Field Day & Swim Call

MFT: Swim CALL & Laundry & Shower
LFP: Cleaning all the showers?

Hallo, so today we had our second to last field day (who’s counting?). Because of bad luck, I’ve actually had galley cleanup twice and dawn cleanup twice in the last 36 hours plus field day! Yuck, way too much cleaning! On the other hand, now that it is all over the ship is nice and clean and I’m off cleaning for another 3 days! Woot :).

We had dawn watch this morning and a very quick dawn clean up. I managed to do a full bucket of laundry and hang it all out to dry by 8:30. Then I went back to sleep for a while. It’s amazing how dirty your clothes get and how not clean (even after strenuous scrubbing) they are. This particular set of clothing for instance got scrubbed with a brush on deck, rinsed twice in salt water, scrubbed again by hand, and then rinsed in hot fresh water, and each time the bucket water turned completely brown! Very nasty — I can’t wait to go to a laundromat and clean these clothes. There are a fair amount that will have to be thrown away. The stains have become too permanent. But for example, I have a sports bra where the strap has been permanently stained (I think from sunscreen mostly).

Anywho, after lunch we had field day. I actually got a pretty good job after doing the shower again (second time in a day) where I got to use Murphy’s oil on all the wood. I must say I truly love the smell of Murphy’s oil as compared to say clorox (which is what I was covered in from cleaning the showers). I even got to keep the empty bottle of Murphy’s oil and it is now in my clothing cabinet hopefully making things smell lemony fresh (it can only be a better smell than currently!).

The best part of today? We got to have a swim call right in the middle of the ocean after field day. The water was pretty calm (only 2 ft. swell) and almost no wind (we were moving about 1 knot under sail). So we all got to jump in. I brought up my shampoo and stuff and jumped in with all my nasty clothing to clean it up a bit. It mostly worked (my shirt smells of rosemary)! I got to clean up nicely (a nice trick? use facial scrub on your body because that actually removes the dirt that has been ingrained into your pores). I even got a freshwater rinse!


It’s amazing how much you learn to treasure simple things like showers and clean clothing and cold drinking water! I can’t wait to take a nice long shower and have ice-cold water to drink whenever I want (now we only get cold water during meals, otherwise it’s lukewarm at best). Anyways, ending the day with and evening watch and a deployment of the 2-meter plankton net. It should be interesting! 

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