Maintenance and Holidays aboard Denis Sullivan

St. Croix, USVI

Ship’s Logs written by AmeriCorps Deckhand Educator Maeve Merkle-Scotland

January 11, 2023

Winter Ambassador program came and went. Looking back on it feels like months since we’ve had students aboard. Around Christmas time and the holidays, the crew was bound by new celebrations and meals. Christmas dinner was a feast made by many of our deckhands and Jake (our awesome Cook) including homemade rolls, steak, fried tofu, and more.

Most days as of recent have consisted of sunset sails and mornings of maintenance. Some maintenance projects to mention are painting the transom and stern quarters, sanding some stained spots on the decks, and repainting the paint locker.

I was on stern/ transom painting duty. It took me and 2 other shipmates about 3 mornings to complete. Painting from the small boat was a unique and silly experience. We had to stand in many intense balance positions on the inflatable dingy to reach the highest points, all while making sure we didn’t float too far away from the boat, or smudge the fresh coat of paint when wake would hit us. To paint the hull, Rachel sat in a blow up inner tube in the water, a paint can in hand, to reach the spots far under our reach from the small boat. There were many giggles involved in such hard work.

Although maintenance with sunset sails can be seen as a more chill way to spend the week, our deckhands fell right back into the teaching flow with our students today.

-Maeve