I was responsible for leading the dawn watch this morning.  Things went well for the most part— our rotation was going smoothly and we passed through a few squalls around 0500.  As our watch started to wrap up and prepare breakfast, the wind died down considerably. That’s when things started to get a little complicated.  With B watch just coming on deck to take over, we needed to set the jib topsail (JT) and take the reef out of the main.  Both tasks are easy for a crew to do, especially with so many people on deck and when the mate on watch is telling everyone exactly which job they should do and when they should do it. 

I, however, was no mate and I had never been in charge of raising the sails before, so figuring out which steps happened in which order was a little difficult, especially with a certain watch officer heckling me that he wanted to go eat breakfast ten minutes ago (at least this time he wasn’t throwing goldfish crackers at me saying that they were “hail training” for North Atlantic weather…).  With lots of helpful advice from the crew and mates, and after some brainstorming with Nadia (the oncoming student B watch officer of the day), we got the JT up, but then the lazy sheet got caught on one of the stays and someone had to go out to the headrig to try to shake it out.  Although I worried that raising the main would be even more complicated, once the reef was taken out it just had to be hauled up so it ended up being a little simpler.
We have a watch meeting before class this afternoon, which I’m looking forward to since it’s been a week since our last one and I’ll have the chance to ask some of the questions I have about this morning’s watch.  I’m spending my off-watch hours this morning catching up on some schoolwork before the captain has my head—my book report is a few days overdue.  Yesterday was fine, although I’m convinced Madame Pele was jealous of the other volcanoes we visited because she’s been trying to erupt ever since.  The night we left the Azores the galley ended up getting pretty smoky, and I was awakened bright and early at 0600 on the 30th (after a long sail handling episode which took from the end of watch at 3 until around 4) because the extra carbon build-up around the flame on the stove had started to smoke an obscene amount.  For the second time in 24 hours we had to turn the stove off and vent out the galley and main salon for a while, but now at least everything seems to be under control.  Time for a snack break…
 

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