Gap Year

Welcome to Gap Year! It’s been a busy few days preparing our boats, and we can’t wait to get out on the water. Time to meet the crew!

Nat has been an avid sailor and marine enthusiast since her first sailing trip to the British Virgin Islands at age 3. Since then, the call of the ocean has been inescapable! This love for the sea has held firm despite spending most of her formative years sailing the frigid waters of the San Francisco Bay and later the nonexistent seas of Park City, Utah. A healthy sense of wanderlust has led her to live in the Andalusia region of Spain, Namibia’s deserts, and Belize’s jungles, and then travel across the Atlantic on the Cape Town to Antigua Seamester voyage in 2023. Nat has her IYT Master of Yachts Limited Sail 200-ton Offshore license and PADI Divemaster certification. She attends college in Claremont, California. Any remaining spare time is spent shredding Utah and SoCal’s slopes, painting watercolors, and planning future adventures. Nat is excited to join the ActionQuest Team and share her passion for sailing and sense of humor with her students!

Garrison joined the GXG family in 2019 as a Seamester student on S/Y Argo. Quickly falling in love with the worlds of sailing and diving, he knew he wanted to perpetuate this experience for others. In 2020, Garrison moved to the island of Utila in Honduras to become a SCUBA instructor. He gained his teaching certifications and spent the pandemic days snorkeling the reefs and learning to identify Caribbean fishes. In the fall of 2020, he started school at Vanderbilt, majoring in Economics and History with minors in Spanish and Business. Whenever he needs to share a fun fact or wants to flex on his friends, he talks about AQ summers filled with night dives, exploring shipwrecks (don’t worry, none are AQ boats), and sunrise sails. A recent graduate, Garrison is incredibly grateful for another summer of beach barbecues, pranks, and creating a community on the water that no one can understand without experiencing it for themself.

Jo is joining our team from the United Kingdom. She is mad about the ocean and excited to introduce our students to a new underwater world. Growing up in South Wales, Jo always had itchy feet and has been traveling the world since 2018, when she graduated from university with a degree in Psychology. An avid SCUBA diver since 2015, she decided to take the plunge and become a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor in 2023. She has spent the last year teaching in Mozambique. When she’s not diving, she can be found singing and dancing in the kitchen, strapping her boots on for a hike, or settling in for a cozy night of movies and board games.