the lack of wind doesn’t mean that is hasn’t been spectacular in other ways. Because of the low wind we (well C watch did the heavy lifting – thanks C watch) got to set and downhaul and set again the Fisherman Sail, which hadn’t been done in a few years. And definitely gave us some extra speed with the low wind. Today however the wind totally died and we had to sail under the d-sail (aka the engine) for the whole day. But no waves, no wind and the past few days of good on course sailing was the perfect combination for a swim call. Yay! Despite the thousands of micro plastics in the water and the few macro plastic floating by swimming in 5800m deep water it was a pretty magical experience. And hopefully depending on the weather maybe have another chance to.
The lack of weather has allowed for a lot of learning of celestial navigation, something that I knew very little about before coming on the ship and has been extremely cool to learn about. And baffling that it was the main navigational tool used to perform these transits before GPS was widely available in the 2000. The view of the stars and the Milkyway has also been so clear. And as Irena has requested the photo I took of the Milkyway will be in this blog.
The calm seas have also allowed us to catch a mahi mahi yesterday, after 3 missed bites in the past few days and a broken fishing rig. We were finally successful and Kanoe and I, acting as guest stews cooked up some fish tacos for everyone. Anyway hoping for some wind tomorrow but it has been nice to take a second and appreciate where we are in the journey that we are taking.
Maisie, Deckhand, B Watch
Recent Posts from the Ships
- Ocean Classroom 2024-A collaborative high school program with Proctor Academy
- Collaborations and Long-term Commitments: SEA’s Caribbean Reef Program Sets a Course for Coastal Programs that Compliment Shipboard Experiences.
- Sea Education Association students prepare for life underway using state of the art nautical simulation from Wartsila Corporation.
- SEA Writer 2022, Magazines From the Summer SEA Quest Students
- Technology@SEA: Upgrades Allow Insight into Ocean Depths
Programs
- Gap Year
- Ocean Exploration
- High School
- Science at SEA
- SEA Expedition
- SEAScape
- Pre-College
- Proctor Ocean Classroom
- Protecting the Phoenix Islands
- SPICE
- Stanford@SEA
- Undergraduate
- Climate and Society
- Climate Change and Coastal Resilience
- Coral Reef Conservation
- Marine Biodiversity and Conservation
- MBL
- Ocean Exploration: Plastics
- Ocean Policy: Marine Protected Areas
- Oceans and Climate
- Pacific Reef Expedition
- The Global Ocean: Hawai'i
- The Global Ocean: New Zealand