Open Window School -Day 4

We caught a great wind today and it was like magic.  We were also excited to see a pod of porpoises and a rock covered in seals earlier today.

Today’s weather started out sunny and warm, and towards noon the weather stayed the same. Suddenly, out of nowhere the weather changed and poured down rain. Luckily, Wind Watch had lunch during this time, while Water Watch got drenched.   This gave great motivation for Water Watch to answer the trivia questions in order to get into the main cabin for lunch.

A short time later it just turned cloudy, but comfortable. Besides the changing weather, we had a great sailing day today. We only used the engine for 2 hours, our best yet.

Tonight we are anchored at Spencer’s Spit on Lopez Island. It is very sandy around us and on Flower Island. There is a bald eagle in a tree. We will keep our eyes out.

This afternoon turned out to be our Challenge Day because of the anticipated low tides and hard currents tomorrow. For Challenge Day, the crew on Orion and Carlyn gave us a list of goals to accomplish today and then stepped back to let us figure it all out. They wouldn’t speak, but encouraged us to seek out the solutions from the students that knew those skills. They let the 6th graders sail the entire ship. The beginning of the day was hectic, everyone was talking over each other as they tried to get the role they wanted on the boat. Luckily, some kind people made sacrificess and gave up the role they wanted for the group. Unfortunately, troubles continued when communication was awful and we couldn’t get anything done. After many struggles we finally changed for the better, and began to work as a team. We needed to form 4 different groups: the sailors, the scientists, the documentarians, and the naturalists. In the end, we got all 3 sails up, finished all our experiments, and made it to Spencer’s Spit. Yay!

Tomorrow we are all worried about making it to the dock in Anacortes on time. The extreme low tide in the middle of the day would prevent us from getting to the dock so we may need to start earlier in the morning. Additionally, there will be strong currents in our way as well. Still, we are confident we will make it, even if we have to wake up earlier.

From Lucas and Rachel