By: Gabi, Chloe, Paradis, Daniel —

After packing all of our belongings in countless dry bags and learning some basics of our boat: the Townsend, we finally pushed off the dock in the Marina to start our journey to our first destination, Saddlebag Island.  Within the first few strokes with our paddles, we all quickly realized that the old-timey way of transportation of longboats is not an easy task.  Rowing took some serious muscle power, but when we all worked together and got our strokes in sync, we were able to row our way to Saddlebag Island, which was about 2.5 nautical miles away.  With the winds on our side, we were able to raise two of our sails to help push us to our destination, which was a joyous relief for all of us.

Arriving at saddlebag island, we were welcomed by the rocky shores of a small beach. Saddlebag gave our crew a quaint yet great place to stay with two small grass patches just perfect for our two tents. We decided at Saddlebag that the girls and boys would be alternating between the boat and the tents for sleeping—luckily for the girls, land would be their sleeping spot for night one. But not to get to ahead of ourselves, before any talk of going to sleep happened, we all enjoyed a lovely dinner of burrito bowls and a desert of hot cocoa with chocolate squares. We all sat out by the beaches’ edge and talked over our difficult yet fulfilling first day.