Cargo, Stars and Med Pro

Well, I'm at it again.  I left Sacramento yesterday morning around 5:30am and headed north into the cooler Pacific Northwest.  Made a short stop in Portland to see some close friends and have dinner, then rolled into Seattle around 22:30.

This morning came early and I headed down off the hill to PMI with a quick stop at the Starbucks Corp. for a Grande Italian. I'm managing to wean myself off of coffee right now, and am excited to report that aside from some minor vision blurriness, I'm managing quite well with only one cup of coffee today and yesterday.  I have no clue if the vision blur is from coffee or just fatigue from driving, but I'd like to think of it as a detox thing.  :-)    As my shipmates arrived at school, we swapped some sea stories and caught up before starting our class.  It's always fun to hear about everyone's experiences from their sea phase.

This week we are studying all aspects of cargo, cargo handling, stowage, history, damage, and anything that pertains to getting stuff from here to there across the water. The one interesting statistic that I took away from day one, is that 90% of what we use in our lives today, came on a boat. Think about it. Where are your clothes made? Car? Toothbrush? household appliances?  yup.   Ships have been moving goods across the oceans for hundreds of years and it feels good to be a part of such an old industry.  Much has changed, but then much is the same.

Anyhow, next week we dive into Celestial Navigation for 2 weeks and then we wrap up with Medical Provider before heading back into our next sea phase.  It feels really good to know that in 4 weeks, I can say that I only have one school session left!  LIGHT at the end of the tunnel!!!

So, I'm gonna hit the rack early and try to catch up on some long overdue rest.  More later.