By Sara, Jaimie, Arielle, and Jake —

Today we woke up at 8:00am and got ready for the day. We started with breakfast which consisted of the normal: bagels, muffins, and cereal. After breakfast we went to the Spring Street International School’s science lab and learned about the invasive rabbits on the island from Beatrice Grauman-Boss.

Photo by Tom Grauman

Photo by Seth Grant

After learning about the rabbits, we got in the van and went to American Camp to survey the warrens and the number of active entrances.

Photos by Tom Grauman

We learned that there is about 1 rabbit for every sq. ft in American Camp.

Photos by Seth Grant

Photo by Tom Grauman — fenced area is (mostly) rabbit-free

We spent about 2 hours surveying the area and then returned to the dorms for lunch.

The survey with Beatrice was part of a longitudinal study on behalf of the US National Historical Parks Service.

After lunch, we resumed our earwig trials in the science lab.

The focus of our trials today, was to see how much time it takes for the earwigs to acclimatize to sample arenas (Tupperware filled with sand).

Once we finished with our trials, some of us went to return earwigs, while others began to work on dinner prep and blogs.

    Soon it was dinner time and we were joined by Jen Olson, the coordinator for the San Juan County Marine Stranding Network associated with the Whale Museum here in Friday Harbor as well as NOAA and the SeaDoc Society.

Photo by Seth Grant

The Stranding Network is a non-profit organization that researches and helps stranded marine mammals. After dinner, Jen gave a presentation about her work and informed us about the necropsy (animal autopsy) we are going to see tomorrow morning.

This morning, after getting a 7:45 wakeup call, we got ready and ate breakfast. After breakfast, we headed down to Friday Harbor High School Stem Lab. There, Derek Smith, whom we met earlier in the program, showed us the tools and inventions that he and his students work on and created, such as the 3D printer, virtual reality headset skateboards, & ROV.

Derek was very generous with the equipment and let us play around with our own 3D design for our earwig experiments.

The one that amazed everybody the most was the electric car that his students worked on and mostly completed. Derek told us how proud he was of his students for doing something so amazing with hardly any help. He told us that it is almost 100% ready to be driven. The only problem he has encountered was the brakes. He is very excited to drive it.

Another creation that he had in his class was the Augmented Reality Sandbox. When we first saw it we thought it was just an ordinary sandbox. We were all wrong once he told us what it can do. It can teach people simple earth science concepts—as you manipulate the sand you can see topographical details come out—you can even simulate rainy conditions!— but it can also be there just for fun. When we got a chance to play with it, we couldn’t leave it because it was just so much fun. 

After visiting the Stem Lab, we headed back to our temporary home and we had lunch. During lunch we talked and played games. After lunch, we started to talk about our upcoming projects that we individually are going to do. We also reviewed some of the scientific vocabulary we have learned so far and met to discuss a New York Times article with the provocative title: There Is No Scientific Method.

Later we had exploration time, and some of us used the time to take a quick nap before dinner.

By Jack, Lynn, and Peder —

Today we woke up at the amazing time of 8 o’clock. We ate breakfast and grouped together in our silly boots and wind repellant clothes to head back out to False Bay. Last time we were at False Bay it was a long stretch of muddy ground. Today it looked like the dictionary definition of a bay. The name ‘False Bay’ finally made sense to us after seeing the two drastically different scenes in the same place.

Photos by Caroline Grauman-Boss

Next we began to scoop up earwigs in vials to be used in trials later.

Male earwigs were scarce but we encountered many gigantic females.

Next we headed back to the science lab to begin our trials with our new lab ‘rats’.

Many trials were performed including testing of mate selection dependent on size or location.

In between the trials we snuck away to grab a late light lunch. Afterwards, we all headed out to exploration time. Indeya and Peder stayed for the Slip-and-Slide, while Lynn, Jack, and Jaimie went to get ice cream. The rest of us stayed and played cards and chatted.

