News

Sailing! Science!  …and seasickness

October 13, 2026
Ali, Cian, Baker, Piper, and Lela are furling the jib in this picture and you can’t see them but a pod of dolphins were playing at the front of the boat.

Monday, 12 October 2026
Position: 40° 36.8’ N x 070° 08.8’ W
Ship Heading: 160°
Ship Speed: 6.4 kn
Log: 128.1 nm
Weather / Wind / Sail Plan:  Partly sunny skies and light breeze with reefed mains’l, main and fore stays’ls, and jib most of the day.  
We are in the ocean. A very blue one.

Today was a hectic day. A watch was on anchor watch when the anchor slipped (dragged) so they had to reset the anchor at 0300. Then we got hit by some huge seas with big swells.

Anderson, Landon, and Aiden are holding the neuston net full of an absurd amount of salps (little gelatinous plankton)

This being our first day truly underway in the open ocean led to many of us being seasick at some point today. However we did not let this get our spirits down because we also did a whole lot of fun things. We did a neuston tow, secchi disc, and we got to set a bunch of sails:  the main sail, main staysail, forstays’l, and the jib.

Ezra, Ali, Cian are processing the neuston net haul. We are sieving out all the plankton here to calculate a biomass volume.

We got to do a lot of sailing and science it was fun so that was a good summary of what happened.  We are moving even now as I am writing this. 

Cian

P.S to mom and dad, being seasick sucks, but I am alive and well.