Programs Blog

SEA you later!

March 28, 2026
Image of Marguerite Brody watching the sunset on the lab top

Saturday, March 28, 2026

Position: 17º44.841 N 64º41.939 W

Ships heading: 225º

Log: 1166nm

Weather: Cloudy with light showers

Location: Docked in Christiansted, St. Croix

There is something profoundly difficult about saying goodbye to the sea. At first, it is vastness and uncertainty makes you feel small. But over time, without realizing it, you begin to belong to it.

The sea has a way of teaching lessons that cannot be learned on land. It teaches humility first. Out here, you are constantly reminded that you are not in control. The wind shifts when it wants to, the waves build without warning, and the weather answers only to itself. In that surrender, there is a strange kind of peace. The sea teaches patience because nothing can be rushed. You move at the pace of the current, the watch schedule, the turning of the stars overhead. It teaches resilience, asking you to keep going through exhaustion, discomfort, and uncertainty, until what once felt impossible becomes routine.

But perhaps most of all, the sea teaches presence. There is no room for distraction when surrounded by something so immense and alive. Every sunrise feels earned, every night sky impossibly close, every shared laugh and tired conversation made more meaningful by the world of water around it. The sea strips life down to its essentials: trust, endurance, wonder, and the people beside you.

So saying goodbye is not simply leaving a place. It is parting with a version of yourself that the sea helped reveal. The person who steps back onto land is not quite the same as the one who first set sail. Some part of the ocean remains within you: in the way you carry silence, in the patience you have learned, in the understanding that strength often comes from yielding rather than resisting.

And maybe that is the sea’s final lesson: that goodbyes are never truly endings. The water leaves its mark long after the shore is behind you, continuing to move within you like a tide that never fully recedes.

 Shout outs: Miss you all dearly! See you soon!

Marguerite Brody, B watch, Trinity College