I just finished cleaning up the aft cabin (the time is 0530, July 25)—dawn watch always cleans the soles and heads.  Today I’m scheduled to present my section of Bury The Chains, a book by Adam Hochschild that we were all assigned sections of earlier in the week.  Tomorrow, I’m supposed to explain to everyone how the propellers work (each student is working with Ben on explaining a ship system). 

Things have been going well and last night’s watch was possibly the funniest I have ever had.  Johnny was teaching us all his version of Tai-bo (spelling?) and so A-watch was pretty much doing some very funny synchronized dance moves on the quarterdeck.  I was laughing so hard I cried and it was hard to stay on my course at the helm (but don’t worry, I managed).
            We had an interesting watch two nights ago as well: we hadn’t seen any other ships in a few days, but in the middle of the night we started to detect a large object dead ahead on radar, (several miles away dead ahead, not close) seemingly stopped in the water. The bow watch was having trouble seeing it visually, until we realized it was only displaying a flashing amber light intermittently.  So Saphra and I spent an hour or so watching the “Spanish fishing boat” (Read: Russian submarine) while the staff worked to communicate with it to make sure it really was stopped and that we could pass it safely.  It was a little spooky having this large, unidentified radar object stopped directly in our path when we hadn’t seen anyone else in a while.  The person at that vessel’s radio also said he only spoke Spanish (with an accent that sounded Russian), so even just being sure that the vessel was really stopped and that it was safe to pass took waking up our Spanish speaking crew members.
Also that night, I got to hear the story of the H.M.S. Bounty from Tim, who is as good a storyteller as he is a carpenter.  The Bounty story and mysterious vessel encounter definitely made the watch pass quickly.  Now it’s time to wake people up for breakfast… 

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