Location: Mountain Point, Virgin Gorda
Hello, parents, siblings, friends, and pets! It’s Carlie writing to you all today. Today was a very eventful day here in the BVI’s, as it was our first ever rotation day!!! Basically, a rotation day is when the other boats within our fleet take turns doing different activities throughout the day. Due to this, our day started bright and early; we woke up around 7 am to the song “Who Let the Dogs Out,” which quickly woke everyone up, including Dillon, who slept on the roof of the boat and persevered through all the rain in the middle of the night. After this, we started our rotation day with water sports. Avery and I slalomed, which was so much fun, but we realized how much different it is to ski on the ocean instead of a lake as it is much rougher here. River also wakeboarded for the first time ever, and he got up on his third try and was the only one to be able to get up on his boat. At promptly 10 am, we took the dinghy boat over to the scuba boat, also known as “gap year,” and we all dove for the first time ever! Except for Michelle, who already has her scuba certification. I thought scuba diving was so fun, but it felt very weird to breathe under the water through the regulator. Even though we went pretty shallow today, Laurel, Alivia, and I all got to see a stingray on the ocean floor, which was so cool but kinda scary, to be honest. After we stopped diving, we had chicken salad sandwiches, goldfish, and carrots with ranch for lunch which was prepared by Grace and Arthur. Later, we went over to a different boat for our next rotation, which was paddle boarding. Here, we did a relay race, where we tried to paddle-board as fast as possible around another boat named “Meow or Never,” as well as try to push the other people off of their paddle boards, why they are trying to simultaneously push us off. However, we didn’t realize that the other kids on Meow or never were also trying to make our team lose. With that, they tied fenders to the paddle board when Leila was paddling so it slowed her down a bit, but we still managed to win. Following paddle-boarding, we switched to our last rotation of the day, which was knots. Although many of us thought it could be boring, it was actually pretty fun! We learned three different knots all which are often used in sailing, these include the Clove hitch, bow-line, and the cleat hitch. Kaya and I were buddied up, and we had to tie a blow line around each other’s waists and try to keep them from falling off the boat. When holding Kaya up, the knot stayed, but my hands accidentally slipped, so she fell into the water anyway. After all of the rotations were finished at 5 pm, we went back to our boat and took our third ocean shower of the trip. Around 6:30 we had chilli for dinner which was really yummy.
Michele, Avery, and I made Gatorade with the powder for the first time this trip, and it was really yummy. After we did the daily squeeze, and I asked the group, the question of the day which was “what is the favorite place you’ve ever visited, for me I said it was a tie between Greece, or Dubai. Sahil said that his favorite place he had ever visited was either India or Ohio. To end the night, we played Tarzan the Monkey Man as a boat, which Margaret won, and did the forum. In the forum, we did a personal quiz, which helped us all determine which types of leaders we are and who we work well with. Well, that is the end of our very eventful day, so now we are all heading to bed, so goodnight. PS. I just read this to the whole boat and they loved it, so i hope you all do too.