Log 22

Today, I woke up before sunrise in the hopes of seeing some ocean life. The captain had told us that between 0500 and 0800 we would be sailing through a common whale watching area. Well, I had to wait an hour just for me to be able to see anything. There were a lot of ships, mostly cargo. It wasn’t until around 0700 that we saw something. It was only a flying fish, but they normally fly when fleeing from something else. Unfortunately, we think they were fleeing from our ship and not from a pod of dolphins. Towards the very end, we did see dolphins, but only through binoculars. One of these days, I will get to see a whale.

It is an interesting experience being on the ship. For a while, it is strange waking up on the water. But as time passes and you started to get used to it. Almost as if you have lived on the water your entire life. Then, there is a moment when the full reality of the situation hits you. I was sitting outside on the ninth deck, looking out to the ocean, and I started thinking about what I would be doing if I was back in Maine. And I realized just how lucky I was to be travelling the world on a floating university. It is one thing to learn about how big our world is behind a desk, but you don’t actually realize how big it is until it takes you four days to travel from Myanmar to India.

In movies and from beach goers, you always hear that the people could stare at the ocean all day if given the chance. I would absolutely agree with this statement. I have found myself lost in the waves several times. You don’t even realize the time passing around you. I once spent two hours watching the horizon, but it only felt like twenty minutes.

Another one of my favorite things to do is to watch the sunset. It is an amazing experience. I never realized how quickly the sun sets. You can count it down if you time it right. One moment it’s there, and the next, it’s gone. You would miss it if you blinked. There are stories about a green flash resulting from the setting sun. We watch for it every sunset we get to see. We haven’t seen it yet, and aren’t sure it even exists, but our thinking is, what if it does? So we watch.