Wake up was at it’s usual time at 6 in the morning[at anchor in Great Salt Pond, Block Island]. After the typical crew meeting there was a full crew meeting. Daily chores were completed after breakfast. C-watch had to clean the heads and soles. B-watch had to scrub the deck down. Last but not least A-watch had galley clean up. A thick, hazy fog settled upon the boat and the water was extremely rough and for B-watch (who had day watch) it was especially difficult to handle it all with four junior crewmembers suffering a taste of mal-de-mar

But B-watch’s Junior Watch Leader instructed the raising of the foresail. That went fairly smoothly. The foresail was not the only sail to go up, the other sail raised was the jumbo, which is the sail in front of the foresail. The reason for that being the wind pressure, by setting only those two sails up the wind would be distributed evenly.

Back to the bad weather. Brendan, the Junior Watch Leader for today, was partially sickened but was very noble in carrying on his job. Sadly, three B-watch junior crewmembers were feeling not so "up to par". Instead it was up to Noah, Joe, and Anne Marie to carry on the duties such as bow watch, stern watch, boat/deck check, navigating, and the helm (steering the boat), sometimes doing double shifts or even up to triple duty. Since the fog was so thick we needed two junior crewmembers and Katina on bow watch, plus another junior crew at stern watch. In case you are wondering Katina is an intern on the Ernestina.

Before our morning watch started we did a plankton tow. The tow is a strong, fine net in a funnel shape with a jar attached to the bottom to collect the micro-organisms. Surprisingly we caught many, many, many comb jellyfish. We didn’t have a chance to look at the phyto-plankton and zoo-plankton because B-watch had to raise the foresail.

In navigation class we figured out our approximate arrival time at 1915 or 7:15pm, at Nasketucket Bay a smaller body of water off [Mattapoisett] in Buzzards Bay.

Hopefully bedtime will be coming soon so talk to you later and much love from the crew bye.

Written by,
B-watch

The totals: 121 miles traveled, 18 hours spent under sail, 65 gallons of water and 29 gallons of fuel consumed, no rice krispie treats, brownies or gooey, fatty, full of sugar sweet multi-layer bars left!

Captain: Amanda Madeira
Program Coordinator: Inette Rex, Chris Newlan (SSL)