Spring Sailing

February 02, 2020

It’s been a pretty exciting start to the semester, and while I’ve managed to keep my academic workload pretty light this semester, I’ve filled that time with TAing, drumming, and work on Graduate. Needless to say, the first sailing trip of the semester was a welcome break.

The voyage we undertook this past weekend is traditionally just for the nautical science staff, or “mates”. The captains reacquaint everyone with the operation and safety procedures for the boats we take out, and we spend some time coordinating which pairs of first and second mates will go out on which student voyages throughout the upcoming semester.

Mimicking the structure of those voyages, the weekend trip was a two-day affair, with an overnight stay moored at a marina in Long Beach. However, since everyone knows the drill, most of the time is just spent lounging on deck in the sun and listening to the captains tell stories and explain nautical trivia. Here are a couple pictures I took the first day!

An ocean view of long beach. This is the standard destination for the nautical science staff voyage, as there's plenty of stuff to do on shore and we can easily meet up to do scheduling for the semester. The ever-present mountains looming above Los Angeles. They're still pretty surreal having lived in Maryland for so long. The port of LA is one of the busiest in the world, and as such we often find ourselves sailing alongside these massive container ships. Having heard the horror stories, we like to keep as much distance as possible! Facing West we get a pretty good view of Catalina, a pretty big island off the coast. When we get lucky with perfect conditions, that's our destination. I've not been yet, so fingers crossed. A fantastic sunset from the Long Beach marina. A perfect backdrop for the much-needed walk to Chipotle. A sunrise over a quiet Long Beach on the following day. It was cold as hell during the night so I woke up at 6:00 to go get hot chocolate and watch the sunrise from a parking structure.

During the first day we also got a chance to see a couple whales and dolphins, however none breached long enough to get a good photo or video. Maybe next time. Until then, happy 2020-02-02!