Programs Blog

Friday, April 10th, 2026.

Noon Position: (Lat and Long): 20 °38.39’ N, 65°42.77’ W

Log (nm):  226.3

Weather / Wind / Sail Plan (from 1300 Watch Change): Going south to dodge a cold front

Description of location: the ocean????

Hello friends and family members! It’s Simon writing for you today, which is why you are captivated and engaged with my incredibly succinct, rich, and well thought out writing! I am writing this at 19:28, having finished my afternoon watch, which means, to those closely watching at home, that I was previously on evening watch yesterday! During that watch, we deployed a lovely CTD into the water. CTD’s allow us to capture important information, including conductivity, temperature, and depth. Anyhow, our CTD reached a depth of 600 meters, which, if you didn’t know, is quite deep. I can hold my breath for a long time, but even I would be challenged by the depths of the CTD. Honestly, I would probably succeed quite easily, but I don’t want to make you feel bad. The CTD is also attached to a rig that collects water samples at different depths, which we can analyze for chlorophyll and pH. Overall, it’s a pretty good gig, and worth doing at home if you have the time.

            After that, it was time for bed! If you lay just right, you don’t even have to get up to eat, because the ocean will turn your stomach into a soup! After bedtime, I got up for my afternoon watch. Afternoon watch is sort of like cheating, because you get to see with your eyes, normal style. We had class today at 14:30, during which we covered sextant use (Pictured here by the lovely Kate), and the surrounding math of sextants. To boil it down, if you point the sextant deep into the iris of the ocean, you can calculate the angle that the blue comes back to you from. But, because different parts of the ocean have different color, you can compare you color with an almanac published every year that covers different ocean colors. The colors are proprietary, however, and pantone charges an arm and a leg to use them. We have knockoff colors on the deck, but we are always a little bit off, which makes navigation a pain, especially since I accidentally dropped a bit of toothpaste back behind the GPS on Tuesday, and we have been using celes-teal navigation ever since. 

            Other than that, today has been chugging along at a rather steady pace. It’s hard to say when the day ends, since someone is always up, and clanging around the galley on boat check. If you don’t know what boat check is, it’s a rather complicated process, but it boils down to pressing as many buttons as you are able around the boat in the shortest period of time.

            A little birdy came by to visit us, and sort of circled the boat for several hours. I’m pretty sure he is still up there as I am writing this, and honestly, it feels quite unfair, because birds are supposed to fly, not sit on our boat and look at the weather. At least he had the decency to catch something, which was rather impressive, but I could likely have done the same thing using only a deep ocean trawling line and a couple of hours. The bird species is a red tailed trailhawler, which is a bird that specializes in hunting surface dwelling fish, such as flying fish, and salty trout (Like trout but for the ocean). These birds are particularly impressive, because they grow up on Bermuda, and once they leave their nest, they never stop flying, until they mate.

            On a personal update note, I can’t sleep very well, although I am improving. Still, I am slowly entering delirium, which is why I made up the bird in the last paragraph. Nonetheless, the boat is a delightful experience, and the food here is absolutely fantastic, and better than anything I could cook up at home. While we continue to experience difficulties with various attempted boardings, we have been working on canon aim and firing, which is honestly relatively easy. Using sails is also great, because we can haul more loot without using more gasoline, although we are moving relatively slowly. Finally, we are moving down south instead of north, because we want to avoid a cold front up North. I didn’t make that up, but now you never know! Anyhow, hopefully we turn around soon!

            I hope you enjoyed reading my blog! Please send your feedback of my blog to 111 water lane, water city, water town, water country. I’m starting to get the feeling we’re surrounded by water.

Simon Braun, C watch

Christopher Columbus lookalike

This is me when snack is served on the ship