News
First Big Sailing Day
Sunday, 19-20 July 2026
Noon Position:: 41 deg 17.765’N x 070 deg 57.293’W
Ship Speed: 1.5 knots Avg.
Log: 30 nm
Weather: Waves and wind, but sunny, Wind: Beaufort of 3, West x Northwest
Anchored Menemsha Bight, Martha’s Vineyard to just past the wind farms by afternoon Watch
Hello! It’s Andrés and Sal. We are currently on dawn watch in the lab, and we just finished identifying samples from our Neuston Tow. We observed many copepods of varying colors and sizes as well as crabs from the zoea and megalopa stages. We also found many isopods visible to the naked eye, swimming around in the pristine bucket! Crustaceans aside, we also found many fish eggs and pteropods (left-handed snails). We didn’t get much sleep and will need to recover with some sleep during the day today before we do night watch from 1900 – 0100. During the 15 minutes before A Watch (Andrés, Sal, and others) relieved C watch, we watched the beautiful stars above us, seeing the Milky Way and other stars spread across the open night sky.
After a shaky start to the morning yesterday, the waves continued full strength, leaving many people feeling pretty seasick. Everybody came together to cover the jobs of those recovering from seasickness earlier in the day. While sailing yesterday, we deployed the Neuston Tow, Secchi Disk, CTD, and the Shipek Grab. When retrieving the Neuston Tow, I (Andrés) didn’t realize that the current was pulling against me…the process of retrieving the net is harder than it looks!
On the 19th, we hoisted the Tops’l and the Mains’l, allowing us to travel slightly faster than our previous 2 knots (approximately 2.27 mph). The Mains’l was quite hard to heave the line as we approached its final positioning and Tadgh started chanting “When I say chocolate, you say milk!” Every time we chanted milk! We heaved the rope, finally perfecting the positioning. The dinner (ravioli) cooked by the stews Ava and Jeremy was perfect after a long day!
Andrés and Sal, A Watch
P.S. Hi mom and dad! (from Andrés)