I’m in my rack, about to get up to get dressed for watch. I have watch 0800-1200/2000-0000 today, so I’ll be on the bridge while we’re leaving the pier and heading out to sea! I’m pretty excited about it, but a little nervous since I’ll be the first sophomore handling the underway log books this cruise. I’ll be turning on the SPOT when I get out on deck, so you can follow us using one of the 5 SPOT pages listed in the SPOT box on the right.

It’s Thursday night, and we’ve only got two full days left in Buzzards Bay before casting off lines and heading south. We’re doing very well in preparations for departure, with only a couple of major things left on the to-do list. On-load was finished today, with the arrival of 200 gallons of milk. We’re now fully stocked and ready to feed 600 people fully for the next 49 days. Tomorrow is our Coast Guard-monitored fire/emergency and abandon ship drills.

I’m laying in my rack as I write this, after a long, exhausting day. I got lucky with my rack assignment, and am at the end of one of the upper holds, in an area with a lot of space in the aisle (a very rare commodity on board), and I’m on the bottom. As a result, I’ll have plenty of space to get dressed in the morning, nobody will be walking through my area to get to their rack, and it should be a little quieter.

We’re now officially less than 12 hours away from the start of Sea Term 2009. At this time tomorrow morning, the freshmen will be checking in and starting their first briefing of Sea Term in Admirals Hall. A few hours after that, the ship will be alive with cadets moving in and starting the immense on-load process that will last all week. I’ll be posting photos and videos of this process throughout the coming week, so stay tuned!

I’m writing this during a quick break I’m taking from packing my bags. I’ll be leaving my house early in the morning (0630) to drive from Annapolis, MD up to Buzzards Bay, picking my car up in Connecticut. I’ll stay with my grandfather tomorrow night, and then Monday morning I will join the 500 other cadets in checking in and moving on to the ship, to begin Sea Term 2009.

I’ve been hearing concerns about how to sign up for SeaWave, mainly regarding credit cards. In order to sign up for SeaWave, you do need a credit card so that usage can be billed. This information is necessary during registration to complete the process. If your cadet will be using the credit card of a parent and needs the information for the card, it will need to be provided to them so they can sign up.

Merry Christmas to everyone! As we speak, Sea Term 2009 officially begins in 1 week, 3 days and change. I’ve added a countdown timer on the sidebar right below my picture which currently displays the up-to-the-second count until the official start of Sea Term. I’ll be continuing my pre-Sea Term info posts tomorrow.

I received a Skribit suggestion that I talk about cadets bringing laptops on cruise. Not only can cadets bring their laptops, but I would highly encourage it. In the evenings on cruise we have plenty of down time, and having a laptop provides plenty of entertainment opportunities. Almost everyone brings DVDs as well as movies stored on their computers directly, so having a computer on board allows you to watch all the movies available (Note: Chartwells also rents movies to cadets very cheaply and they have a large selection).

One of the biggest issues on cruise last year was communications. While we’re at sea, we have very limited contact with the rest of the world. We have an e-mail system that connects a few times a day to send and receive e-mails held in the queue, called SeaWave. And that’s it. No Internet, no phone. Just a delayed e-mail system. It may sound like a problem, but in reality it’s all we really need.

Well, we’re almost halfway through finals week, and only a few weeks away from Sea Term 2009. In keeping with last year, I’ll be blogging during the voyage about the trip, keeping friends & family of Sea Term cadets up-to-date. This year, however, I have the benefit of knowledge and experience from last year’s Sea Term to share with people prior to departure. So, I’ll be starting my Sea Term coverage this week and posting throughout the holiday break with tips, information and updates about Sea Term that could be useful.