(First and foremost: Happy birthday, Mom! I love and miss you so much!)

Hello!

Today, we departed Nuku’alofa under a hot afternoon sun and fair wind. The dock where the ship has spent the past few days moored is tantalizingly close to the outer islands and light green coral reefs, so to find myself traveling back onto greeny blue water is a long-awaited treat. It’s a tall order to report out all that I have experienced in the past week, so to sum it up I will simply say I am humbled.

Ahoy Mateys! Hello all the way from Nuku’alofa, Tonga! After a long day of data organization and ship cleaning yesterday, we set sail at 0500 this morning towards the capital of Tonga and arrived around 1330. It was all hands on deck as we helped safely get Bobby C. Seamans into dock.

We arrived at Orona yesterday afternoon after an unforgettable time on Kanton.  Today started around 6am with a beautiful sunrise and tasty chocolate chip pumpkin pancakes.  After some quick chores, our watch group packed up the small boat and made our way over to the beach.

We left Kanton yesterday, an absolutely amazing place I’ll never forget. A watch (my watch) was then completely wrecked with dawn watch (0100-0700). Fully exhausted from adventures in Kanton and working to get underway again; it was rough.

Hi Mom! Today is the day we set sail for Orona. My early morning was spent recovering from a long night of performances, dancing, storytelling and a feast I won’t soon forget.  After few hours standing watch my fellow watch mates and I hopped into our Defender (small boat) and headed to a new coral sight recently named “coral plains”, and for good reason.

Kanton was the paradise you always read about as a kid, and leaving this beautiful atoll is like a snap back into reality, one that is going to be relatively hard to make. The plethora of wildlife alone was absolutely breathtaking.

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.

And if you told me that I would’ve survived the first leg of this trip, I wouldn’t have believed you for even one second.

It has been a long two weeks on the Robert C. Seamans, laced with dark nights and happy memories with plenty of time for moments of reflection and silence in between.

We have had quite a few very exciting days here on SSV Robert C. Seamans, and there seems to be no slowing down. July 14th we crossed the equator and celebrated my 20th birthday. July 15th we turned right around, and we spent our day learning how to go aloft and completing our lab practical. T