New Sea 2010 - Days 6-9

Day 6
 Wake. Run. Dip.  The only difference this morning was that the two new members of our crew had to do their swim assessment along with morning dip.  We had a lovely breakfast of eggs and bagels.  A couple of the folks had found fresh herbs on the island the day before and we added them to our eggs.  Then we took a walk up to the ICP (ice cold pond) and our trainers were gracious enough to explain the group initiative that takes place there, but not have us actually do it.  Oh, and we also learned how to make a coonskin hat as demonstrated by one of the crew.

  We loaded back onto the Mighty 12 and headed off to Dix Island.  The next day we were arriving back to Wheeler Bay in order to take a few tests and switch over to the Sharpies for the rest of training.  On the way we were greeted by a motor boat with a fellow OB instructor, the man who maintains Dix island, and some stranger who, in the span of five minutes, managed to convey all known "cool/hip/rad/surfer" hand signals to our boat.

Day 7
 Wake. Dip.  Time to sail back to base for a fun filled day of testing.  We arrived at Wheeler Bay around 12:30 and ate lunch on the mooring.  Once we were docked, we began the process of changing into swim clothes for the our swim test.  The swim test included jumping off an 18 foot pier with our PFD on, taking it off and placing it onto the dock, then swimming out about 70 feet to rescue a victim and bring them back to the dock.  After that you swam about 10 yards underwater.  The final element was diving down 10 feet and grabbing dirt from the bottom.  We all successfully completed the swim test!

  On a side note:  Don't try to fix your own coffee after swimming in 48 degree water.  I mistakenly put lemonade powder in mine instead of powdered milk.  It was rather disappointing and I had to make another coffee.

  The rest of the day we spent reviewing and taking the Maine Wilderness Guide test and our Safe Boating test for Outward Bound.  Mixed into the day was a great talk by Bob Rowe about OB history.  I would have enjoyed the talk more had I not gotten sunscreen in my eye and it was causing me distracting pain the whole time.  That night we slept in one of the student tents and dreamt about our second capsize drill to be done in the morning.

Day 8 
  No run and dip today.  Nope, today our mission was to capsize the Mighty 12 underway with a gybe.  In addition to that we were all wearing our foul weather gear.  In a highly scientific experiment I wore my SmartWool under my foulies to see if it would keep me any warmer.  I'm not sure how well it did while I was in the water, but I believe it kept me warmer once I was back on the boat.  We successfully gybed and capsized the boat.  It was really awesome watching her rise back out of the sea.  It reminded me of the scene in Pirates where they flip the boat and leave Davy Jones' Locker.

  Once we sailed the boat back to the pier the majority of the crew started cleaning her up, while five of us went to go get our pre-employment drug tests done.  When we returned the whole crew split into two as Sharpies only hold six students each.  The two boat crews, Ritt and Rip Hudner, spent the next couple hours packing food and gear onto the boats.  We left Wheeler Bay early in the afternoon and headed a short ways to Long Cove for the evening anchorage.

Day 9 
 Wake. Dip.  Off to Monhegan Island.  This was a  pretty straight shot so we took the opportunity to due more MOBs (man overboard drills).  Tommy, our energetic crew member who resembled a round fender attached to a cooking pot (please don't make fun of him), offered to keep jumping off our boats.  He also performed this altruistic task when we were sailing on the Pulling Boat.  Almost 15 times he jumped overboard to help us hone our MOB skills.  As an added bonus our trainer took away our rudder and we had to save Tommy steering only by our sails.  Amazingly enough he never got hypothermia.

  When we arrived in Monhegan we were given an island welcome as people flung themselves off the local pier when we rowed into the bay.  We were happy to find out when we asked them how the water was, that it was wet.  We anchorage ashore and set off for an hour to explore.  One of the crew and I found a fun path that lead us to the white cliffs on the other side of the island.  In order not to be late back to the boats we had to do a bit of running, but it was nice to get the legs moving after sitting on a boat.