We’re coming to Boston!

The public is invited to visit SEA Semester’s flagship, the SSV Corwith Cramer, to learn more about SEA and our programs for high school, gap year, and college students. This is a free event open to families. We hope to see you!

After a week at sea with no land in sight, the presence of the Boston cityscape on the horizon and the crisscross of scurrying boat traffic has been nothing less than dramatic.  However, our intrepid sailor/scientists remained focused on their duties and brought us safely to anchor near Georges Island, part of Boston Harbor proper.

Welcome to the SEASCape Session 2 Blog! This will be updated daily by the students in pairs. For today, the students are just settling into SEA campus, so we (the student coordinators) have written the first blog post.

Bonjour (as the sailors say),

It has been a fun time here on Mama Cramer (Where’s Daddy Cramer?). We are in Stellwagen Bank if you hadn’t noticed yet, but we can see large ‘fish’ called whales or in sailor lingo wh’ls.

This morning we emerged from the fog. The ship made way at a fast pace; we soon left far behind the cloaking Stratus cloud that for so long darkened our horizons. We had a nice breeze, which allowed us to sail with six sails. In addition to the four normal triangular sails, we raised a topsail, which is square, and an additional triangular sail at the bow.

One of the things I have learned so far in this trip is that things can change in an instant. Skies go from clear to cloudy, wind fills in from almost nothing to practically gale-force, and a sunny day can turn into thunderstorms, all in a matter of minutes. So for us students on the SSV Robert C. Seamans, one of the most valuable lessons has been adapting to these changes.

It is 1930 (7:30 am) on a Friday night, and I am hanging out on the bow of the Robert C. Seamans. I have come to know this specific location on the boat as the “bow watch spot”. One member of the crew has stood here, tethered to the stay, all the way forward where the sides of the boat come to a point, for every hour that we’ve been underway.

Today was cold. The morning started off sunny and moderately cloudy, but all of a sudden, the fog set in. We could barely see 10 feet in front of us, and it brought a huge mass of moist air. Our hair became engulfed in droplets of dew, and we turned on the fog horn, which was very loud and scary.

It’s been ten years since the Woods Hole Diversity Initiative launched the Partnership Education Program (PEP) in 2009. The 11th PEP cohort, which numbers 14 students, recently completed their classroom work at SEA, as well as a short cruise aboard the SSV Corwith Cramer, and are now living on the SEA campus while they do internships at scientific organizations in Woods Hole.

Hi everyone,

Today was our last full day on campus, and we made the most of every moment.