Today I had the watch from 1300 to 1900. When I was told I was expressionless. After last time there was no reason to get excited. Class was really good today. We based our discussion on the difficulty of talking about slavery today. At first we went off in our watches in which I think my watch all participated really well (even though a certain somebody keeps going off on a long thing of irrelevance) but even the chief mate who is not really interested in the academic side of things, had quite a lot to say. I will go into more detail on the questions and answers we came up with in a reflection, as I don’t have time here but I definitely think that its food for thought for everyone.

Because we have class right in the middle of it, it always messes up the routine as students have to sit down and take part in the discussions but a member of the crew from the on watch has to stay on the helm (someone has to steer!) Most people could understand this and that its of no fault of anyone in particular and I tried my best to alter the rotation as best as possible to give people breaks but watch duties still have to be done-I mean there’s wake up’s, boat checks and dinner set-up! Even thought this chaos was going on, I felt calm and collected and people were just going with it and staying positive. In fact, I was really pleased (especially compared to the last watch that I had which I hope you have not forgotten). But, suddenly somebody had to piss me off and I was vex. It spoilt the whole thing. One person had to start moaning and complaining, refusing to do a boat check. I just did not get the immaturity. I still don’t. How can everyone else, even the other student of 20, deal with the situation maturely but he can’t? He constantly argues anyway so to see him try to mess up my rotation even more, messed me up. I was boiling inside but I just had to let him continue arguing with himself-over a boat check-(it’s not difficult) as I continued with what I had to do. Logan and I did the boat check in the end. THEN, he decides to come up to me saying he’ll do the boat check in 15 minutes when it had already been done, I looked at him like ‘what? is this guy serious?’. Trust, I was ready to throw him off the boat. Ben gave me a great quote by Cicero- “ Men are like wines, in time, the bad turn sour and the good mature”. That is so true.
So yea, I guess apart from that, the day went pretty well. 

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