New and Sea and Such

While at sea…

Tracking Data:
Latitude: 10 degrees, 57 minutes N
Longitude: 056 degrees, 27 minutes W
Avg. Speed: 20.17 knots
Total distance made good: 756 Nautical Miles (NM)
Distance to Salvador: 2,722 NM
Sea Depth: 14,500 feet (Almost THREE miles deep!)
Air/Sea Temp: 78.8 degrees, for both
ENE winds at 23 knots making for moderate to rough seas; Swells ranging from 7 – 10 feet.

Now for the big news. So yesterday I was trying really, really hard to get work done. However, for two of my classes I didn’t have the books. I went to the library on multiple occasions to check the books out from the reserve section so I could begin the reading…to my great luck they were never there. Well, lets just say that’s a good thing. Big news folks, big news. Call the newsman, and bring in the chorus line. Strike up the band and cue the lights because I got cast in a show!!

Yesterday from 1830 – 2000, the performance arts professor was holding auditions. This dawned on me at about 1945. I went to the Union where they were being held and was hoping for the best. I had nothing prepared, but had been told that there would be monologues to choose from. So, I asked for a piece and I gave it my best. I read over it once and I was rushed onto the stage, as there was only about five minutes left before the next activity was to take place in the Union. My monologue was from a show called Suicide in Bb. It was a short play originally written, produced, and preformed at the Repertoire Theater at Yale University in good ol’, gun wavin’ New Haven. My character name was Jeep and he talked about the feelings he had inside his jail cell. It was a personal monologue and in it he was contemplating suicide because he was sentenced to life in prison…why, I have no idea. I only had one page of the script to look at. Regardless, I went up there and gave it my best, and she loved it. She (the professor) then pulled me aside and set up a sort of improv conversation that I just had to go with. It worked out perfect. In about 10 minutes I had done an audition that I normally would of taken days or weeks to prepare for, and this went better than all of those!

What fun it is going to be. There are 6 shows that will be preformed in the Union over the course of our journey. Besides the fact that I’ll be acting on the stage of our ship, the other great bonus to being cast in the show is that I get college credit for it!!!! So now I have 15 credits!!! The SAS program does not recommend taking 15 credits because the work load is very intensive, however, there are no texts or tests for the performance lab, just rehearsal on A days and script memorization!!! So, my Uncle will blast me for saying this, but this show won’t be like a regular class so it works out perfect! That’s not to say it is not going to demand just as much attention, if not more, because of the short amount of time we have to put on the shows. I was cast in one of the six shows, as for whom I might be playing, I have no clue. More reports on that tomorrow when the class meets for the first time.

As for life at sea…today when I woke up and went out on deck to enjoy my breakfast in company of the sea, the clouds were so low it was like you could of picked them out of the sky. There were layers of high clouds with the bright blue sky shining through, and below them were dark, thick, heavy, low clouds that were just hovering over the ocean, motionless, while the turmoil of the sea churned below them. I have learned that it is a completely different world out here on the wide-open ocean; with no land in site, and white caps and waves as far as the eye can see…there is nothing but the sky and the wind, the water and the sun that brings life to this bustling metropolis onboard the MV Explorer. I’ve also realized that this ship is exactly like a country, or a city really. I feel as though we could just stay on the sea forever; completely isolated from the world around us, and maybe, just maybe, when we are in dire need of supplies, we could stop by the closest port and stock up, and then, get back underway navigating the most unknown territory in the world…the ocean…why the hell not?

Well, there is much to be done. Until tomorrow, I’m off.