Location: White Bay, Peter Island
First Full Day!
This morning we woke up around 7 am. Several people had slept in hammocks or on the trampoline, so after we all had put away the hammocks and bedding, our chefs for the day got out cereal and melon for breakfast.
After breakfast was a quick trip back on land to meet up with the whole ActionQuest and GoBeyond fleet, Mike, who is the director of ActionQuest, gathered everyone together to talk about what the next 21 days are going to look like for us. We had some shore time afterward and then went back on the boats to wait for a sailing permit. Once we had the permit, it was off to Peter Island!
Lunch was sandwiches underway, which made it somewhat difficult for people to attempt to stand up and also make a sandwich. We arrived at Peter Island at about 2 pm, where we anchored and took the swim test, which consisted of swimming around the boat six times and floating/treading water for ten minutes. Once everyone had finished the test, we went to the trampoline to talk about our dive gear and the checkout dive.
For the checkout dive, we had to complete four basic scuba skills and show that we were able to do them. Some people had a bit of trouble equalizing, including myself, but out of the ten students, eight of us were able to successfully descend all the way down 30 feet to the sandy bottom. As we completed our skills and came back up to the surface, dinner was being prepared. We all took off our dive gear and put it back in the storage area. Then it was time for saltwater showers which many students were very excited about because we had a very long travel day prior to today.
For those of you who don’t know, saltwater showers are when we jump off the stern, get back out, use our shampoo and body wash, jump into the water again, get back out, and we get roughly ten seconds of fresh water to rinse off. Dinner was being prepared as we all sat around doing some icebreakers. Two of the students on our boat lost their luggage on the way to the BVIs, and we had just got word that one of their bags was found, but we didn’t know whose bag it was. We sat around for a while talking about who’s bag it was, and then dinner was ready. We had sloppy joes, mashed potatoes, corn, and salad.
Clean-up from dinner is currently happening as we also eagerly wait for the last two students to arrive on our boat, and we hope to see them soon! Unfortunately, it was cloudy all day today, so there wasn’t a pretty sunset to watch or take pictures of, but maybe there will be one tomorrow!
-Finnley D
P.S. OUR LAST TWO SHIPMATES JUST ARRIVED!!!