Word: westwards
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...excitement builds as students board the Westward. They gradually take charge of the schooner's scientific activities, which include round-the-clock net tows to analyze ocean life and water samples daily at depths up to two miles. They hone their seamanship on the six-week voyage, navigating by sun and stars across the open ocean, guiding the vessel through changing weather under the watchful eyes of the ship's mates and captain. Says Captain Sidney Miller, 52: "At first the students can't believe we'll let them make mistakes. But we do, as long...
Voyaging through the Caribbean (and off Nova Scotia, where Westward cruises in summer) sounds glamorous indeed, but aboard ship the glamour blurs. Students average only four hours of sleep a night and whirl through a torrent of classes, experiments and deck duties...
Each student also spends at least one 14-hour stretch chained to Westward's diesel stove as "galley slave," cooking for 34 people. Meals are justly referred to as "feeding frenzies." Sample fare: pizza, noodles and beef, fresh-caught dolphin fish. For the most part, the young mariners are too tired for ship board romance, which is discouraged anyway in SEA literature as "tiresome and destructive" in such close quarters. A student-lettered sign high above deck announces: NO FRIGGING IN THE RIGGING...
...pragmatic learning by doing aboard Westward comes as a shock to many students. "When you get science in school, it's so pure," says Debbie Merrill, 20, a sophomore majoring in environmental studies at the University of Vermont. "You never hear about how the researchers lost some of the sampling bottles in the ocean, or how sick they were at the rail." Arndt Braaten, 19, a junior at Luther College, discovered during spectro-photometric analysis in West-ward's lab that tiny particles of iron peel away from the ship's hull and form measurable concentrations...
Frequently students tell him that the program has changed them deeply. Paul McDowell, who raced small sailboats before his Westward voyage, says the semester has changed his view of the oceans: "As a racer, I've always tried to get from one place to another across the sea as fast as I could. But aboard Westward we've learned how to work with the sea. I have learned about what lives in the sea, how we affect the sea. Sailing isn't just competitive now." Explains Chief Scientist Donald Drost, 36: "We're all interested...