Location: Mountain Point, Virgin Gorda
Today started with a 7 am wake-up and eggs for breakfast cooked by Ali and Kayla. The morning continued, and we quickly cleaned up the deck in anticipation of a neighboring AQ crew paddle-boarding our ship. Most of the crew went to the bow to practice putting their dive gear together in a race format. The two crew members who did not need to attend this (Anton and Sophia) went paddle boarding with the other AQ Shipmates. Following that The Avizia crew took a dingy to shamwari, another ship in the AQ fleet, from there we got on very fast dinghies and did water sports such as water skiing, wakeboarding, and kneeboarding. While walking and boarding a dinghy with Anton, Nora, Mallory, Maddie, and our skipper Nat, we saw an injured sea turtle in the ocean and managed to get it the appropriate care that was required. After water sports, we had sandwiches for lunch. After lunch, we started our diving experience by taking a dinghy to Beso, a sister ship in the fleet from which we could dive.
We got all of our diving equipment, including BCDs, Air tanks, Weights, Regulators, Fins, and masks on and ready to go. The dive instructors briefed us on the dive of the day, got us fully suited up, and jumped in. After our buddies and instructors were all in the water, we started doing our confined water lessons 1-3. We practiced some general skills, such as removing masks underwater and getting water out of our masks underwater. Many of our divers saw starfish, and some of them saw stingrays. All of the divers were very happy with their experiences and can’t wait for more. After lunch, we had our final activity of rotation day, Dink/dock, where we learned to tie knots that helped us run the ship. To finish off the day we ate Alfredo pasta with sausages and a salad. Today, all of our crew mates finished dive sections 4-5 theory and passed the quizzes to start and finish dive certification outside of the confined water dives.