Journal entry for week April 16 to April 22                

Journal: April 16, 2006

Underway to Dominican Republic

Happy Easter! With a good wind, no clouds, and bright sun it was a beautiful day. Like any day underway, it started out with the morning watch chores. Deck wash, soles, and toilets were all scrubbed with typical industry. In the beginning these chores seemed to take hours, but by now they’ve become just another part of the day.

Today was also student’s first trip aloft! Despite a lot of fear of heights, my whole watch made it all the way up, and it was worth it. The view is amazing from 85ft up, with the whole Caribbean ocean spread out it front of us. Well, I guess it’s not the Caribbean ocean anymore, we’ve officially crossed into the North Atlantic.

Journal: April 17th, 2006

Dominican Republic

Today was our first day in the Dominican Republic and I am pleased to say that I get the pleasure of writing today’s entry. First we arrived in Bahia de Samana. Then we anchored and took a bunch of pictures of the greenest land we’ve ever seen. We saw this motor boat coming towards us and we figured that it was just a bunch of people trying to check out the Spirit but then we saw a couple of guys in the speed boat. One of them had a Harvey Gamage shirt on and shook hands with the whole crew. Harvey Gamage is part of Ocean Classroom Foundation’s fleet and is Spirit’s sister ship. It turned out that this guy’s name is Martin and he arranges everything from dinner to getting fuel whenever an Ocean Classroom ship comes in.

After our arrival, we had another field day, but this time it was a hurried one (field day, for those who missed an earlier description, is a thorough cleaning of the boat). We were waiting for a group of people from the Dominican Republic to visit the ship to check us into the country. The Captain wanted us to look our best so we all put on our TSEA t-shirts and clean pants. Then we furled the all of the sails and made the boat really look sharp. The group of officials finally came and welcomed us into the country.

Once we were cleared in to the DR, we had to get ready to go ashore. Then we got aboard Gordita and Armin to go ashore. We were supposed to meet up with Martin, but he never showed up so we went to an open air market to look for presents for the special people back home. Then we walked to the internet café and checked our emails and myspaces. Afterwards we tried to go find phones, but apparently none of them worked. We then went looking for places to eat and found one place that served Italian food.

After eating and e-mailing family and friends, we had to go back onboard the Spirit for dinner, dinner clean up, study hall and a review of tomorrow’s rough plan to further explore the DR. Apparently we’re going to a school and giving a presentation. Then we’re going to visit a waterfall. I‘m so excited! You’ll have to read tommorow’s entry to find out what happens next.

Jamiylah Asaad

Journal: April 18, 2006

Dominican Republic

Today, we woke early because we had a full day planned. We got to shore by 9:00am and set off to visit the secondary school in Samana. Upon arrival, I was amazed at the state of the school building; it was dirty, with water pooled on the floor and vulgar writings on the wall. When we went upstairs into a classroom however, we saw that none of that mattered.

Yesenia Perez was the teacher in the classroom we visited. Through translations by former TSSG student Blanca Garcia (who is on board as a deckhand this year), we understood that this was a Spanish class and that Senora Perez chooses to teach it not as a teacher but as a guide. She allows her students to pick what they study and teach it to the rest of the class. She also told us over and over again, “This is your home”, which put us all at ease.

The students of the class ranged from ages 14 to 20. They sang the Dominican Republic National Anthem and put on an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Although the whole drama was in Spanish, the students were such good actors that we basically understood the story line and where to laugh.

After the play, we broke up into groups and talked to the kids which was a bit tricky because their English wasn’t great and our Spanish wasn’t great. It was still a lot of fun, especially when the students in my group started singing and insisted we sing as well. We ended up singing a sea chantey that one of the watches had taught us called “Haul Away Joe”, which pleased the students greatly. Unfortunately, after that we had to leave because our taxis had come to take us to the Cabo Limon Waterfalls.

The drive Cabo Limon was amazingly varied. As we went up the hill and out of town, we left the touristy concrete buildings and started to see falling-apart wooden shacks and half finished concrete buildings. The further you went away from town, the poorer the area seemed to get, but everywhere you looked, the people were happy which was heartening.

