Location: Saint Barts to the BVI
Hi, this is Will again writing to you from Different Drummer, which has finally anchored back in the BVI after our awesome journey throughout the East Caribbean. In the morning, we woke up bright and early to the smell of French toast courtesy of our chefs, Roman and Evan. As they were cooking, however, and as more people began to wake up, a heated debate about whether or not dance was a sport took place. After a solid hour of both sides taking their sides adamantly and a lot of strong philosophical opinions about the nature of sports, we agreed to disagree. We decided to ally ourselves once again to eat breakfast. After breakfast, we (except for Scarlett, Evan, and Celeste, who had already taken it) all took our VHF exam and all passed first try, thank goodness, thanks to Claire’s lessons and review. The rest of the morning was pretty chill; we motored to another anchorage off Shell Beach to do some light snorkeling, in which we saw a whole menagerie of fish, including remora, groupers, turtles, and even a stingray. Now, this (and a chicken salad sandwich lunch/leftover mashed potatoes from Thanksgiving) was all well and good, but there was an undertone of something between dread and excitement as we knew we would be taking our final passage back to the BVI. However, this one was different, as we would be leaving in the afternoon rather than the morning like the others, and it being about an 18-hour sail, we knew it would be our first (and last) completely overnight sail…
Lunch went by and a few hours of afternoon chilling, and we prepared to depart on our passage at about 3 in the afternoon. We took off, with Watch Team 3 (Me, Andrew, Sadie, and Rina) taking the first 3-hour shift. At the end of our watch, dinner was ready — a delectable cuisine of sautéed sausage, rice and beans, and cornbread. One smooth dinner and clean up underway later and Watch Team 1 (Scarlett, Roman, and Celeste) took the 6-9 shift. A lot of us used the following hours to sleep to prepare for our super late/early watches, and the consensus was that even though the night watches were a bit brutal on our sleep schedules, they were magical and rewarding, with nothing but the moon, stars, and dark sea surrounding us. Watch Team 2 (Orly, Evan, and Peyton) take the 9-midnight shift, Team 3 take 12-3, Team 1 get 3-6, and Team 2 finally end the sail at the end of their watch at about 9 am the next day, anchoring where we are right now off of Virgin Gorda.