Location: Mountain Point, Virgin Gorda
The day began very early; we woke up at 6:30 to the entire boat shaking as we raised the anchor to move the boat; after, we ate our breakfast of oatmeal. After finishing breakfast, we got ready to dive. The advanced divers, Celeste, Noah, Claire, B, and I, went on a dive to 25 feet for 33 minutes. Although it was a relatively uneventful dive, our instructor, Garrison, was happy because “The most important part of a dive is safety!” While the advanced divers were refreshing their skills, the rest of the boat was doing their first-ever dive! Nadiya, Sariah, Ella, and Sadie were shocked when they had to simulate a scenario without any air, but everyone came out in one piece, and Sariah proceeded to slay the day away. After we all finished diving we returned to the boat to find it overrun by strangers, due to us being the designated diving boat. There were over 50 people on the boat! We were all overwhelmed, but not for long, as we were immediately shuttled off to another boat for kneeboarding, wakeboarding, and waterskiing. B and Houston waterskied while the rest of us kneeboarded. Noah attempted the wakeboard but only succeeded in swallowing a few gallons of seawater. Nadiya managed to do a full twist before wiping out, and I was able to stay up for a solid few minutes at high speeds. After watersports, we moved onto zests – small sailing vessels made for racing – zests are hard to control, though, and Sadie and Nadiya got stuck behind a larger boat for 20 minutes before being rescued by one of the dingy. Noah and Houston excelled, speeding past everyone else and even overtaking dinghies at some points. Julia and Maren learned extremely quickly, despite capsizing once they sailed from one end of the bay to the other, evading Riley’s attempts to catch them. After testing, we finally returned to our empty boat. We all took the most refreshing ocean showers of our lives and then enjoyed a dinner of chili and rice prepared by Nadiya and Claire. We ended the day with some much-deserved brookies and an emotional conversation about our values.