When we got to the trail head for the waterfalls, we decided to horseback ride up the trail which was both enjoyable and distressing. The ride was enjoyable, the state the horses were in was distressing. They looked overworked and unhealthy. We had guides to take us along the trail and it was amazing to see how hard they worked for us. I felt a little bad for making them go through the trouble of dealing with us and their unwilling horses. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun, but it was also a bit of a wakeup call. We have discussed the difference between tourist and travelers and in this case, I realized that we can’t always avoid being tourists.

When we hiked down to the waterfall, all of our jaws dropped at how beauteous it was, water dropping down into a bubbling pool. We all jumped in the water promptly, and I don’t think fresh water has ever felt so good before. After not having a fresh water dousing since Statia, it felt good to get all that grime off of us. Swimming against the current, you could go under the falls to the other side and look at the torrents of water streaming down in front of you. In addition to that, if you followed the wall, you got to a calm sheltered spot, kind of like a cave. There the water was deep enough to climb the walls and dive down into the pool. All in all, the trip to the waterfalls made for a splendid, relaxing time.

After leaving the falls, we were given time to explore the town before dinner. In groups, we decided our priorities and then used our time to shop, eat or use the phone/internet until the precious hour of 6pm rolled around and we all met up at the dinner spot. We had arranged for local food to be prepared for us family style and boy oh boy was it good! We had tostones, rice and beans, beef, fish, chicken, salad, and our choice of drinks. It was the best meal I’d tasted in a while and it felt great to be able to all sit down at a table and eat as a group.

After stuffing ourselves to the gills with food, we were given the opportunity to dance. Just to the side of our table, there was a cleared area, so we all got up and danced to our hearts content. While Marcos was spinning Melanie around during an impromptu salsa session, the rest of TSSG began doing interpretive dance of various jobs on the ship which was a big hit. We acted out hauling on lines, swabbing the deck, and best of all, pumping the head. After eating and dancing until we were fit to drop, we waltzed back to the ship in high spirits. Hopefully these high spirits will hold for a while because we are coming up on our next voyage leg which will take us to San Salvador.

Journal: April 19, 2006

Anchored in Samana

Our day began with the infamous boat runs to an island that seemed almost an oasis, as it was hidden beneath blankets of palm trees, surrounded by green murky water. It sat about a quarter of a mile or so off the coast of Samana with a bridge connecting it to land. We had heard on the island there was a little place to buy cokes and pastries, so as we packed our bags we thought of island music, umbrellas, pina coladas, and our sunglasses resting on our faces while all of us sat in chairs with Dominican water washing up against our naked toes.

As I climbed out of Armin, up onto a rusted dock, I saw a beach veiled by trash and a path laden on either side with even more trash. Marcos told us to go explore and to take time to ourselves to write in our journals. We headed off, in search of the restaurant. We walked through paths sheltered by emerald vines and jade trees, up to broken steps, which lead us to pretty much a dead end in the middle of an opening of shrubs. A little scared of the weirdly mysterious, we hurried back down the steps, with all hopes of paradise lost, to a beach, underneath the bridge. We played around in shallow, warm water and tanned, as we wrote a “must do entry” in our journals. We talked, reminisced about the magic of our trip, thought about how close the end was, and wondered how different life at home would be. Never again, we decided, would we have to go back to school, because this was too amazing, too marvelous to ever return to any regular school, have any regular classes, with any regular kids. While our peers were sitting in a white room, staring at a white board, we were there on an almost forgotten island playing with golden and orange shells, digging our toes into the cream colored sand. We figured out the various species of fish that lived in the surrounding waters, understood the mangrove trees, and contemplated the symbolism in “A Tempest”. No, we would never go back…

Marcos whistled (a new skill he has learned recently) and slowly, I assure you very slowly, like the sun giving up the earth to the moon at sunset, we inched back to the boats, acknowledging that time itself would be our worst enemy.

Later that day, we set sail for San Salvador, on the course we had plotted. I guess our skills as your little sailors are indeed soaring.

Ryan Marks

Journal: April 20, 2006
Underway from Samana, DR to San Salvador, Bahamas

We are still underway to our last port stop in San Salvador in the Bahamas. Time is going by so fast I feel like it was just last week that it was our first time stepping on to Spirit and begging for this journey to begin. I have seen so much positive change in all these girls and it makes me so happy to share this experience with them.

Today the swells have been really high – about 4-6 feet with some as big as 10 feet. This is the roughest that it has ever been and surprisingly no own is sea sick like I thought they would be. The swells are really fun actually. It is almost like a roller coaster because the boat goes up really high and than comes down fast and it’s been like that pretty much the whole day.

