News
Time for Port Stops! Woo!
Kaitlyn Sweeny, University of Rhode Island
Ship’s Log
Present Location
12° 02.509’ N 061° 45.769’ W
Ship’s Heading, Speed and sail plan
At anchor in Grenada
Weather
Light breeze, partly cloudy, the seas are calm
Hi everyone! I am happy to report that we are officially at anchor in Grenada! This past week has been incredible, filled with so many learning opportunities and challenges. The other blog entries certainly do life on the ship justice, we have all been able to come together to help each other with this transition, but it has also been an individual process. Waking up at all hours for watch, sleeping when you can, taking in all of the information we need to know to keep the Cramer sailing happily along is something that we can only personally push ourselves to succeed at. We all became so accustomed to life on board the Cramer so quickly, and now we have other adjustments to face, the port stops!
Showing the lines to the judges.
Yesterday was such a fun day, dawn watch (0100-0700) moved quickly, and we all had fun together. In the afternoon we had the line chase, where all of the watches competed against each other to find lines on board. A Watch won! There was also so much wildlife around us through the entire day, flying fish jumped out of the water, birds swooped and dove around the ship. (I would like to give a special shout out to the two tropical birds that were flying with the ship for most of our evening watch), and during both night watches, there was so much bioluminescence swirling around the ship! Coolest thing we did during our evening watch was striking the jib tops’l and then furling it out on the bowsprit in the dark!
This morning, around 0745, I was woken up by the sound of the anchor being lowered into the water and I immediately knew that we were in Grenada. When I had gone to bed after evening watch (1900-0100), Grenada was just a glow of light on the horizon, no land in sight. Climbing up onto deck it was quite a sight to see land up close again, and knowing that a portion of our experience has come to a close while another section begins. For the rest of the weeks, we will be sailing between our port stops, and spending a few days at each one, to conduct research for our change projects, do reef surveys, and to explore a bit more of our world! I can only feel so much excitement at the fact that there is still so much to experience and see and do!
– Kaitlyn Sweeny, University of Rhode Island
PS: Hi mom, dad, Kathy, Dave, and TJ! Love you all! Also, sending lots of love to my CTC family! Hope you all are well! And, it’s February, so happy birthday to Chris, Rebecca, and Emily!