Massachusetts Maritime Academy - Muster Yearbook (Buzzards Bay, MA)

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March came, bringing with it final exams (Whew!) and the beginning ot our first cruise. As expected, our numbers were greatly re- duced by the finals, and those that were forced to tread the year were replaced by oth- ers from the classes before us until, at the present time, only thirty nine of the original one hundred remain. The illogic of a system where you must repeat ten subjects because you failed one never failed to amaze us. We ' re not sure just how it came about, but we suddenly found ourselves on the cold grey- green ocean that tossed the Bay State around like the proverbial cork. No one spoke much that first day; we were all to busy hoping and praying that all the bad things we had heard about our ship weren ' t true. We bumped into bulkheads as we walked, were hit in the head by swinging locker doors and couldn ' t hold food on our trays nor in our stomachs. In spite of the initial miseries, we soon found that hfe at sea was wonderfully peaceful. As youngies we had very little responsibility on watch, and sixteen hours a day were our own in every sense of the word. We had time to read, or play cards, or get those extra hours of sleep that we had been missing all year. Sing-alongs sprang up on the fantail in the evening and there was a movie every night on the quarterdeck. We were still youngies and there was still work to be done, but the sheer joy of life at sea made our lot a happy one. Then the water changed from deep gray- green to bright cobalt blue and we were in the Gulf Stream. The air and the sea temper- ature rose thirty degrees in a half hour. The sun beat down on us warmly, and soon we noted another change in the color of the ever present sea, this time from luminescent bright blue to an almost pastel aqua. On the horizon we could see our first port of call; Bermuda. As we entered the harbor, we looked in awe at the pale sands of the shoreline, the rich foliage and the white-roofed houses that cov- ered the hillsides, and the small sailboats that danced their way along the surface of the sky-blue water. We thought that there could not be another place in the world as beautiful as this, and we were right. There was not an island anywhere as clean, as picturesque, as friendly, or as easily enjoyed. We rented mo- tor bikes and went on our own sightseeing tours; and what sights there were to see— the underground caverns, the fort of St. Cather- ine, Hamilton with its quaint shops, the town of St. George, and the countryside that abounded in flowers and beauty. It was col- lege week in Bermuda, and the beauty that rode the streets on motor bikes overshadowed all else for many of us. We let our mark on 26

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BERMUDA . . . ST. THOMAS A well remembered landmark in Aruba.