This morning I was on bow watch which means I was on look-out in the front of the boat. When you are on bow watch your job is to report any vessels, weather, and anything that that would change or alter our course. For me, bow watch is my favorite job on the boat. It is really the only time you have all to yourself. It is very calming and makes you think a lot but of course you also have to keep a good eye out for anything at the same time.

This morning I was on bow watch very early in the morning because my watch was from 4am-8am. As I was looking in the distance, I saw something come up and out of the water very slowly. At first I wasn’t sure I had seen it because after a while scanning the horizon, your eyes can be very deceiving and you think you see stuff but it’s really not there. This time, I saw it again and I new it was something but I wasn’t sure what it was. I saw it again and then I ran to the back of the boat to tell my other watch mates to come and see the thing that I saw. We headed back to the bow of the boat but nothing was in sight! They waited and waited but there was nothing. I was so mad I wanted to show them but it was gone whatever it was.

Ife Cook

Journal: April 21, 2006
Underway to San Salvador

Another day underway to San Salvador.

Today, we were in the midst of a seamanship class on Rules of the Road when we caught a four-foot Mahi-Mahi fish. Class quickly changed to Marine Biology and as we studied and then dissected it. We’ve grown accustomed to such distractions. Sometimes we’ll be reading a text book and the next minute we’ll all be rushing for our cameras because someone spotted a whale or dolphin. Perhaps the craziest part of it all is that this is part of our high school experience. I mean who else can say that they went to school on a tall ship in the Caribbean and learned navigation during their junior year? Not many. So anyhow, we filet the fish and then had it for lunch. It was delicious.

The rest of my day was filled with my regular watch duties. Slowly the crew is passing Spirit under our hands, so the knowledge we built up in the past weeks is coming out in full force. It’s a little overwhelming, but it makes watch more interesting.

On our journey to San Salvador we were making about 9 knots, but the swells were really high. There were many times that I swore I would go overboard. I would be carrying a pot of dishes and suddenly I would fly across the deck. Marcos calls this type of highly uncoordinated walk the “toddler stroll”. Others like to call it the “drunken stumble”. I’m already feeling a little nostalgic about leaving Spirit in a week. Our group has worked through and done so much in the past five weeks and just when we’re getting the hang of it, it happens to be our last week.

For the most part I think our group is living the last week up, and taking advantage of every opportunity because we’re all quite aware that our voyage is coming to an end. On occasion we can go on the head rig (lots of us take advantage of this). Its almost like riding a roller coaster, because the bow sprit bobs up and down until you think your leg are going to get drenched, but sure enough the ship carries you way above the surface. I’m really going to miss moments like these on Spirit and look forward the rest of our voyage.

Jane Marque

Journal: April 22, 2006
Underway from the Dominican Republic to San Salvador

Ah yes another day underway! We started off the day with our normal “at sea” routine which consists of chores, breakfast, class, lunch, etc. We sailed on a starboard tack, with our sails on a beam reach. Our sailing went pretty fast as we made our way through the Caribbean Sea up into the North Atlantic at about five knots. To our surprise, we started to realize that, finally after our longest leg at sea thus far, we were definitely going to be at our desired anchorage in San Salvador earlier than expected and by the end of the day.

My watch (group) was the one in charge of the boat when we anchored at 11pm and I was the Junior Watch Officer which means that I would have to be in charge of lots of people in making sure we dropped the anchor in the correct spot, and that everyone was organized and tending the right lines when we struck (pulled down) the sails. This was extremely more stressful and nerve wracking than one might think. It entailed a great deal of management and multitasking. We checked our radar and navigation charts diligently throughout the watch to ensure a safe arrival. Once we were close enough to the harbor, we began to strike sail. First we struck the jib, then the jumbo, the fores’l and then the mainsail. Once all of that was finished, we checked the depth of the water using a lead line. When it was the right depth, we dropped the anchor. I made a mistake with one of my orders which caused confusion and chaos during a dangerous moment but with the crew’s understanding, support and quickness to handle the situation, it all got sorted out in time. It was difficult and challenging but, in the end, it was empowering to know that I had accomplished, with a lot of support, what I had only seen done by instructors with far greater knowledge than I.

Angel Thackeray