MMA Sea Term - Follow the Voyage

On most days, if you drive down to the Cape in January and February you’re not going to find too many people walking about — unless of course you visit to Taylor’s Point on Buzzard’s Bay!

At the start of the New Year, the MMA campus was more than busy as over 600-cadets prepared for Sea Term 2013: attending classes, emergency training in the pool, and loading the 540’ Training Ship Kennedy for the 6-week rite of passage, known as SeaTerm.

This year’s voyage has cadets and crew traveling to Willemstad, Curacao on Friday, January 24, 2014. On January 27, the Ship will set sail for a February 1 visit to Bridgetown, Barbados. They will spend 3 days there and depart on February 4, to their next port in Cartagena, Colombia on February 8. The Kennedy then will head to Miami, Florida as it begins its long trek back to Taylor's Point on February 23, 2014.
 Even though the chilling winds on the ground indicate the trip is a vacation; it is by no means a pleasure cruise. Over the course of the six week trek, cadets work and learn on the TS Kennedy every day and will live in three-tiered bunks in rooms with up to 80 other “ship-mates.” All this pays off with the hands-on experience they gain and of course the day or two of liberty in each port!

This exciting and unique trip is a cornerstone of the MMA education, and has definitely evolved over the years as technology has become more accessible and sophisticated.

One major development is the Follow the Voyage program — an online blog documenting the experiences of the cadets for students to learn from and teachers to use in their classrooms as a real-life application of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. This year students from all over eastern New England will Follow the Voyage in their classroom.

That’s not to say Follow the Voyage is only for educational purposes. Parents and loved ones are able to see and virtually “follow” their cadets working on board and prospective students will get to understand what learning at MMA is like from the student’s perspective.

As the TS Kennedy continues her voyage, we are excited to have you watch us along the way! Visit www.maritime.edu/seaterm to see the blog or click the “Sea Term 2014” link on the MMA home page. If you have any questions or comments about Follow the Voyage, don’t hesitate to contact our Follow the Voyage Outreach Coordinator, Meredith Emery at memery@maritime.edu.

Follow the Voyage Students get ready to log. Here's how.

On the FTV Blog (www.maritime.edu/seaterm)  Click on ship tracker on the menu bar.

The Ship Tracker Screen will appear, you will see a map of Buzzards Bay with little red dots around it. These dots are the ships location for a given day. Beneath the map are links to data you need to record. For example: the tides, temperature, and visibility readings.

Beneath those links you will see the name of the ship and its current position (longitude & latitude) Using the new position plot the ships new position. Draw a line between the two dots. This is the new distance.

Measure the distance between the previous location and the current location (using the map key) to get the distance traveled for that time period. Using the distance and time period you can calculate the average velocity for the day using the formula:  Velocity= distance/time.

Alternatively, you can calculate the distance using this online calculator
Next return to the blog entry and perform the activities suggested.