Later, we had dinner with Susan Middleton the author and photographer for the book Spineless.

Photos by Seth Grant

Amazing techniques and stories of her photography and journey were shared over and amazing bowl of chili.

Finally, we settled down to watch Mulan, which was heavily anticipated. After singing along to all the wonderful songs, we headed off to bed.

By Sara, Jaimie, Arielle, and Jake —

This morning we woke at8:30 am for our normal breakfast. Once we finished eating, we wrote our blogs from the longboat trip and sorted through pictures. We then went to the local farmer’s market where we encountered many stands selling fresh produce and handmade goods.

Photos by Seth Grant

After an hour at the farmers market, we walked back to the dorm for a quick break. Afterwards, we walked to the San Juan Island Museum of Art where we looked at pictures by Ansel Adams, Ernest H. Brooks II, and Dorothy Kerper Monnelly.

Tom, our media consultant, gave us quick lesson on the camera that these photographers use(d). For instance, the brownie camera that Ansel Adams first used. After our lesson from Tom, we had time to browse the museum some more before returning to the dorm.

Back at the dorm, we had a debriefing about the longboat trip, where we talked about what we liked and didn’t like about the trip. We then did a self-evaluation of our team skills. After this time of debriefing, some of us helped prepare dinner, while others had time to explore the town and play board games. For dinner, we enjoyed some burritos as well as ice cream for dessert.

Following dinner, we played a game called ‘Song Wars’ and then the evening resulted in us singing karaoke. The songs selected consisted entirely of Disney soundtracks.

By Arielle —

Yesterday we spent the day mostly relaxing after our exhausting longboat experience. However late last night we all had an experience I don’t think any of us will ever forget.

Photos by Seth Grant

When it was just getting dark we headed down to the Friday Harbor Lab docks with two large waterproof lights.

We then dropped the lights about a foot into the water and sat back and watched as the sea just about came to life right before our eyes.

Different creatures from all over came attracted to the light. We saw Gunnels, Shrimp, a collection of fish, and much more as the sun slowly set behind the horizon.

The Sea Anemone coating the underside of the dock practically glowed in the dim bluish shine of the light, swaying softly in the currents. We stayed at the dock until 11:00 pm, watching the life down below in a way that none of us had ever seen before.

By: Jaimie and Lana—

This morning we woke up at 6 AM to go for our morning dip, eat breakfast, and get the boat ready.

While preparing breakfast, we had a couple of troubles—one being Peder getting a spice in his eye, so we had to get water off the boat to flush it out. Another trouble we had was not being able to find the gluten free oatmeal for Chrissy and Michael, but we found flax muffins instead.

We ate breakfast, packed the boat, and were on our way back to Saddlebag Island.

After rowing for 3 hours we anchored at Guemes Island to eat lunch at around 2:00 PM. For lunch: PB&J. We ate and rested for 1½ hours. Jake fell asleep after eating lunch.

Once we were ready to keep going on our voyage back home, Jake was still asleep, so, as a crew, we decided to let Jake sleep and he woke up after an hour of rowing.

While we were rowing, we encountered four foot wakes and everybody had a blast going over them. We rowed for another hour and we reached the shore of Saddlebag Island.

We then had a little snack and drank some water so we can have enough energy to unpack our gear and dinner. We were on the boat for 7½ hours and rowed for 6 hours.

Once we anchored, our captain told us that we did over 250 perfect power strokes. After unpacking all the gear, the chefs started to make dinner. For our last night all together we had burritos with beans, avocados, cheese, onion, tomatoes, sour cream and garlic.

Since it was our last night together we had s’mores for dessert.

To be able to get s’mores first we had a song war. We played in groups of five people. Group A had Lynn, Jaimie, Peder, Jack and Indeya. Group B had Lana, Sara, Quinn, Jake and Arielle. Group A won so they got to get s’mores first. We gathered around a fire pit and laughed while eating our s’mores. After cleaning up dessert, we went to bed as a crew for our last night together.

