Programs Blog

Thursday, October 24, 2024
Position: 38° 14.0’N x 076° 17.4’W

Log: 68.4nm
Weather: We’ve had great weather today averaging 18°C it was today. Today we sailed majority of the day with the Tops’l, main stays’l, Jib, and the raffee (for the first time)!
Description of Location: Chesapeake Bay

A and B watch started their day with two-hour anchor watches; we were at an anchorage at Chesapeake Bay off of Annapolis. Around 0700, C watch got us underway! They hauled back the anchor and set sails. After sailing through the Chesapeake for an hour or two, we jibbed and hove to for science deployments:  Neuston tow, CTD, Secchi disk, surface station, and a shipek grab. Towards the end of our science deployments, we had to maneuver around numerous crab pots. Luckily our outstanding C-watch lookouts, we safely navigated through. Afternoon watch completed the processing from those deployments. The Secchi disk result was our trips all-time low of 2.5 meters, meaning from the surface, 1% of light only reaches down to 7ish meters.

During class today we all read through the thank you notes from Hampshire Regional High School students. They were thanking us for our contribution for carrying and soon deploying their mini boat that they have worked on for a year. It will collect data that will be sent back to their school, and hopefully someday will float ashore where the people finding it can read the directions (in many different languages) on how to communicate with HRS. We will be deploying the mini boat named “Millennium Raiders” in a couple of days once we enter the Gulf Stream.

We finished the last 30 minutes of class time dedicated to working on our projects. We continued sailing around 5 Kts down the Chesapeake into a beautiful sunset. We had a scrumptious dinner (shout out goop as Stu stew) and B-Watch will drop the anchor around 2100 tonight.

-Sophia L., (A-Watch)

Jeff Schell (Chief Scientist, SEA):  Thanks to the students of Hampshire Regional HS.  What an honor it is to be asked to deploy your awesome scientific-sailing ship!  We are all so excited to part of this adventure with you.  It was great to meet and connect with you, your teachers Jon Letendre and Jacob Masenior, and with Cassie Stymiest from Educational Passages.  Go Raiders!

Sophia L.- Thank you so much HRHS for all the kind letters!! And to family: miss and love you all so much! Mom- tell Riley and Martha I miss them!

Freya C.-Thanks so much to HRHS for trusting us with your mini pirate ship!

Olivia K.- Thank you for the kind words HRHS! We are so excited to deploy your mini boat! Hi Family&Nate- I can’t wait to see you all for the holidays and I love you all SO MUCH!

Aubie R.-Thank you HRHS!

Adam K.- I am excited to launch your boat and see where it goes, thank you for all the letters! To family: I miss you and I can’t wait to see you.