Location: Muskmelon Bay, Guana Island
Instead of waking up to music, the majority of the boat found themselves waking up in the pouring rain at around 6:45 pm. We had bagels and yogurt to get our brains going for our sail chat that started at 9 am. Our real skipper, Nat, showed us all the different parts of the engine, and we all took turns jumping down into the hatch and examining the different pieces that allow our lovely boat, Avizia, to travel through the beautiful BVIs. To make sure that we understood what we were learning, we had to explain what we were looking at to the next person who crawled down. Liz showed me where the battery, radiator, and coolant were, along with a few other important features of the engine. We had about an hour of free time that we could use to practice the seven knots that we needed to memorize in order to pass one part of our sailing exam. After I was confident with my knots, I jumped in the water to cool down, and it didn’t take long for me to see Margot, Norah, Ali, Maddie, and Nate doing backflips off of the bow. Our next rotation took us to Baso to start our 3rd open water dive. We set up our dive kits and descended into 40ft water. We only had two skills to complete on this dive. The first one was manually inflating our BCDs with our mouths and hovering in the water to practice our buoyancy skills. After we hovered, we had to completely remove our masks underwater and put them back on, clearing them by blowing air out through our noses.
Once our two skills were complete, we were all able to go for a fun dive and explore the local reef. We saw spider crabs, parrot fish, and even a stingray! All of us got to moon jump and mess around by doing backflips and headstands at the bottom of the water. After our three-minute safety stop, we returned to the surface, where we removed our kits and met back up with Anton and Nate. Anton was focused on his book while Nate was passed out sun tanning. We had a few minutes to join them before going back to our boat via dinghy. For lunch we had sandwiches and left over pineapple from this morning.
After a quick lunch, we were taken to Shamwari and were able to hang out with Odyssey kids. Half of us were taken to do water sports. Sophia, Nate, Ali, Mallory, and I were the second group to go, and while we were switching boats, we heard the others talking about how Anton shreds on the wakeboard. I was the first in my group to go, and I finally caught air on the wakeboard. It was really encouraging to have the whole boat cheering me on. Sophia also was able to get up on one water ski right before our rotation came to an end. It’s always so nice to see everyone supporting each other and the genuine happiness that comes from it. Our final rotation was a hike on shore. Everyone threw on some dry clothes, and we all hiked uphill for about an hour and a half. And despite all the complaints on the way up, the view was definitely worth it. Everyone was extremely sweaty, and we were all thankful to finally take our ocean showers after a long day. It started to pour yet again, and Ali and I were able to see a small rainbow over the island. We had dinner and are all at the helm, talking while watching the sunset. I think we are all starting to realize how quickly the summer is flying by. Although we all miss our family and friends, we only have six days left of this once-in-a-lifetime experience, and we are all trying our best to soak up every single moment. We only have one more dive until we are officially certified, and I’m sure the rest of this camp will fly by after that.
“This is sick”
-Kayla