Location: Sommer's Beach, Tortola
Today was a very special day for Avizia because it is our skipper, Max’s birthday. We woke up at around 6:45, and Amanda baked Max an early birthday cake while Emilia and Roman prepared scrambled eggs for breakfast. We had a great morning that consisted of singing multiple happy birthdays and Zoe, Emilia, Sadie, and Julia going for an early morning swim. At around 8:00, we began rotations with a sail chat about the mechanics of our beautiful ship Avizia taught by the one and only birthday boy. During the chat, Peter and Andrew were invested in the inner workings of a boat and asked lots of thoughtful questions. Our next rotation of the day was zesting (mini sailboats), which took place on another boat named Baso. Roman, Jackson, and Andrew zested first and successfully did lots of tacking and managed not to capsize.
Unfortunately, when Zoe was jumping into the water, she jumped onto a jellyfish and got stung in two places. Ouch. (She’s all good, though!) Elsa, Carly, Campbell, Julia, and Leoni enjoyed relaxing on the paddle boards during this rotation and got their tans on (with a lot of sunblocks, don’t worry). After this rotation, our whole ship headed back to Avizia for Lunch, which happened to be cheddar broccoli soup. It was not quite a fan favorite for Avizia, but we did all at least try a small bite. After our lunch, we continued our rotation with water sports on the dinghy. Andrew continues to be a pro at wakeboarding, as well as Jackson, who seems to never fall off while waterskiing. Shout out to Campbell, who stayed up very long on the knee board today! Our last rotation of the day was open water scuba diving, which took place on the ship Nomada Caribbena. All of us practiced our required skills for certification in deeper water to ensure our safety when diving deeper depths. The visibility while diving yesterday was a tad bit low, but Campbell, Zoe, Roman, and Carly all spotted two sting rays and a few jellyfish during their dives. After a long day of rotations, we all headed back to Avizia to take ocean showers and get ready for our second beach barbecue of the session. After we were all freshened up and changed into our outfits, we headed to the barbecue at about 6:00. At the barbecue, we all enjoyed getting to eat food on shore and interacting with the other boats. The hotdogs were Julia, Zoe, and Emilia’s personal favorite foods for the barbecue. Because the beach we were on was a beautiful island, there were no lights on the beach, so our barbecue ended earlier than the first at about 8:00. Although our day was long, it was not over yet because after weeks of convincing Max allowed us to raft with the ship Oddessy from sail-side B for the night. We all had tons of fun with our new friends and had many laughs throughout the night. Tired from our action-packed day, we all dosed off one by one, sleeping with one eye open after the series of prank wars going around started by us. Annika helped us set up so many hammocks, and we had to keep our laughs quiet to not wake anyone. Avizia took on another day head-on, and we will do the same tomorrow. Bye, guys!