Land Ho!

11 days out on an open ocean later...

Argo is fast becoming home to me and falling into the rhythm of living on a ship has been much easier then I expected.We are divided into 3 watch teams, each watch team rotates through every 3 hours, day and night. At first waking up for the midnight to 3am watch or the 3am to 6am was extremely hard but after a while it became pretty natural for us. Cooking underway is pretty intense....pots and pans flying everywhere and bowls of already cut up vegetables zooming across the kitchen. You learn to balance and your body slowly adjusts to moving with the ship as it rises and falls with each swell. We're living five people in each cabin and the cabins are tiny (three bunks on top of each other) so we've gotten to know each other pretty fast! Most everyone is chill and there haven't been any big arguments which is really nice.

Life on a ship is much more intense then life on land. You are constantly balancing and half falling all over the place, constantly trying to find something to hold on to. I'm finding hard to find the words to describe the feeling of raising a sail or taking in a sheet. We are a new ship but because it is traditionally built we only have one winch on board which means everything else is done by hand. We hand over hand the halyard line (line=rope) up and just when you think your muscles are about to give out you have it sweated all the way up. There's something about the first few moments when the motor is shut off and it's just you and the ship sailing across the ocean.