News
Safety Training and a Bit of Silliness
Saturday, 18 July 2026
Noon Position: 41 deg 21.4’N x 070 deg 47.0’W
Ship Heading: anchored
Ship Speed: anchored
Log: 6.8 nm
Weather: Clouds filling in all day, and then rain most of the night.
Anchored Menemsha Bight, Martha’s Vineyard
Hi! It’s Mia and Ada! We are in C watch, and this morning we did our first ever hour long watch. Mia’s was 4:00am – 5:00am and Ada’s was 5:00am-6:00am. We are a tad sleep deprived but it will be even more fun tonight since we have dawn watch from 1:00am-7:00am… This morning we left Woods Hole and sailed to Martha’s Vineyard. This was our first time underway on the Cramer and we found out that the tables in the main salon are gimbaled…meaning they tip. We became masters at coiling large dock lines throughout the casting off process!
We hoisted the forestays’l and the mainstays’l. We discovered that hoisting a sail on the Cramer is much harder than it looks… After a delicious lunch, while under sail power we had some safety drills! We had a man over-board drill, meaning a buoy “fell” into the water and we deployed our safety rings and M.O.B. radar poles into the water. Each watch has a job and ours is assisting the captain while A watch deploys the Rescue Boat and B watch deals with sail handling. We rescued our buoy and then it was time for snack. During the afternoon we completed some fire drills with the hoses, flooding drills, and abandon ship drills with these weird safety suits that make us look like penguins with a LOT of extra skin… Me and Mia toppled into each other trying to get them on… Once we had, we all waddled around simulating an abandon ship. In case of that emergency, me and Ada are in charge of deploying our watch’s life boat!
While comfortably anchored in Menemsha Bight (Martha’s Vineyard) we watch as rain showers roll in with some lightning. Dinner is vegetable curry over rice with chicken on the side. For us, it is time for bed before our early morning anchor Watch. Good night!
Mia and Adabella & C Watch