Location: Antigua
Hello again, this is Peyton yet again!!!! We have done a full rotation of jobs and are starting from the beginning again. Our day started normally but didn’t stay like that for long. We all woke up, and Roman and Will immediately started to cheer it up. We had the basic eggs and muffins but with a twist of coffee cake instead of muffins. After a lovely breakfast, we started the dishy pit and quickly finished that up. Everyone started to get ready for a history tour of Nelson’s Dockyard, which is where we are currently docked. The tour was super interesting but a little short.
We got the whole history of the buildings and reasonings behind the names. Once the tour was finished we came back to retrieve our phones before going out for some shore time. Everyone was super excited to talk to their friends and family. Personally I was so happy to talk to all my family and hear their voices. We walked and talked, eventually finding a delicious smoothie place before walking to Bar-Bs for some lunch. Basically, everyone got chicken tenders with fries, which was absolutely delicious and a superior meal if I say so myself! Once we stuffed ourselves full, we walked back toward the boats, grabbing a couple of snacks and souvenirs on the way. Everyone spent their time walking around, checking out the town, and just hanging out in general.
Personally, after we came back to the boat, Sadie, Scarlett, and I decided to relax a bit in the sun, taking a break to walk and buy some water/soda. Our number one goal for today was to create an absolute bombastic fire playlist, which was successfully done. Scarlett sent it to Claire, and it has been blasting this entire night, making our teenage selves very happy. After our shore time, we turned our phones back in, sending our last goodbyes to everyone. Then, we started to get ready for a casual walk (according to Claire and Ben). Let’s just say it was not a walk. The hike was really fun and gorgeous, but harder than a walk. We had to do some “rock climbing” and put our blood, sweat, and tears into it, but the views were so so worth it (There are pictures). We walked down a road to get back to the start, and everyone was just hanging out and being silly. We got back around 5:30, and our amazing chefs started an amazing dinner, Thanksgiving Night. It was super lit to have our Fire 97.9 Radio playing Cuban jams, courtesy of Evan. Cooking was super fun, everyone was dancing and cooking, making a super fun and efficient chaos. Scarlett and I tag-teamed the chicken, her opening the cans, and I drained them and dumped the chicken. Surprisingly, Celeste napped through almost the entire thing, which was super funny but honestly so real since the hike exhausted all of us.
After our hype cooking session, we set up the table and chowed. It was so delicious, and everyone went back for at least a few seconds. During this heavenly period of time, Scarlett came up with the most amazing idea to try and get our dish pit done before Frenchie (they were about to start their dish pit and would be 15-20 min ahead of us). Of course, all of us accepted the challenge wholeheartedly and became really hyped. Immediately, everyone worked like a well-oiled machine, blasting music, yelling, and signing—perfectly organized and controlled chaos. Like riding a bike, we finished our dishy pit in record time with about twice the amount of normal dishes and were fully finished before they even started to deckie. Amazing W for us.
Eventually, everyone gathered in the salon for a sail chat with Claire. Today, we learned three kinds of knots, went over the basics of immigration and customs, and everything legal/logistical about boats. We also learned about VHF radios. All of us will take the practical exam for this and hopefully become certified. During the knot portion of this talk, Celeste and I made brownies since we had already learned these specific knots. Once we had finished sail chat everyone was just hanging in the salon and galley. Quickly, games started to erupt with Ben’s Rugby ball. We were playing catch, which evolved into a super fun game of monkey in the middle. This soon grew to two monkeys in the middle and three people on the outside. One of the funniest parts was when the ball went down the stairs, Andrew speed ran to grab it, or when Roman and Evan began lightly wrestling on the ground. Pretty soon Derrick came over from Frenchie, he is honestly an honorary member of Different Drummer now. As we waited for the brownies, we had some delicious popsicles because a single dessert was not enough for us. We, of course, destroyed our brownies when they came out of the oven. Now we are just hanging out and chilling. Frenchie came over to our boat, and we were just gonna chill and talk. Love you lots, Mom and Dad!!! Peace and Love.