Location: Marina Cay
Hey guys! We started off the day with a lovely 7 am wake-up as we were sailing to a new destination called the Dog Islands. After our little 25-minute motor, we arrived at “Great Dog” island, where we sat down and ate our cereal breakfast, which did not sit very well with the rocking of the boat personally, but that was okay. For the following 4 hours, we were given the very rare opportunity to “just chill” until lunchtime. Very happy with this gift, we all spent our time differently. Being the dive boat, we did have some traffic from other boats, but we mostly remained inside the salon or on the hard top to get out of people’s way. A majority of us changed into swimsuits and headed to the hard top to hang out. While Maren attempted to even out her tan, I took the liberty of a braiding circle inspired by Ella’s hairdo: First Nadiya, then Celeste, and even Houston’s hair, which he proudly kept wearing. Later downstairs, in the cool air of the salon, Aiden, B, Celeste, and Claire had a nice circle of book reading. While a few of us continued our French bracelet-making. Soon enough, our lounging around came to a close with a delicious mac and cheese lunch.
After enjoying the mac and side of cantaloupe, dishy pit quickly cleaned up as the rest of us set up our scuba gear. The open water students split into their groups and continued a few short skills in our first non-confined dive! Maren, Houston, and I were in our group with Megan, while Sadie, Nadiya, Sariah, and Ella went with their instructor Sela. The advanced open water divers went on a dive with Garrison. After a short dive, we all got out and practiced switching our tanks. We switched our tanks and headed right back into the water for our second dive of the day. The open waters finished a few more skills, one including my reg flying out of my mouth and my mask flooding from laughing so hard at Maren.
Anyway, my little group went on a 30-minute dive following Megan while the other groups went off separately. The advanced open water divers were identifying fish on their dive, which they all said they ended up really enjoying. When we all got out of the water we went a little crazy on the snack cabinet as we began our sail to a port for fresh water and fuel. During the sail, a few of us wrote down a bunch of songs we wanted on a new playlist. Following the port stop, we continued a little bit to our location for the night as Aiden and Nadiya began to cook our summer Thanksgiving feast. The rest of us took ocean showers and got ready for dinner (including Nadiya because she got kicked out of the kitchen). Claire and I got into an intense game of War while we waited. Noah also chimed in to help out in the kitchen.
We sat down for the Thanksgiving meal and had many laughs around the table while also hosting our friend Zoe from the staff boat. Following many helpings of mashed potatoes with gravy and stuffing, we did squeeze around the table, which included saying our favorite ice cream flavors in a Batman voice. Finally, we began cleaning up as dishy pit (Sadie, Claire, B, and Ella) painstakingly had the duty of cleaning Thanksgiving dishes. During this time, Aiden was gifted an extremely highly honored fresh water shower as a prize for his hard-working chef skills (this has never been awarded to any student in Garrison’s four years of teaching). He came upstairs looking like Count Dracula with his combed-back hair, boasting how much cleaner he was than all of us. We then all sat down for a few inspirational messages from Garrison, which turned to sharing our most prized possessions but also somehow ended with singing the national anthem. That about did it for the night. Everyone enjoyed a more chill day, and we are now looking forward to some land time tomorrow. I also had a great time with the skipper camera today, so enjoy!