0700 hours

Current Position: Anchored off Cementon, NY.

Day Five of the second leg of our Voyage of Discovery.

Temperatures turned frosty over the course of the night. When we rise this morning, wispy banks of mist are rising from the river's surface all around us.

Our crew takes a little extra time to bundle. A big day lies ahead of us! This afternoon, the students will deliver their presentations.

Mouse over for another shift at the capstan.

0745 hours

We have plenty to do before then, however. First off, we must get underway. Having rotated through all the anchor positions, our crew members fall right in line as they man the capstan to weigh anchor one final time.

Nothing like a bit of exercise first thing in the morning. Just look at those happy faces!

0800 hours

Working together, we soon have the anchor on the channel. Back at helm, Erika turns us full right to get us on course.

Meanwhile, on the fore, Mr. Dawson and Ms. Wegman secure the anchor to the channel and reposition the wodden "carrot" that holds it to the rode.

On the orlop deck, the faking team wraps up by faking the anchor chain (all 400 pounds of it!) and resecuring the shackle. Once they're done, the anchor can be used again at any time.

0845 hours

After all that work, the crew is happy to dig into breakfast. As we eat, we motor north to our next destination: Athens Channel. Fortunately for us, temperatures steadily rise through the morning.

On our way up, we pass this damaged river beacon. We didn't do it! And we hope the resident cormorants didn't do it either.

Actually, our educated guess is that this beacon was likely damaged by pack ice at some point over the course of the winter.

1015 hours

The Athens Channel Lighthouse marks the southern entrance to our destination for the day.

As we enter the channel, we pass by picturesque Athens, NY.

1100 hours

We soon dock at Peckham Materials at the northern end of Athens, just south of the atomospherically named Murderer's Creek. Peckham Materials is a familiar sight for most of our senior crew -- they are a frequent host, and the Half Moon spent most of the summer here during our rebuild projects.

With the ship taken care of, the students turn their full attention to preparing their presentations. The students convene with their teachers for a final review and tips for improvement. Each team also writes out its hypothesis, materials, procedure, and conclusion, and creates graphs to display during the oral presentations.

You can see the rest of the students preparing below.

1345 hours

After a few hours of work, the students are nearly ready. We officially schedule the presentations to begin at 1430 hours.

1400 hours

Until then, why not enjoy a lovely, warm afternoon?

Students who've completed their reports take the opportunity to perform activities they've been angling to do. Mr. Morency escorts Emma and Erika up to the main top to enjoy the view.

Meanwhile, other students relax on deck or have an educator look over their work one last time.

1430 hours

The time has come! The grand finale to the students' ecological research! The entire crew gets comfortable on the weather deck to watch, and/or deliver, the student presentations.

1445 hours

Katie and Sarah volunteer to go first with their report on charting the arc of the sun. Each two-student team describes their hypothesis, demonstrates the use of their instruments, and discusses the conclusions they reached during their experiment. After each presentation, the students also take questions from the audience.

Click here to see the student presentations in greater detail.

1645 hours

Kayley and Santino's report on mechanical advantage concludes the presentations after two hours of information and discussion, including a few surprising revelations that will lead to improvements in our future data collection techniques.

The students excitedly celebrate their success. Congratulations to one and all!

1745 hours

We still have plenty of daylight left in the day, so we take the opportunity to learn about lines of position. Everyone breaks out the directional compasses as we sight nearby landmarks.

First, we read the bearings of three landmarks that are likely to be included on our river chart.

In this case, we use the channel marker to our east (pictured), the northern point of the Middle Ground Flats (the island which forms the channel), and the Athens Channel Lighthouse to the south.

Each compass bearing from our ship to a known landmark is a line of position. By charting three such lines, we can triangulate our position on the river.

Our initial readings place the Half Moon somewhere near downtown Hudson, NY, but we improve with practice and differentiate between operator error and instrument error.

Mouse over to unmask the miscreant.

1830 hours

After we familiarize ourselves with lines of position, the students are mostly free to just kick back and relax. Predictably, the students can get a little rowdy, and we discover that one troublemaker has taken to pestering the galley crew. By talking through the fan, he can issue robotic-sounding commands to those below. Who could this young whippersnapper be?

Mouse over to see the galley crew hustle.

Fortunately, the galley crew making dinner is in a relaxed, unhurried mood, as you can see by mousing over to the left.

1900 hours

Tonight, Ms. Wegman serves an Italian variation on shepherd's pie for dinner.

1945 hours

After dinner, Sarah, Katie, and Kayley wash dishes in the galley while we settle into our evening.

With the pressure of their presentations behind them, the students are all in a lively mood. We promise that's a hug, by the way, not a tackle.

As a note, Kayley and Katie would asked to say "Hi" to their moms. Hi, Katie and Kayley's moms!

2015 hours

The students have one final academic task to complete during the voyage -- the English Language Arts project that's been developing over the course of the past few days. However, the students don't need to finish revising their poems until tomorrow, so tonight they can just relax.

For now, everyone gathers on the orlop deck to play a party game that Michael suggests.

Ashley and Erika step out of the orlop for a few minutes so the rest of the group can make up a story about them. When they return, they have twenty questions to guess the details of the story. We won't spoil the rest, in case the students want to play again once they get home.

After the game, the students settle into their bunks and update their journals before anchor watch begins at 2200 hours. Tomorrow brings the last full day of our Voyage of Discovery.

On this date in 1609:

The seventeenth, faire Sun-shining weather, and very hot. In the morning as soone as the Sun was up, we set sayle, and ran up sixe leagues higher, and found shoalds in the middle of the channell, and small Ilands, but seven fathoms water on both sides. Toward night we borrowed so neere the shoare, that we grounded: se we layed out our small anchor, and heaved off againe. Then we borrowed on the banke in the channell, and came aground againe; while the floud ran we heaved off againe, and anchored all night.

-- Robert Juet's Journal.