Open Enrollment, Day 2, April 2014

Do you have any interesting stories about today….

We learned how to raise the sails (main, mizzen, and jib sails) and navigate the boat more effectively. A big point of the learning today was how to Tack the boat, where we are sailing and completely shift the boat to go against or with the wind.

At first it was kind of unfamiliar, but by the end we had become well educated in it. It was a group effort, so everyone had to do their part. We also learned how to steer the boat. This was all very cool because we completely navigated the boat by tacking it for a period of time. This is good preparation for Friday, where we will completely be navigating the boat by ourselves without the help of crew members.

Any favorite wildlife sightings, quotes, games to share?

We were thrilled with the great animal sightings we got today, as we saw many harbor seals and harbor porpoises. We also skipped rocks on the shore and played other fun games on shore of Spencer Spit, and had lots of fun sailing and navigating the boat. We learned about navigation in detail and used longitude and latitude in depth.

Describe the anchorage or moorage where Carlyn is right now:

We are in a small bay on Orcas island, at an old camp established in 1926 called Four Winds *Westward Ho Camp. This camp is a summer only camp and is especially important to the Carlyn, because it is Carlyns home. Carlyn was built back in 1996.

Today’s weather:

On the water in the morning the weather was fairly windy with many clouds, but the sun was shining brightly. As the day converged into the afternoon we started to lose the clouds, but picking up more sun. So if you were in the sun, you weren’t that cold because the wind was less of a factor.

Describe highlights from today’s science and sailing watches:

The highlights were definitely learning how to tack the boat and seeing if we could beat a 40 minute time limit for science testing. Overall, today was very fun and interactive with everyone participating and we all enjoyed it.

Do you have any questions, concerns, or expectations for tomorrow?

No one has gotten sea sick yet and we expect that everyone will be fine for tomorrow, so that is a relief. A question we have is this: Will the cooking groups get to choose the meals that they planned to make or will we cook what the way the crew planned?