Location: Muskmelon Bay, Guana Island
It rained on and off the whole day, going for short bursts and leaving behind golden sun rays and lush greenery, setting the scene for a beautiful, action-packed day. Dylan motivated some of us to join him in an early-morning workout, which involved choosing a card from a deck and assigning an exercise to complete for each card. Surprisingly, only two cards blew overboard, and we were able to retrieve them. Everyone was sweating from the exercise, so it must have been a nice reprieve when the first downpour of the morning began. We then moved on to breakfast, which was bagels and yogurt. Oliver tried toasting the bagels in a pan, but they ended up burning unevenly, so we just ate regular bagels with cream cheese (they were delicious). Since today was a rotation day, we ate and cleaned quickly so we could set up our tanks and get kitted up for our dive. The Open Water Divers went down to 40ft, did some skill training, including a CESA (Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent) and Evie and Eden caught a glimpse of a ray. The Advanced students completed their second PPB dive (Peak Performance Buoyancy), where we descended directly into an underwater obstacle course. Once the dives were completed and everyone had surfaced, we moved on to water sports.
Oliver, Ava, Zane, and Eddie went wakeboarding while Lizzy suggested that the rest of us nap and sunbathe. When we arrived back at the boat, Gary prepared a wonderful lunch for us: chicken salad sandwiches with celery, lettuce, tomato, and various spices. After we ate, we went for a short- albeit steep and intense- hike, which ended with some time to play on a boom swing, which was set up on Glad 2 B Here. Evie was able to do a backflip off of the swing, and both she and Dylan climbed up the rope and jumped off the boom. We headed back around 3:00 for a sail chat with Will and Skyler, where Zane became fast friends with Will as they bonded over rock climbing. From there, the open water divers went straight into showers, although the Advanced divers had to hold off since we had a night dive coming up. We ate a nice chili dinner as the rain sprinkled down around us. We cleaned up, and then the Advanced divers set up their gear. Millie French braided my hair so it would stay out of my face while diving, which worked really well. She had to stay out of the water since her ears were acting up, but she was able to get in some good nap time and should be able to dive tomorrow. Once the sun had set, the Advanced students splashed off the boat and descended into our second dive of the day. The already-amazing underwater world was made even more mystifying by the majestic rays, lobster, squid, and tarpon that swam through the beams of our flashlights—the night ended with a late-night shower, some brookies (brownie cookies), and an invigorating card game of BS.