Rhone Day/Poop Day

Location: Great Harbor, Jost van Dyke

Today we celebrated a holy day. Rhone day. BLESS UP. We (Ayden and Mackenzie) woke up bright and early around 6:00 to bring us from GHP to the Rhone🔥🔥. We, of course, woke up to Sandstorm, the Rhone day anthem, and began getting insanely hype. After a quick cereal breakfast, we headed up to the hard top to dance to Sandstorm and chug water to Thunderstruck.

Then, it was finally time. The DMs started preparing the dive gear for all the open water divers coming to Nacho and our own gear, too. I assisted Anzie’s (instructor) dive of the Rhone’s stern with our very own Lily and Aggie while the boy DMs, Avi, Wylie, Hayden, Jayden, Alex, and Tyler, went down to dive the bow of the Rhone with Mackenzie🤿⚓️⛵️. While we dove, Alli got to snorkel on the surface with Ayden and swam down to my dive group before we got too deep, which was a pleasant surprise/jumpscare. Both dives went swimmingly! WOOHOO! With dive one of the day completed, the DMs (minus me because my ears were feeling iffy :(, sad) started the whole process over again of helping students kit up, splash, and assist/lead dives. Once dives 2 and 3 finished up and the Vega girls (Aggie, Lily, and Alli) returned from their hike of Salt Island, we munched on some delicious ramen. I must mention that Rhone day is a very festive holiday at AQ; so much so that the Oryx boat students wore mumu’s while diving😍. Tyler cooked up some ramen that fueled up some of the DMs (Jaden, Wylie, and Tyler) for their final dive with the Minerva kids; Jaden led the dive while Wylie and Tyler trailed (I heard it went well, yay!). To finish up our magnificent day at the Rhone, Alli, Lily, Aggie, Hayden, Ayden, and I snorkeled the stern of the Rhone above our Nacho divers and Minerva students. On the way, in Ayden, I did the craziest “front flip,” which resembled more of a twist if I’m being honest. I saw 10 needlefish, Aggie saw a cool sea urchin, and Ayden saw parrot fish! Once we were all back on Nacho, Wylie and I took the fattest boat nap ever before Ayden and the other Nachos brought our beautiful Nacho back to GHP.

Unfortunately, when we arrived, I was woken up from my heavy snoozing to Avi sticking his watch in my ear, an Ayden specialty. We Nachos then got amazing news, we could take head showers. We were finally squeaky clean. Bless. And even better, it’s MEXICAN NIGHT!!! Best night. Wylie and Alex began cheffing it up like Nacho was Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen. Wylie needs his kitchen cleared, so we’ve all been told (screamed at). The galley was in shambles after, pray for the salonkeeper. We devoured dinner like never before, and we ate in silence.

Then, it happened. It was time to get poopy 🤙(more specifically, for our courageous and amazing skipper, Ayden, to get poopy for the second day in a row). Last night there was an incident with the port aft head (the girls’ head, rip). Ayden had to take apart the head, and we all smelled smells that should not exist. Unfortunately, the head stayed poopy all day which meant that I had to periodically go down to our head and drain the head, every single one of us Nachos nearly yaked at least once today. After dinner, Ayden got poopy in the water by blowing air from a tank into the bilge pipes in hopes that a geyser of poop would get blown out to clear the pipes, which did in fact happen. We Nachos all stood on the portside of Nacho to cheer on Ayden. Avi almost got sprayed by the explosion of poop, and my foot had to get bleached; that’s all I’ll say. We then headed over to another boat, Nomada, to watch Ayden do the same thing to their boat.

This is all to say, we all have two things to be grateful for tonight and for the rest of our lives: Ayden’s bravery and that we did not have to do that ourselves.🫶 As I’m writing this, the other Nachos are cleaning up the aftermath of Mexican night and baking a cake to celebrate a memorable poopy Rhone day. 💙
Love you, Mom and Dad! Snuggle with Poppy for me 🙂