Something I want you to know about living on a ship is that it never. stops. moving.

I used to think the ocean was a peaceful place. From above, the ocean looks serene right? It looks like a giant expanse of flat blue and black sandwiched in-between chunks of bumpy land. It looks predictable and it looks secure, but trust me, that image is just an illusion of oversimplified romantic ideals.

Our day began like any other day in port with a 0630 wakeup. What followed the 0630 wakeup was not like any other day we’ve had on this trip. After a two hour bus ride, we were on the border of Spain and Gibraltar. With a smile, foulie gear, and an open passport, we walked right into the autonomous territory of Gibraltar.

We baaaaaack!

Midmorning today I woke up, tumbled with the rocking of the ship into the library in my banana boxers like I usually do when I have the morning off, and poured all kinds of ideas for weird themed blog entries, and lists of quotes and anecdotes onto the ships network. They framed my state of mind at sea.

Life on land has been great, but it is time to say goodbye for a little while. Cádiz came at the perfect moment. I watched as my shipmates recharged, and experienced all that Cádiz had to offer. When you have not been on a journey such as this before a little relief at a port stop is great to have. You get a chance to explore and think about all the things you experienced on the boat. It is often hard to reflect underway because of the busy schedule.

The sun rises late in Cadiz, but the crew on the Cramer rises early.

By the time the sunlight started streaming onto the ship, we had been up and busy for 3 hours, finally ready to go out and explore!  Ida has talked of almost nothing else but the watch towers in Cadiz for the last few days. I completely understand why she is obsessed with them; they are beautifully decorated, unique towers that are scattered throughout the city providing breathtaking views from the top.

We are now gently moving away from Mallorca seeing the beautiful island getting smaller and smaller behind us as we move towards new adventures on our cruise track. The sun is peeking out from a 7/8 cloud cover in the sky and the wind, coming from SExS, is taking us into deeper waters as we leave the Bay of Palma now 5.15 nm away. Steering 213° on the helm, the Cramer is going steady 4 knots in the “blue blue blue” [dead dead dead] ocean (this phase is used to explain that a blue ocean indicates that there is little life in the water, as opposed to green water).

Hello friends and family!

Today I am writing you from the wonderful island of Mallorca at Porto Pi! I am so excited I am able to write to you today because it is one of the first days I have not felt sea sick since we left the port in Barcelona. I have definitely learned the importance of Bonine and water! On a brighter note, today was our first and only full day on the island of Mallorca.

Hola amigos y familia,

It’s been three days since our departure from the Port de Barcelona, and we arrived in style as a class to Mallorca, currently docked at Porto Pi, a naval base near Palma at around 1000. After an all hands lunch, students and faculty were free to take some time to explore land for the first time in three days. Students noted patterns of tourism, commercial shipping, and immigration as we are working on our papers for Maritime History and Culture.

Hello from the other side… of the Atlantic! Today we made our last foray into the city of Barcelona and continued our assimilation to life aboard the Corwith Cramer. We practiced emergency drills, capped by the emergence and donning of immersion suits, ran through the procedural deployment of scientific equipment using our shipboard hydrowinch system and celebrated our second shipboard-birthday (Kate) in two days.

Hola family and friends of C-269,
Today was an eventful day in Barcelona. The Conservation and Management class made an 8 am trek to the beach to conduct our beach survey- quick shout-out to Mark (Conservation and Management professor onshore), we miss you! It was a great time, Kiernan and I took care of a 5-foot length of the beach and found a lot of debris. Not surprisingly for the size of Barcelona, there many more plastics than we found in Woods Hole.