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British Virgin Islands - 2013, Session 2

Staff Update Day 1

Location: West End

Having said goodbye to the previous session's shipmates, we are now eagerly awaiting the arrival of new ones. Right now we are prepping the boats and filling them with food and other supplies and checking that our equipment is ready to go. We are all so excited to greet the 12 new shipmates on the dock and help them settle in on the boat. But the most exciting thing coming up is throwing off the dock lines and watching West End get smaller and smaller in the distance. For the next 20 days, the crew of Spindrift will have the experience of a lifetime. This is the moment when it all begins — the beginning of an adventure.

Here is an introduction to the crew of Spindrift:

Charlie- skipper

Charlie grew up on the lakes of Minnesota, but after graduating from Gustavus Adolphus College headed for saltier waters! In 2007 she sailed with Sea|Mester as a student, then later joined the AQ team as a skipper in 2009. Besides sailing with AQ, Charlie has also worked for S.E.A., Spirit of South Carolina, the windjammer Angelique in Maine, and scuba dive live-a-boards in the Bahamas. She currently holds a 200T IYT Master of Yachts Unlimited, a 100T USCG Master, and a PADI Divemaster certification.

Evan- dive instructor/mate

Evan was born in Buffalo, New York and lived the first ten years of his life along the east coast of the United States. After that, he moved to the Middle East to spend the next eight years in Doha, Qatar. After graduating from high school in Qatar, he moved back to the US to attend university. As of this summer, he is a rising junior at the University of Miami studying Marine Affairs, Business, Spanish, and French. He spends most of his weekends underwater with the University of Miami Scuba Club. After three trips with AQ as a shipmate, he decided to come back as a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor along with the side qualifications of EFR Instructor, DAN O2 and First Aid specialty and Equipment Repair.

Linda- dive instructor/mate

Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Linda was drawn to the magic of the oceans at an early age. As a child, she spent most of her summers on a sailing boat discovering the Baltic and the Mediterranean sea. At the age of fifteen, she took her first scuba certification and soon after that decided that she would work with scuba and biology in the future. After attending high school in the U.S., she went back to Sweden to complete a bachelor degree in Biology at the University of Uppsala. With a passion for new adventures and teaching, she has worked as a dive instructor in Sweden, Spain, and Greece. When she is not out on the water, odds are you will find her playing ice hockey or discovering the world. Linda's professional credentials include PADI Open Water Diver Instructor, Emergency First Response Instructor and an Inshore Yacht master Diploma by the Swedish Council for the Education and Training of Yachtsmen.