Location: Sollier, Mallorca
The morning began as usual at 7:00 as the lovely synth from “I Miss the Rage” rang through the cabins. Trippie Redd and Playboi Carti’s beautiful voices were enough to will students awake. Despite the similar routine we were all getting used to; this morning was different than any of the other 28 mornings we’ve had thus far. As we made our way out of bed and up onto the deck, we realized what was new. BAGELS!!!!! It has been almost a month since any of us had eaten a good ol’ bagel and cream cheese, and today we got to experience that again. Toward the end of breakfast, we were delighted to hear that we were going to be making a small passage to a different port in Mallorca, a mere 5-hour trip and that we were going to spend part of the day there on shore tomorrow.
After breakfast, eager to motor off to Sollier, we conducted a smaller version of our beloved “passage prep,” which consisted of putting away all of our dive gear, securing the dinghies on deck, and preparing down below in case of another 60/40 passage. Once that was complete, we all met down below for our first Marine Bio exam. The staff set us off toward Sollier while we worked hard on answering questions about algae, bacteria, evolution, and a whole lot more. Once we finished our exam, we made our way on deck to see some beautiful orange cliffs. With about an hour of free time before lunch, I personally took a very pleasant nap while other students worked on finishing up their marine bio essays that are due tomorrow, day 30.
We had a little bit of a late lunch, a greek salad with tzatziki sauce and naan, and then came another new experience. Our first man overboard (MOB) drill. Calum honked the very loud horn in 3 long blasts, which signaled a MOB. We used a little buoy as a dummy, and it was dropped overboard as we scrambled into our watch teams to commence the organized rescue of the said buoy. “MAN OVERBOARD” pierced the air as watch team one (including me) prepared the rescue swimmer (Carolyn), watch team two prepared to medically help the survivor, and watch team three, the sail handling team, “dropped the sails” (I say this with air quotes because we were just motoring and didn’t actually have any sails to drop). Countless arms pointed to the buoy as we learned the most important aspect is to keep eyes on the MOB at all times. As Calum turned the boat around and got closer to the buoy, watch team one attached a line to Carolyn, our rescue swimmer, and prepared to drop her in the water with the intent to reel her back in with the survivor. Once we got close enough, she jumped in and swam over to the buoy, grabbed it, and signaled for us to reel her back in. We sat in a row on the deck with the line holding Carolyn in our hands and dragged her back through the water and eventually up onto the side of the boat. A few people from the front of the row then jumped up and grabbed her legs to swing her over onto the deck as we had successfully obtained the buoy. Watch team two immediately begin medical procedures, examining to see if the survivor was breathing. When they discovered it wasn’t, they began CPR to revive it. Luckily, with their newly learned but excellent CPR skills, they were able to revive the buoy and save its life.
After the drill, we rolled right into Oceanography class, where we learned all about water, bonds, polarity, and density. After class, we had a little bit of free time before dinner. Some of the students (me included) decided to swim to the beach that was nearby. We had only 30 minutes before we had to be back for dinner, but we went for it anyway. It was about a 10-minute swim, so we were able to spend a short but needed time on shore. We walked a little bit up the main street of Sollier in our bathing suits and goggles while also holding two “DIVERS BELOW” sausage buoys. You could tell we were tourists from miles away, but we rocked it. As close to 10 minutes passed, we needed to get back into the water and swim back to our home, Vela.
We arrived just in time for a delicious dinner of sweet curry chicken and rice (shoutout to Lindsey’s mom for the recipe and Lindsey for head cheffing). Toward the end of dinner, my squeeze question was, “what has been your favorite part about the first 1/3 of the trip, and what are you most looking forward to for the rest?” Which, for me, was day 10 when we got to go swimming in the rain in Corsica, and I said I was most looking forward to more scuba diving in the Caribbean. We ended the squeeze with 10 seconds of silence to just listen to the wind, water, and peacefulness of Sollier.
It is now dark out as I am finishing up this blog post, and I just went up on deck to see the beautiful streaks of light from Soiller reflected across the still water, and I thought I should add that in as well.
Apparently, a prank war also began today between the divemasters (Rachel and Skylar) and Matt and Ali, which can be seen in one of the uploaded photos.
To all my friends, family, and pets back home, miss you, and I’ll see you soon.
-Sky