In the night we sailed to Greenport to make up for lost time. Many of us had trouble sleeping because of the rough waves. At about 4am, those of us who were awake could hear the crew putting up the main and fore sails. It was pretty impressive to hear how the crew worked together in synchronization to raise the sails in almost no time. Mostly they chanted "4, 6, heave!" to pull on the lines together, but one time they sang a funny song about a sausage to stay synchronized. In the morning, we were woken up by "Friday" by Rebecca Black. While we sailed to Greenport, Port watch helped with sailing and Starboard watch learned about whales. When we got to Greenport, we took another trip to land (yay, real toilets!) and sat in a park. Some people played catch with a football while other talked and worked on their projects. After eating dinner on the boat, we went back into town to get ice cream. Last night was also the first night we had dock watch, which was similar to anchor watch, but a little bit simpler. We heard loud music from a nearby restaurant which finally closed at 2am. It was a fun day full of new experiences, new places and very noisy restaurants.
Day 7 - Crossing Buzzard's Bay
Today, we crossed from Greenport, NY to Aucoot Cove, MA. The crossing was quite rough for many of the students, with high seas and lots of wind for the majority of the trip. We spent a lot of time on deck to stave off seasickness, and shared stories with each other as well as learning from Emily about whales. Fortunately, by the mid afternoon the waves calmed down and everyone was able to recover with some vegetable soup for dinner. We reached Aucoot Cove just before sunset, and set anchor. The students stood anchor watch on their own for the first time, then the last watch helped the Starboard watch adult crew raise anchor around 2am as we headed for Plymouth, MA.
Day 8 - Erica's Blog Entry
Today was the last full day of our interesting and fun trip. Last night we anchored in Aucoot Cove, MA. It was really pretty and we saw the most amazing fireworks show. Right before it, there was a sunset that involved beautiful pink clouds and an orange sunset. Later that night we did anchor watch all by ourselves! It was really fun and requires us to be extremely responsible. After all, we were responsible for the safety of the ship and everyone aboard. We are all finishing up articles for the magazine we will all be a part of. It's not an actual magazine, but we are still going to present and read our work aloud to everyone on the boat. In the morning, we sailed and then docked at Plymouth, MA, to go whale watching. We left Lady Maryland and sat on a slightly larger boat to sail to Stellwagon Bank, an area in the ocean threat is high in biodiversity and is bursting with life. Phytoplankton blooms there, so zooplankton blooms there as well. Zooplankton eat phytoplankton. Many of the whales' prey eats zooplankton, so as a result, many whales also love to hang out there. Like I said, there is a lot of life out there! There is a food chain the goes like this:
Sunlight + nutrients -> phytoplankton -> zooplankton -> other creatures -> bigger creatures -> whales
Overall, I learned a lot about marine life and how to control a boat. Today, all the students assisted in docking Lady Maryland, which is extremely difficult. Imagine parallel parking, but a thousand times worse. Once docked, we left Lady Maryland and went aboard Tails of the Sea. We saw a humpback whale and several finback whales! Finback whales are getting second largest whales species. Seeing those whales was an amazing and unique experience for us all. Hi Dad, miss you!
Check out this space again tomorrow morning for more about our action packed day 8 and pictures!
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