S/V Restless

Hi y'all, it's Charles here! I'm gonna make this quick because Kyler said I can deconstruct a regulator tonight, but today so much happened that this blog should practically fly off the page—hopefully! So today started at 7 am with Disney villain songs (I liked the one from The Lorax especially), and a quick breakfast of cereal prepared valiantly by Gabry, our chef for the day. After that, we all had to throw our life jackets on because we had to sail, during which we Neptunes had to buckle up and finish module one of our boat diver booklet. After we arrived, we assembled our kits to dive the Shark Planes, which was definitely my favorite dive spot of the trip: the coral was full of life, the fish were fishing, and the planes looked like sharks! What more could you ask? I loved swimming around the planes (see attached pictures), and honestly the dive went by too fast; only 40 minutes later we had to get out of the water to eat lunch—ramen, a food that can apparently be miscooked, despite the only instructions in the recipe being to boil it—and to clean the boat for our newest shipmate: Carla! This was mostly dull, with everyone chipping in to get the job done, but the highlight of Boat Appreciation (what AQ calls deep cleaning the boat) was definitely when Eva accidentally dumped a bucket full of seawater on our divemaster Liam while trying to clean the roof of the boat! We finished just in the nick of time before Carla arrived, but we barely had any time to introduce ourselves before we had to head to our next dive spot: The Chimneys. During this time, the Dolphins continued drawing their fishies, and we Neptunes got to take a nap, of which I can say nothing except it was perfect. To be clear, these journeys were no Odysseys; they were, to put it briefly: brief. When we arrived, we started our second dive, which for us was our Underwater Naturalist Dive #2 (of which I think only I logged the dive), during which we went into a tight crevasse one at a time like sheep to a slaughter. Notably, Maren was diving without any weights for the first time and spent much of the dive floating off. After the dive finished, we stowed our gear for the day and started our ocean showers, during which Mason learned how to backdive, and Amelia saved my dive watch from a watery death. The dolphins then had a lecture on oceanography, during which Mason and I cooked dinner—veggie burgers, mashed potatoes, etc.—which was unanimously voted as the best meal of the trip! During the dishy pit afterward, Lyra encountered an unfortunate slip into the water, which was determined to be of natural causes. This caused a series of karmic crimes, which ground dishie pit to a halt. Jade dried the dishes well, Mackenzie provided moral support for this blog (and saved my swimsuit), and yours truly needs to get to the forum.