Q&A with Concordia from the week ending November 8, 1996
Which place was your favorite so far? Amanda and Rachel, Marcellus, NY
by Francois Ares, 11/08/96
My favorite place so far has been the Galapagos Islands. My favorite part was taking a tour of the island and seeing some amazing sights like giant tortoises, volcano craters and the diverse vegetation of the Galapagos. During our stay, we also went cliff jumping, swimming with sea lions, and swimming with white tipped sharks. As a group, we had the opportunity to visit the Darwin Center and see the captive breeding program of the famous giant tortoises. (Pitcairn Island and Western Samoa were really great too.)
There are two things that can happen to the 'stuff'. It all depends on where in the world you are when you push the little button. We are only allowed to put toilet paper and anything that has been ingested first into our toilets. Everything else must go into the regular garbage. Some countries have very strict rules about what happens to the waste, others are not quite as strict. Many ships have a storage tank that holds the wastes and when at sea, the waste is flushed. Once we are in international seas , we are allowed to send it into the deep sea. However, when we are close to land or at dock, we must always use the storage tank.
I have seen the movie White Squall! The movie was actually one of the reasons why I applied for Class Afloat because it looked so amazing and like a wonderful experience.
Life aboard the Concordia for us is similar to the lives of the student sailors in the movie. We have to do our school work, go to class, go to all our night and day watches, fix and clean the ship, do sail maneuvers. Also, we all act as a team and also go to port like they did.
There are some differences like our ship is a lot bigger. We have two, three and four people to a cabin where as in the movie they all slept in the same cabin. We are a coeducational ship and in the movie only boys were part of the student crew. At the beginning of our trip, none of us got as sick as the boys in the movie did. We have the option of not climbing up the rigging so if you are afraid of heights it doesn't matter but in the movie they had to do it. I saw the movie about four times and thought it was amazing, but Class Afloat is about ten times more amazing than the movies.
Ocean
Challenge / e-mail: ocean@oceanchallenge.com
/ Class Afloat 1996-97
(c) 1996 Ocean Challenge, Inc.