2012 Trip 5 - Pacific Swift

Trip 5 - Day 7. We all woke up, quite thoroughly tired from late night watches and such like. It was cold and rainy and Starboard watch, my watch, had one long shift in the rain. Sam, a crew member with an incredibly illustrious beard said that it would clear up when his watch, forward watch, went on. It did. So irritating. We began at Ritchie Bay, and slipped lines off of the Grace which we were tied up with for the night. Skipper Dave says I have to include those technical bits of information so you people reading this have a general idea of where we were. We left there early in the morning, well early for us, those of us who have night watch late into the night, unlike the crew who get to sleep all night unless there´s an emergency. Then Starboard watch watched for our four hours. After that forward watch went on for their four hours. We were motoring for the day because the wind and rain didn´t co-operate and let us poor souls sail.
We lunged over quite a few waves and surprisingly enough there wasn´t too much sickness. The waves were amazing though, quite a few times we got sprayed by the ocean, especially those on bow watch, or, in my case talking the ears off of those on bow watch. Because it was raining and wet for a lot of day 7 there was some awesome styles going on, I took great pride in my yellow duck jacket, however, I was outdone by Gillian who had the jacket complete with the overall water duck pants. We named her master duck. Teese, if that´s how you spell his name, had eight shirts on. I think that´s all he brought, I´m sure if he´d brought more he´d have worn them too. The serious intermediates whose test is today were studying maturely while the juniors, who finished our test on day 6, played cards or some other sort of silliness. One of the best parts of day 7 was the smell wafting up from the kitchen. Roast beef dinner. Complete with potatoes, carrots, Caesar salad, heaven on a boat. If I stood next to the stove pipe I would get whiffs of the roast when it was taken on to be basted or checked on. Dinner was just as good as we had smelt. It was incredible. After our incredibly amazingly, spectacularly scrumptious dinner many of us sat in the folksole and told jokes. Fiona told us many remarkable jokes complete with accents and everything. We stopped in Effingham at 16:20, the captain says I have to say that too. It´s around the area of Barkley Bay. Super pretty. I saw the most amazing sunset. It looked like fire moving in sync with the clouds and a huge ball of fire was the cause of it all. There was even some green, I have no idea how it worked. Then we all had our  Sunday service. We wrote a list on the community of Salts and why it is that way. We discovered we all really like each other. And work well together, are really good friends and can never pretend we´re anything but ourselves when we´re on the ship. There was lovely music as always and some really nice harmonies. Then some of the crew members talked about God and what he was about, what they were about, and shared some Scripture verses. The topic was essentially, loving each other and God´s love for us. We were challenged to bring the amazing community of Salts home with us and create it elsewhere. After the service we all headed down to the Hold and ate rice crispies and peppermint tea. We stayed up later than usual, at least that´s how it felt. We had a good time and got to know each other better. All in all, it was a good day. The mysteries of secret friends are still up and much is being done for them. I should stop now and go take my many words elsewhere. Hope you all have a great day and are wishing you were lurching over mighty waves with frozen fingers like we are.
Emily Marion Grant
Translation Emily, or Sally as Olii calls me.