Programs Blog

September 4, 2025

Location (Lat and Long): 46° 21.14’N x 134° 53.1’W

Ship Heading: 350 psc

Ship Speed: 6 knots

Log (nm): 2375

Weather/Wind/Sail Plan: Winds SSE force 4. Sailing on a starboard tack under the four lowers (mains’l, main stays’l, fore stays’l, jib), topsail, and raffee

I think the highlight for me today was watching an albatross skim the waves at sunset. I had briefly relieved Skyler (third mate) of the con so he could take his turn at all-hands dinner. For twenty minutes or so I was alone on the quarterdeck. Sam stood lookout, clipped into the forestay at the bow, the back of his head just visible over the lab top. The ship rode smooth over the swells, sails balanced and steering easy. The sun sank behind a line of clouds to the west, a band of orange just visible below on the horizon. A shape in the water caught my eye, and as I watched it solidified into an albatross. As if feeling my gaze, it unfurled its wings and took off, a couple of effortless flaps to break free of the waves and glide above the water. Its wings were long and slender, and though I watched for as long as I could without drifting off course, I never saw it flap its wings again; it rode the wind, just like us.

Thursday is drill day on the Robert C Seamans, so we ran through man overboard, fire, and abandon ship drills during afternoon class time. It was also watch turnover day, when Captain Allison, the engineers, and the stewards stand the 12-4 watch to allow the usual watchstanders to rotate watch time (C watch rotated from the 12-4 to the 4-8). As I write this I am sitting in the main saloon after watch. A watch is in the galley cleaning up after dinner, listening to the Indigo Girls. B watch is mostly sleeping, in preparation for their 12-4 watch tonight. Most of C watch is awake, in the library or the main saloon, crafting or journaling. An intrepid few are on deck getting in some reps for the pushup challenge (the goal is to complete one pushup per nautical mile traveled over the course of the trip; today’s log is 2375 nautical miles…) The stewards just brought out our midrats (midnight rations), which appears to be some kind of fruit cobbler and smells tempting.

We have built a world in miniature here on the ship, and it feels so rich and complete that sometimes I forget where we are. I forget there is ocean on all sides for hundreds of nautical miles around. I forget the sea beneath our keel is two miles deep. I forget that on watch tonight, if the clouds part, stars too numerous to count will range across the sky, the milky way a brush stroke above the masts. But when squalls sulk on the horizon, when sunlight dusts the wavetops in the morning, when the clouds burn red in a conflagration of sunset, I recall the ocean and our ship a speck upon it. My capacity for awe is fleeting, but it finds me on lookout and I am overcome by the magnitude of the horizon.

-Josefine Wallace, C Watch