Location: The Bight, Norman Island
We began bright and early this morning, with the whole boat awake well before 7 am. After some safety briefing information, a wonderful cereal breakfast courtesy of our chefs: Maddy and Dan, and a code of conduct review, we finally left the harbor and set sail! Thankfully, during our passage to Norman Island, no one became too seasick (the puke contest has not started yet…). As we traveled, some of us slept, some helped steer, while others sat right on the trampoline, getting soaked with salt water.
We all arrived at our mooring extremely to complete our swim test (a long six laps around our boat, Mere Cat) and to get underwater for our first check-out dive! We split into two groups for some basic skill tests and got to see some large Tarpon on our way back to the boat!
Following our dive, we were all starving and made some delicious sandwiches with salad. Our lunch was cleaned up by our hardworking dishwashers for the day: Amanda, Ava, Sean, and Jack. After lunch, we had some downtime, sleeping, reading, tanning, or talking, and then all jumped in the water to snorkel and explore the caves near our mooring. While snorkeling, we saw lots of colorful parrotfish, Christmas tree worms, jellyfish, and more tarpon! When we all got back, we had our first real boat showers and tried not to get stung by the jellyfish while washing shampoo out of our hair. Once dry and slightly less salty, some of us gathered to play cards (Spit, Crazy Eights, and BS).
Throughout the day, Kaleigh kept our salon clean and tidy while Harley and Bella made the deck look (almost) brand new.
Dinner was amazing, with sloppy Joe’s, mashed potatoes, and corn, followed by our inaugural post-meal game of squeeze! Our question of the night was “What is the spirit animal of the person to your left” and the answers varied from Moose to Kangaroo to Stingray.
While we all got a little bit too much color on our faces and are still working out all the kinks in our dive gear, overall, the first day was extremely successful!
Check back for more updates soon!
Much love, Caroline xoxo