DR - 3/12/15 (Thursday)

-       We had been following a schedule of 3 hours of sailing and 6 hours of sleeping.

o   One night, Thalles had seen some bioluminescent dinoflagellate (Noctiluca scintilaus).

è We arrived at Samana Bay around 11:40am.

è Around 3:00pm, we deployed the ROV. 
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o   Visibility was very low due to the muddy conditions of the water.

o   Thalles was the snorkeler/diver that stayed with the ROV in the water. 

è A few of us decided to look at and ID some plankton samples at 4:00pm.

Around bedtime, while everyone else was trying to watch a movie, I was in my berth trying to study. I chuckled when Eric walked my berth and made a sly comment about how they seem "like a bunch of monkey" trying to fix the technical difficulties of playing a movie on the TV screen.

A lot of stars are our tonight despite the city along the coast coming alive. Lights and music paint the scene of this coastal city. Along with the barking of dogs in the background. Finally a moment to truly be by myself and reflect… Blue-water sailing is not a lost art… Yes, it’s true that the economy of most countries are not dependent on this archaic form of travelling and transportation. But it still has its place in our culture today. Especially in a fast-growing one where continuous advancement of technology is weaning us (the majority of us) from the foundation that made sailors and seafarers survive and succeed in their trade. What happens when you take a bunch of ‘city-slickers’ (college students of different backgrounds and interests) and strip them of most of the luxuries they’ve come to take for granted? You are left with human ingenuity, the remnants of past human generations. Basic human instincts that allowed us to stand on out two feet in situations from the most mundane to the most challenging.

Living on Sea Dragon opens your eyes in a way that nothing on land can ever achieve. It will change the most reluctant and eemingly incompetent individuals into their better (hopefully) future selves. It will teach the younger generation, such as a high school student (Dante), that you can’t just “explore” from a book. That you have to go out there and learn that sometimes…what you may have read from books may not be the whole story. For those who are already enthusiastic about learning (Thalles), sailing on Sea Dragon will only strengthen and motivate him even more to continue learning and exploring. And for the one who has already seen it all. The most experiences guy of the group (Pat). Maybe this expedition will just be another check off his ridiculously long list of experiences. Maybe his presence can serve as an extra resource for those of us who do not know as much about living on a boat. Or maybe this will change his current attitude on life, his family and his next career path.