Sail to Porto!

It’s amazing how fast 60 people can run upstairs when someone yells out, “dolphins!” We got on deck way faster than during the fire drill or when “idle hands” is called. (Idle hands means that everyone not in class is supposed to get on deck to help with a sail manoeuvre) It was the second day of sailing and there was a pod of dolphins up by the bow and they swan with the ship for the whole afternoon. It was incredible! At one point there were at least twenty of them! Sometimes they spun and jumped, almost as if they were showing off for us. Only in Class Afloat does the whole class, teachers and all, drop everything they’re doing fire drill style to book it on deck to see dolphins. I don’t think that anyone was expecting to see them this early into the trip. It was a real treat and I think that it made everyone’s sail. The next day, someone called out’ “whales!” and the same thing happened. This wasn’t as impressive however because many people couldn’t see them cause they were far away. I only say the spray from the blow hole but this was still amazing. I did however see a whale a little closer up and this was magical! First I have to paint the setting for you all. I was helming with this girl Morgan and we had the 7:00 – 8:00 pm shift so the sun was setting. It was an epic sunset because there were no clouds as it had been a hot and beautiful day. It was by far the most impressive sunset yet so many people were hanging out on deck to watch it set. We were talking about how content we were and decided that the only thing that could possibly make the whole situation better would be if a dolphin jumped and we ate some chocolate. Well shortly after that a whale came quite close to the boat and waved at us with its fin and a girl brought us each a piece of chocolate mousse cake! So that was definitely the best helming experience I ever had and ever will have I think. It’s hard to beat whales, sunsets and chocolate!
As for the first day of sailing, I was sick again. It was strange because some people that were really sick the first sail were fine but others who were completely healthy got sick. I was unlucky and was sick both times but I got better after the first day so it’s all good. It also got really calm after the first day and the ocean was like glass. You could see forever, it was like a blue Saskatchewan! The only problem was that there wasn’t that much wind so we had to turn the motor on in order to get to port on schedule. Surprisingly, even after leaving port a day late, we made it to Portugal on time and had to slow down a bit so that we didn’t get there at 2 in the morning!
Monday was my watchdog (teacher in charge of my watch)’s birthday. Ms. Williams is super enthusiastic and is the best watchdog ever so our watch decided to do something special. It was also the same night that we switched time zones. The time zone switch always takes place at midnight and at midnight you either go back to 11:00 pm and do that hour all over or you skip to 1:00 am. For us we had to go back an hour so my night watch and the following night watch each split the hour and did an extra half hour of work. It wasn’t too bad though. I was on the helm (steering) for the first hour and then I rotated to standby on helm which basically does the exact same thing as helm so for two and a half hours I did the exact same thing. It got boring but at least there was always someone to talk to and the night was clear so there were a ton of stars. Anyways, back to Ms. Williams’ birthday. She decided it would be fun to do night watch with us so that she could stay up till midnight, and then the second midnight because that way she could have her birthday twice. So she helped us out and afterwards we took her downstairs because we had planned a small party in the pantry for her. There was tea, cookies, music and birthday cards. She was so excited and happy. There was also some birthday stuff planned by everyone, not just our watch. I helped to make a birthday cake and there was a special dinner. It was a lot of fun. The birthday tradition on the boat is at morning colours (when we all assemble on the boat deck to hoist the ‘colours’ or flags of the boat) we dump buckets of water on the lucky birthday person. So she also got really wet :)
There was a meeting for the scuba diving club and we’re trying to plan our first dive for Spain! I can’t wait to make use of my certification. There are however a ton of regulations for insurance reasons, such as we can’t dive beyond 30 feet! That’s really shallow so a bunch of us were disappointed but it will still be nice to dive anyways. I also started up the environmental club with help from Ms. Williams (she’s a bit of a tree hugger) and Morgan the whale/sunset/chocolate girl. So the clubs are all in full swing!
I got to spend quite a bit of time aloft during my watches. I helped set sails and attach a sail that had been repaired. I also climbed all the way to the royal! That’s the highest yard. I went at night too so it was extra intimidating. There was a bunch of us during night watch that just wanted to climb up for kicks so we did. The pro crew is surprisingly chill about letting us go aloft. As long as they know that we’re up there, they’re cool with us climbing. It was amazing once I finally got to the top. It’s probably a completely different experience in the day time however it was pretty great at night. It was the clearest night so there were tons of stars and the moon was also almost full so it wasn’t even that dark. It was also quite warm because it had been sunny all day so I stayed up there for awhile.
We got to Porto this morning so right now I’m in an internet cafe. It’s a really beautiful city however the boat is docked in the industrial area so that’s not too nice. I’ll try to write more about Porto soon!