Congratulations!

Congrats to all of our Spring 2014 crew on an epic voyage! We all look forward to hearing about your future adventures, and hope to sail with you again soon.

Be sure to check out Laura's article on the voyage in her local newspaper.

UPDATE: Check out an article about Mandy and the OCF spring trip in her local paper!

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Finals!

A beautiful day sail from Some Sound saw us shoot through Merchant Row and the Fox Island Thoroughfare toward Rockland, where we'll stay for a weekend full of final exams. For our local families, please hold off on any visits to the ship so your students can focus during the busiest academic days of the semester! 

We're looking forward to seeing all of our friends and families a week from tomorrow in Portland!

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Maine islands

After a short stop at the Isles of Shoals marine lab and bird research station, we had a lovely passage east to Stave Harbor, where we had a much needed day devoted to academics and a bit of small boat sailing in Gecko. All are well, studying hard for finals and taking in the incomparable Maine coast.

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Outward Bound for Isles of Shoals

Gloucester has been a wonderful stop for our crew. We not only stocked up on fuel and provisions, but visited whale researchers at Ocean Alliance who are designing drones to fly into the blows of whales to collect valuable data to study whale stress. They call it a SnotBot. They're also working with the pop artist Pharrell Williams on a new line of jeans made out of recycled and reclaimed ocean plastics. 

We visited artists, the Fisherman's Memorial, the Schooner Adventure, and had many other adventures. We're looking forward to Isles of Shoals where we'll learn about songbird research and the Shoals Marine Lab.

We'll be headed Down East after, bound for final exams and some wonderful cruising before seeing friends and family at graduation on the 24th.

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Birthdays and ship work

We had a great call in Mystic Seaport, surrounded by beautiful wooden boats and living in a maritime museum. We celebrated Scott and Mandy's birthday, worked on the ship, and meet some fantastic people. We're bound today for Gloucester via Stellwagen Bank.

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Fish On!

 Finally, after two and a half months of intensive fishing (if you can call dragging a handline intensive…) we caught our first edible fish today.  As we started to near the cooler waters north of Cape Hatteras we had begun to give up hope of enjoying the pleasure of fresh fish straight from the sea.  Each morning we dutifully streamed our line off the taffrail, with the confidence that today would be the day and we would soon be eating the fresh fish sandwiches for which our cook Lizzie is famous for throughout the fleet.  But every night at twilight we would reluctantly coil up the fishing line with resignation and, as the days wore on, despair.

 Sure we've had some close calls; we've seen Dorados (Mahi Mahi as their known) leaping in the air around our lures, we've seen them lying in wait under fish floats, and we've even caught a few barracuda (which we threw back over concerns of ciguatera).  Our wait for a delicious seafood meal would have to wait.

 But today was different.  The entire ship was woken up to the call of "Fish On!" yelled by our Chief Mate, Mr. Leathers.  In no time he had a beautiful Bonito (a smaller cousin in the tuna family) over the rail amidst a very happy ship's company.  Not wanting to waste any part of this opportunity, we reviewed some salient aspects of the fish's physiology, and looked in its stomach to see what we could learn about its diet.  Shockingly we found about two dozen small larval crustaceans, larval fishes, and even a very small seahorse!  Nothing was nearly as big as the lure that the fish had tried to eat.

 The fish was lightly seared in olive oil and garlic, and proved an excellent accompaniment to the gnocchi we had for dinner.  And best of all, we saved the skin and are currently experimenting to see if it is possible to make fish leather using black tea!

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