Monday 16^th January:

Another BM writing today! It’s been an eggciting day to start the week (if you read Amber’s blog on Saturday you know exactly where this is going). [Editor: wait, shouldn’t that be ‘egg-actly’?]

The early risers amongst us this morning had a great start to the day, we watched flying fish fly about above the water as the sun rose, debating whether a group of flying fish is called a flock or a school. The passing of a small squall also brought us a gorgeous double rainbow.

After breakfast we started the day by wearing ship, it’s time to start travelling further south. We got all hands on deck for this as we needed to bring the course (the lowest square sail) around with the yards as we braced.

After smoko it was time for the much anticipated egg drop. The rules were simple, we had to build a contraption to throw our eggs as far as we could aft from the fore platform without the egg breaking. Additional points were available for a presentation & costumes. The BM team dressed up in full costume as third mate Rory, wearing braces and covering ourselves in fake freckles. We even dressed our egg up in a home knit jumper. In the end, we came joint second place with one of the watches. First place went to a team that wrapped their egg up as an orange & managed to throw it to all the way to the bridge intact. Amazing effort on egg devices, presentations & costumes all around.

It was time for some work after lunch for us BMs, and we continued to work aloft on leathers & footrope eyes before a little lesson from Bosun Fi on seizing.

At 4 one of the voyage crew gave a really interesting talk titled “Everything you wanted to know about disability but were too afraid to ask”, he touched on his own experience as someone with a visual impairment, as well on the laws and some stats on people living with impairments around the world. His talk set us up for a really open discussion on disability awareness, the JST (what we do well and what more we can do) and the different experiences of everyone when it comes to disability.

It’s galley scrub for us shortly & then we’ll be out to see the stars! Because the moon isn’t rising now until 1ish it’s been absolutely pitch black at night, we have to stumble around for a few minutes before our eyes adjust when we go outside, but once they do the skies have been amazing.

BM Elise.

Disclaimer: the ship’s masts can get in the way of the satelites when we’re deep sea and moving with the motion of the ocean, so the picture for this blog isn’t from the current voyage. But it’s an impressive effort! Note: all our emergency comms still work, but sending the office a picture of the egg drop challenge doesn’t quite meet the requirements of using it…