Programs Blog

Friday, April 17th, 2026.

Noon Position: (Lat and Long): 26 degrees 40.6’ N, 62 degrees 44.3’ W

Log (nm): 884.2 nm

Weather / Wind / Sail Plan (from 1300 Watch Change): Going South before heading North to Bermuda!

Description of location: Nares Abyssal Plain

*n.b. This blog is a creative work by Simon and should be taken with a grain of salt.

These blogs are getting too serious:

Bing bong bing bong bong bing bing bong bong bing bing bing bing bong bong bing bong bong bing bing bong bing bong bong bong bing bong bing bong bing bong bing bong bing bong bing bong bing bong bong bong bong

            Hopefully those forty-two handwritten bings and bongs help lighten the mood. I’m a bit upset, because while I am writing this on April 17^th, my friend Alex’s birthday back home, it will only be posted a day after his birthday, on the 18^th. I want you to know Alex that I know your birthday. For your birthday, and for the blog today, I am going to discuss a little book called “All About Love” by Bell Hooks. I am only about a third of the way through the book, but I would highly recommend it as a read, and I’ve already taken a blog’s worth of notes on it. If you don’t want to read my takes, just skip to where I write BAZINGA.

Definitions are of vital importance. We spend a great deal of time obfuscating and concealing the meanings of words so as to hold them sacred, and we believe that if we can fit those words to the most situations, in the largest ways, that we create more value in those words. Love is one of these words. We hold it to be a variety of things, but most of all, we hold it to be cathexis. Bell Hooks writes “When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect with them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them.” Cathexis is a feeling of investment in another person, and we feel emotions when those people feel emotions. However, Bell Hooks hypothesizes that this is not love; love is “the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth.”

This definition of love, to nurture spiritual growth, is significantly more involved, and so when I first read it, I felt a bit of friction. I want love to come easy, and to be infinite. I want to extend it to everyone I meet. Spiritual growth, however, implies real work, and real difficulty. Another reason I withdrew from this definition was my dislike for the religious. As a devout non-devout, I find myself recoiling from words such as “soul” and “spirit”. However, I think that Bell Hooks has, in her definition of love, hit the nail on the head.

First, this definition of love disconnects abuse and love. To nurture another’s spirit, or as I think about it, emotional intelligence and health, is opposite of both physical and emotional abuse. When someone abuses someone else, they cannot love them. Just because they feel cathexis for the individual they are abusing does not make them love. In addition to excluding abuse from love, Bell Hooks states that “care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving.” This further expands love beyond care, because we can choose to care for others without loving them. Love accompanies cathexis and care but also covers will and growth. To love someone is to give them a bit of ourselves, however we can.

Hooks continues, discussing a variety of topics on love, and I wanted to focus on two points that are vitally important to understand love, and that I often struggle with. First, to love, one must love themselves. Hooks writes of this concept that “It sounds good. Yet more often than not we feel some degree of confusion when we hear this statement.” We are socialized to see ourselves outside of love. We need to improve, and reflect, and meet expectations, but there is no room for love. It’s important that we overcome this. Self-love allows us to understand why we are important, and why we are worth improving. Additionally, we can only receive unconditional love from ourselves, because we can only understand and control our own behavior to the highest extent.

Another important point that Hooks only briefly touches on is love as the reason we choose to live. I cannot make assumptions for others, but I find myself living entirely for the love I give myself and that I receive from others. The moments in which I feel emotionally supported are the moments in which I feel alive, and best. Love is the point of life to me, outside of logical reason or concern for philosophical basis.

BAZINGA. Anyhow, I’ve discussed enough about love for now. Today we turned around, because we were going to get to Bermuda too fast! The ship continues to run smoothly, and we have turned over to new mates, which will be an exciting experience for all the watches. We ate an exciting snack of cupcakes this afternoon to commemorate the turnover. We tried fishing as well, which did nothing, because the fish are not interested in getting fished, but maybe someday we catch a klutz. The boat environment is incredibly delightful, and there are always people to hang out with and talk to, and getting better sleep has improved not only my own enjoyment of this trip, but clearly positively impacted the people around me. As we settle into this routine, it becomes easier to find time to spend together outside of watch, and to sleep enough to enjoy that time!

I’ve switched my mates from Marijah to Shel, and I’m quite nervous, because I’ve heard we have had quite a few attacks from a variety of creatures, that I will list below:

1.     Kraken

The kraken is frustrating. She only comes out during the day for the most part but has recently started rotating schedules into the nighttime. She attacks the boat with rapid lashes, and has already taken out two crew members, both Shelby and Sally, leaving us with no stewards. Food has been worse as a result, and morale crushed.

2.     Megalodon

The meg, as we call it, takes chunks out of the boat late at night, but mostly just deflates our life raft, which means we have to periodically pump it up to maintain pressure. What a pain!

3.     Atlantic Space Laser

This one is more conceptual, but at around 5 am every day, an enormous laser begins to burn and destroy the ship, and it lasts about half of the day. That means that we are only safe during the evening, and we have all had to stay inside. The stories that sailors talk about the laser are concerning.

4.     Boredom

All these blogs have been way too long, and this is largely because we have nothing to do on this boat. It turns out all of the work is done by the professional crew, and we usually sleep 12-13 hours a day. This still leaves us vast chunks of time to write blogs that are way too long, and that’s also why I have to take some creative liberties in my blog.

For this last part of my blog, I wanted to give my friends and family back home a poem. It’s about love, and I hope it resonates.

Is love the drying wind on tepid sea,

That makes my heart keen for the flight of dove.

Or is it yearning that I hold for thee,

the beating of my heart, is this my love?

To love is making lemon scallop pasta.

To love is hiking with me through the trees,

and sending me poems I didn’t ask for.

It is letting me weep and holding me.

Love is emptying the pumpkins before I carve them

Love is letting me hug you even if it’s something you hate

Love is showing me how to play board games calmly and carefully

Love is waiting until I graduate

I know that love is driving me to school,

and helping me find places where to start.

It’s helping me sail over roiling seas,

and matching rhythms in our beating hearts.

I know that love is not something one tells,

To love someone is to give them ourselves,

 Happy Birthday.

Simon Braun, C watch

Science is getting ready for evening deployments

Kate is steering and avoiding icebergs