Programs Blog

Friday, 01 May, 2026.

Noon Position: (Lat and Long): 32 degrees 43.1’ N, 065 degrees 16.3’ W

Log (nm): 1799 nm

Weather / Wind / Sail Plan (from 1300 Watch Change): Sailing on a starboard close reach under the four lowers with a shallow reefed mains’l. C/O 200 PSC, wind WxS F4, seas WSW 4ft.

Description of location: doing donuts around Bermuda

Here I sit, in the main salon, pondering what I should write about. I’ve had a couple of suggestions from people, but I haven’t really felt… inspired. I’ve known I was writing the blog for today since before we left Woods Hole about a month ago, but all the ideas I’ve thought of have been, well, just meh. So here I am, sitting in the main salon, watching A Watch do galley clean up. The slop bucket just went up, the galley mats are soon to follow, and the trash compactor is stuck closed again. Olivia sits next to me. She turns to me and says, “This has got to be the least glamorous time to be on the boat.” Yes, it’s not the flashiest thing, but I think that cleaning up after ourselves and keeping Mama Cramer nice and well-kept is one of the most delightful things about being at sea.

My evening watch was yesterday. Evening watch (1900-0100) does galley clean-up, like A watch is doing right now. You bring up the mats to hose them down, dump slops (assuming we’re 12nm offshore), do the dishes, pack all the plastic trash away, and wipe down all the counters and soles. This happens at the beginning of watch so that the galley is nice and clean for the next day as well as giving the galley mats plenty of time to dry before bringing them back down, later in the watch.

Today, I was on watch from 1300 to 1900. During afternoon watch, our cleaning job is to do a deck wash, so wash the deck we did! Sophie and I gathered all the supplies and got to work. For a super ultra thorough deck wash, you start by sweeping the entire deck. Everything gets swept to make sure that the daily accumulation of grime isn’t just packed further into the deck. After sweeping, you take some soap and water, spray the deck down in sections, and start scrubbing. It becomes meditative after a while. Yes, your arms hurt, and yes, your feet get all wet, but the act of caring for our floating island is such a beautiful thing to be a part of. After the initial scrub, you wash all the soapy water into the scuppers, and the deck is clean! Until the next day, when we do it all again.

I will be on morning watch tomorrow (0700-1300). Morning watch does the daily chores. From 0730 to around 0830, we tackle the grimy things down below, cleaning the heads, the ladders, the soles, places people grab a lot, and anywhere else that might be kind of gross. My favorite job is cleaning the ladders because it reminds me of my chore back in the co-op (sweeping + mopping the stairs). To clean the ladders, you first sweep with a foxtail brush and then use the cleaning spray and a microfiber to wipe up any stubborn grime. It is so satisfying to see the little gross bits get wiped away with the rag.

Tomorrow is also Field Day. Once a week, on Saturdays, instead of class, we do a big deep clean of the whole ship. It starts at 1400 with a pump-up, then we split off our watches to different areas of the ship. A watch has the galley, B watch cleans the fo’c’sle and the main salon, and C watch takes the aft of the ship. We scrub the bulkheads and clean the drains with a toothbrush. We bring all the cushions and curtains up on deck to scrub them down, nice and clean. We go through every pot, pan, and bowl in the galley and make sure there’s no secret grime on there. We clear out the hutch to wipe it down, so our clean dishes have a place to go. A lot of people get excited about Field Day, because it’s a big reset for the week.

We are now more than halfway through the program. We have fewer deck washes to do than we’ve already done. We’ve done more chores than we will do in the next two weeks. After tomorrow, we only have one Field Day left. It’s a weird feeling to be counting down the unglamorous bits of an experience, wanting them to last just a little bit longer. I wish we had more chores to do. I wish we had another deck wash. I just want to clean the galley one more time. Please, just one more Field Day. Although those bits aren’t flashy— they’re probably not the reason people go to sea— they are part of the experience, and I don’t want that experience to end.

Zara Craig, C Watch

Gray and Tenny in the galley (pc: Zara)

The “Others Watch” setting the JT (pc: Zara)