Location: West End, Tortola
Today we woke up to hype music played by Davis to get everyone excited for the sailing race that was going to be happening today against all the sail side boats. Around 7:30, Mark, who was the student skipper of the day, went off to a skipper’s meeting on Mike Meighan’s boat with Margaux to find out all the details about the race for us. At this meeting, he was told we were going to be starting our race right outside of The Bight, Norman Island, then tacking around a green channel marker in Road Town and finishing the race in Great Harbor, Peter Island. Once he was back, to get the boat ready to race by getting everything 40/40 and getting our main sail up. After that was done, Davis pulled out some blue zinc for us to wear, and we put our PFDs on inside out so they were black, not red, for the race. Next, we slipped our mooring ball and started to motor (with our main up) to the start line of the race. Our starting line-up spot was right in the middle of the whole fleet, which Margaux said is a good spot as it gives us a good wind direction. Our next task was to get ready to raise our jib but wait until we heard the final countdown to pull it out as quickly as possible. When the time came, Ari and Aidan got our jib out super efficiently and took off in the front of the fleet. We were able to pass a couple of boats during the first leg of the race, and we were sitting in first when we approached the green marker to tack. Unfortunately, we did not have our most clean tack, but because of the distance we gave ourselves between the other boats on the first leg, we stayed in first after our tack. From this point, we just had the final stretch of the race left; Mark held our boat in perfect position, Ian and Nicholas worked on ensuring our sails were trimmed perfectly, and Theo kept an eye out for the yellow marker in GHP, which indicated the finish line. Eventually, the yellow marker was spotted, and we all held our breath and stayed patient so as not to celebrate too early (as we were still sitting in first) as there were two boats very close behind us. Five minutes later, we crossed the line, and we all erupted into celebration as we Won!!!!! This race helped us to prove to ourselves how much we had learned about sailing over our three weeks here.
After we finished the race and had a proper dance party to celebrate, it was, unfortunately, time to clean up our boat and pack up to go home tomorrow. We all split up into jobs and got the cleanup done as quickly as we could. Once arriving back in West End, Tortola, we got the boat on the docks and finished our cleanup. After clean-up was done, we devoured pizza and then were given some shore time to go hang out with students on the other boats and obtain our final souvenirs. At 5:30 pm, we returned to the boats to do our final squeeze, taking pictures with our AQ flag that we later cut up into pieces as a memory of the trip and being given our medals from mike that we earned from winning the race. It was now time for our final BBQ, so we headed down to Omar’s Fusion, where we ate burgers, hot dogs, rice, curry, and so many other yummy things. After the BBQ was over, we headed to our final meeting with Mike, where he talked about what future programs we could do, reading us “Oh the Places you will Go” and just talking to us about our experiences. Once the meeting was done, we were allowed to hang out with the other boats till 10:30 before returning to our boat to go to sleep. Overall this trip has been truly amazing, and it’s hard to believe our three weeks here have finally come to an end.