SSV Corwith Cramer awaits class C-233 in Key West, Florida. This looks a lot like but is different from the picture I included in my first blog about SEA.
I am currently at the home of fellow Logger Cat Jenks and family. Nestled in the snow-packed city of Sherborn, MA, we have spent a relaxing few days enjoying a real home and real vegetables. I wouldn’t complain about the food at SEA since I ate a lot better than I did attempting to feed myself at UPS, but my house on shore was a bit lacking in the vegetable department during meal preparation. We hit success early with the meat and pasta combination and ran with it. For six weeks.
The food here at the Jenks house, however, has been phenomenal. We had an early Valentine’s Day/send-off feast this evening which involved steak, ginger tofu, and chocolate covered angel food cake. I would love to stay at the Jenks house for a while. Unfortunately for our diets, however, we fly to Key West in the morning. I and 8-ish shipmates will be getting a head start on our tans before boarding the ship on Wednesday, where I expect the food will be adequate but not necessarily pleasurable.
We will be out of sight of land for five weeks after exiting the Gulf Stream and turning east toward Bermuda, and I can’t imagine there are many produce stores in the middle of the North Atlantic gyre (in fact it’s one of the deadest places on earth, so there’s not much production at all. oceanography pun.). On the up side, we will be out of sight of land for five weeks! This is certain to be a remarkable experience.
Unfortunately, that will mean the end of Krauszer blogs for a while, but you can follow the Corwith Cramer and her “daily” reports at the SEA current voyages blog: http://www.sea.edu/voyages/current_cramer.aspx . I am supposed to alert you that even if we miss a day on the blog, it does not mean the ship has sunk. Sometimes parents freak out.
I spent about four hours today packing, unpacking, and repacking everything I will need for the next six weeks aboard a sailing vessel. It was stressful, to say the least. I mailed three boxes back to Washington filled with winter gear and most of my dark-colored clothing, and I think that I managed to distill out appropriate Caribbean apparel. I suppose we shall see.
I am certainly equipped to face the storms of the Gulf Stream. Armed with two full sets of “foul weather gear” (affectionately termed “foulies” here at SEA), XTRATUFs, and a full-brimmed rain hat, I expect I am pretty invincible, or at least water-proof. My foulies take up as much space in my bag as all of my other clothing combined, so we know what part of the trip I’m most excited for.
I will brief you next time on the details of the voyage and as much as I know of what to expect of the trip, but for now I have some sleeping to do in a very comfortable Jenks bed.
My hair is still pink and a little bit shorter than last week. What began as three distinct colors (a mid-teens punk rock layering of purple, orange, and red) is now an example of human tie-dying. If done by a third grader who favors pink.