By Indeya and Jake —

We woke up at 6:00 AM for our first dip dip dippity dip.

But that wasn’t until 7:00 AM because it took us a long time to pack up our sleeping stuff and get ready. Quinn accidently dropped his shirt in the water, which was honestly pretty predictable. In a thrilling culinary turn of events, Peder sent a bunch of potatoes out to sea. The recovery of said potatoes, as well as Peder’s attitude on the matter, was thoroughly documented on the camera by Jack.

At 11:05 AM we saw two juvenile harbor seals while exiting the bay, and at 12:55 PM we watched a lot of rhinoceros auklets fishing in the riptide around Clark Point. At 2:00 PM we were a mile from Pelican Beach on Cyprus Island.

We were under sail, so we had time to chat about a variety of subjects. We have come to the conclusion that school doesn’t teach anything right. The conversation got a little heated, so we had to take a moment to silently observe our surroundings.

We sailed for a bit longer and then began rowing as we neared the island. We latched onto a mooring ball, and set up a clothesline for the evening so the boat could move in and away from the shore.

However, the wind and currents came up, so we quickly boarded and rowed around the bend to more stable conditions.

Photo by Chrissy McLean

Jack is currently in the lead in the eating contest between him and Indeya. Tonight we ate mac ‘n cheese with a choice of tuna and/or carrots and/or cucumbers. For dessert, we played a newly introduced game called dip ‘n go, in which we have to sing a designated song while continually passing bowls of apples, graham crackers, and chocolate. We won the game! Whoop whoop! We plan to wake up at 6:00 AM tomorrow, which is just another morning in this long line of early suffering.

By Sara and Quinn —

On the morning of the second day, we woke up at the Anacortes Port at around 5:15 AM. A small craft advisory (a warning that did not allow the longboat to travel in the Salish Sea) was put in place the night before and so in order to avoid it, we left early.

Photos by Chrissy McLean

At 5:15 AM, the weather began somewhat bright and lightly sprinkling, but as the day progressed the weather became completely overcast and a little bit windy.
For breakfast, we had oatmeal and tea/hot chocolate. After the first meal of the day, we finished packing (with great help from the Bosuns) and set off for our first official journey on the longboat. This four hour long journey included some practice drills such as the ‘Man Overboard’ and the ‘Squall’ as well as some shanty songs.

Our first stop of the trip was Saddlebag Island. We set anchor in a bay at the beach where we were going to land and had lunch on the boat.

After lunch, Michael set the anchor and created a clothesline system to allow us to land. Then we all worked together to fire line all of our stuff off of the boat.

Afterwards, we had an hour of free time to explore the beach and relax.

Then, the chefs prepared dinner while Michael met with the navigators and leaders to discuss the plan for the day after.

Following dinner, we had our closing meeting. That night, 5 people went into the tents on land while the remaining 5 slept on the boat.

By Peder —

We took the ferry from Friday Harbor to Anacortes, and at 11:00am we met up with longboat Captain Michael and Mate Chrissy from the Northwest Maritime Center and saw a longboat for the first time. The first thing I thought was, “I am not going to survive!” The boat seemed really small for 12 people.

Photo by Chrissy McLean

We quickly got busy with setting up the boat, getting our stuff in dry bags, making dinner, setting up navigation charts, and arranging sleeping quarters.

We learned a lot about boat orientation. We learned what port and starboard are. Starboard is the right side and port is the left. We learned about the masts. There is the mizzen mast, the main mast and the foremast.

We rowed around the harbor to and from the marina boat house. We made dinner. We had pasta with an artesian sauce. We then had a meeting about shore calls and how the sleeping would he arranged. We unpacked the boat in about an hour and had it set up for sleep in about 45mins—yes, we slept in the boat. Before sleeping, Michael the captain told us a story about the tides. We then fell asleep as the boat rocked gently against the lapping waves.

Photo by Chrissy McLean