News
Bagel Day!!!
Camilla Salwen, B Watch, Middlebury College
Ship’s Log
Noon Position
34° 24.8’N x 054° 54.5’W
Ship Heading
225°
Ship Speed
5 knots
Taffrail Log
1431 nm
Weather / Wind / Sail Plan
Sunny weather, wind ranging from force 3-5 from NWxW. Sailing under 4 lowers, shallow reef mains’l, raffee, tops’l, and course (though not for the whole day).
Description of location
In the North Sargasso Sea, about in line with South Carolina
As demonstrated by today’s blog title, this morning started off with something very exciting: bagels!!! Yesterday was my day to help out in the galley (the ship’s kitchen for those unfamiliar with boat terminology) and my sole request was to make bagels. Since it is a two day process, we made the dough and shaped them yesterday and ate them this morning. They were delicious!! There are a couple reasons that I wanted bagels so badly.
Matt and Bec hard at work processing the dip nets!
First, they are one of my favorite foods, if not at the top of that list. Second, closer to the beginning of the trip, I made a decision one morning that I would come to regret very quickly. I had gotten off evening watch one night (or morning I guess) at 0100 and was of course exhausted. When someone came around ringing for breakfast at 0700, I decided I was way too tired to get up to eat just yet, and proceeded to fall back asleep. Upon crawling out of my bunk at around 0900, I discovered my devastating mistake. I had missed the homemade bagel breakfast. Since that fateful day, I have been longing for a perfect bagel meal, and today I got just that. A poppy seed bagel topped with cream cheese and lox started off the day on the best note possible.
In other news, I had until afternoon watch off (starting at 1300) so I was able to enjoy a nice leisurely morning. It was also gorgeous weather today, so I spent some time on the lab top, enjoying the view and the sun. On another exciting note, we set the party hat (the triangle sail that sits on top of the other square sails called the raffee) today for the first time!! We had the whole stack of squares’ls up since we were going downwind and trying to make as much progress as we could.
Lunch was some amazing falafel (to my mom, if you’re reading this, go to Falafel Inc. for lunch today so we can match!) with a side of couscous. B Watch, also known as Best Watch, then began our watch for the day – the beloved afternoon watch. Ava claims it is her favorite watch since we don’t have to wake up early, 2 hours are taken up by class, and there are no chores assigned to those hours of the day. I personally like evening watch because besides having to sleep a bit after finishing dawn watch, we have the day free and then have sleep to look forward to when we are done. It was a very pleasant watch today with the normal rotations and just a bit of sail handling. We are becoming so much more efficient with all the tasks these days.
Camilla (me) and Ava trying to figure out how to use a sextant
It’s kind of insane to think that we’ve only been on this ship for around 2 weeks, and already we’ve made so much progress. Although we all still have a lot to learn and I definitely am far from understanding it all, it’s amazing how far I’ve come since the first day when we boarded the Cramer. It feels so comfortable now and we have such a nice community aboard. I’ve been really appreciating being here these past few days and am so grateful to get to experience something as unique as this. To end the blog today, I share a fun bagel story. We saw a bagel shaped cloud during class today and it made this day just that much better.
– Camilla Salwen, B Watch, Middlebury College
P.S. To my parents and Maddi, I love you guys and miss you so so much!!! Tell Jaxy I love him too!! I hope everything is going well and I can’t wait to see you when I get home.