On the water, time, it seems, is a bit harder to hold onto. It’s easy to write about and reflect on goings on on shore, because life is divided easily into days and night. At sea, watches split and splice time, blurring moments and memories together. And I realize that I have not told you much about living on this ship, just the cool things I’ve seen and the sort of stuff taking up my thoughts. But, what does it mean to live on a sailing school vessel?

We students are divided into three watches, which rotate so someone is on watch at all times. Each watch also has a mate and an assistant scientist—you know, the ones who really know what they are doing. The watch rotation is such that you move through dawn and evening watch, afternoon watch and morning watch every three days. For instance, here’s what happened during a full twenty-four hour period about a week ago.

0030. Woken up this morning by Stu. I am reluctant to get up this morning. I contemplate what clothes I need for dawn watch. I have twenty minutes to get ready.

0040. I wander into the salon, nearly fully dressed. Harness in one hand, socks and rain boots in the other. Foulies, just in case and for wind protection, draped over an arm. I grab a granola bar (we have midnight snack waiting for the ongoing and off-going watches in the middle of the night) and wander to the doghouse. I read the night orders, put on my harness, and climb the ladder onto the quarter deck.

0050. The watch turns over. The watch before us tells us what is going on with the boat. Where we’re going (our course ordered and course steered). What we’re doing (starboard or port tack, what sails are up). What’s happening (what’s the weather like? Is there any traffic?). I am sent to lookout.

0100-0200. Stars tonight are gorgeous. Lookout’s a good time for thinking, stargazing, and singing.

0200-0300. I’m relieved at lookout. We’re motor sailing, so I pop down to the engine room for a few minutes, checking the dials on our main engine to make sure it’s happy. I plot our position on our chart, a dead reckoning based on our last position and the direction and distance we’ve moved since then. I make some coffee.

0300-0400. I take the helm. We’re steering 130° PCS (per ships compass). Though the sea state is pretty high, the fact that we’re motor sailing makes it slightly easier to steer. It’s cold though and plenty windy. 16-17° C.

0400-0500. I am relieved at the helm. I do another engine check. Plot another DR, help bring out galley mats, which had been brought on deck to be cleaned and to dry, back to the galley. I wake up the steward so she can start making breakfast.

0500-0600. I am back on lookout. The sun is trying to rise, though the stars still have a dim presence in the sky. By the end of the hour I’m quite cold. We’ve certainly left the tropics behind.

0600-0700. I am relieved at lookout again. One last engine check. I have a few minutes of free time. The watch changes. We do turnover and have a quick watch meeting—just a recap of what happened on deck and in lab.

0700. Breakfast. Finally. Blueberry pancakes, sausage and pineapple. We do the last of our dawn cleanup (cleaning bathrooms which we call “heads” and the showers, as well as sweeping the floors or “soles”).

0745-?. Sleep.

0930 or 1030. I wake up and eventually drag myself out of my bunk. Either to do homework, shower, or workout, and eventually sit in the salon or on deck and talk with whoever is around.

1300. Lunch and then a nap or more homework or I go out to the headrig.

1430. We have class followed by a snack and more attempts to be productive.

1820. Dinner and time to get ready for watch,

1900. I’m back on watch, in the lab this time. There isn’t all that much to do now we’re near the end of the trip. We do a surface station—collect a bucket of water from the ocean surface and test the water samples for their pH, alkalinity, dissolved oxygen, nutrients, and chlorophyll-a. The lab is dark at night, especially today because we are setting up to run our chlorophyl-a samples and light can ruin the process. We three students and our assistant scientist talk as we set up the equipment needed for chl-a processing. A ship-wide game of Clue has started (everyone is assigned a target, who they have to get to a certain location on the boat with an assigned object. If they succeed, the have “killed” their target and move onto a new target), so the four of us are very wary of suspicious visitors to our lab. We go out to help deck set the tops’l, only to return to find our captain hiding in the dry lab hoping to eliminate his target.

0100 eventually rolls around. We are tired and a little silly. We do turn over and head out of the lab to join the rest of our watch on deck. It’s a clear night again and the stars shine brightly. And I know I will sleep well when I finally go down below to my bunk, but I linger for a minutes or so, gazing up and gazing out, so glad to be just there right then, and no where else.