Bali to South Africa – Fall 2026

Greetings from Argo. Today was our 4th day here at our beautiful anchorage just off of Direction Island in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Today we started off our day with some of the soon-to-be certified rescue divers (Kares, Capri,  Banks, and Riley) doing a fun dive around the coral reef just off the port side of our boat. Just after that, Nacho and I went on a 45-minute dinghy ride to Home Island to go and provision food for us at the local grocery store. While there, we grabbed a lot of chicken and vegetables for our upcoming BBQ tomorrow night. While Nacho and I were on shore, the Argonauts onboard were hard at work practicing a rescue diving scenario, where our Captain, Shane, pretended to be an unresponsive diver underwater, while Lucy and Ozzie were pretending to be menaces on the surface as panicked divers. The rescuers, Capri, Banks, and Zinnia, got into their dive gear and raced into the water to locate Shane. At the same time, Riley, Caleb, and Rachel were providing boat support (grabbing emergency O2, AED, Med kit), and Kares and Gus were attempting to calm down Lucy and Ozzie (the panicked divers). While that scenario was unsuccessful in locating Shane within 10 minutes, we learned a lot from our mistakes and have a better understanding of what to do better. After both the provisioning trip and our rescue scenario were done, we had Tuna Salad for lunch made by our head chef Capri and the sous chefs Lucy and Rachel.

After lunch, we headed to the island for the trip’s challenge course! I, along with Kares, were team leaders for Team Blue; our team consisted of Dusty, Banks, Dylan J, Lucy, and Capri. The other two teams were Team Pink, led by Chiara and JP, along with Ozzie, August, Zinnia, Skye, Tiger, and Paul. As well as Team Green, led by Miles and Dylan V, as well as Hannah, Gus, Rachel, Abby, JD, and Caleb. We (the leaders) revealed slowly over time the members of the team by marking them with their team’s color -- usually an “X” on their hand. JD was surprised during his nap with a green handprint on his back. After everyone got their mark, each team went all in with team spirit! Creative liberties were taken with colored outfits, colored hair, and zinc all over each team member! Team Blue Lightning had the most team spirit of all the teams on the boat with full blue outfits, “BLUE” on everyone’s limbs and back, and even lightning marks on our arms! Once we got to the beach, we immediately started our first challenge, which was to order each team in a line by birthday without talking. Team Pink did it the fastest (under 25 seconds), followed closely by Team Green, and lastly by Team Blue. Our next challenge after that was to fill up a Pringles container with water… however, it was not as easy as that. Firstly, each team had to line up behind a line drawn in the sand, and one player had to spin around a deck brush pole five times in order to get dizzy; that player then crawled underneath the rest of the team towards the water and, once in the water, filled their mouth with seawater, and crawled back and deposited it into the Pringles container. We repeated this with every teammate until our Pringles container was full, and once it was full, one member from the team raced into one of two of our immersion/gumby suits (red suit that we wear when abandoning ship). The two lucky teams to make it to that point were Green Team and Blue Team, and Dylan V. and Banks both were excited to try it out. Once suited up, they raced to our dinghy in the water, which happened to be covered in soap by Jen to make it more difficult to get into. The winners of that game were the blue team (the best team), followed by the green team, and then the pink team.

Then we had a 10-minute break where Shane, Rachel, Jen, and Nacho suspiciously asked for all of our water bottles, without telling us what they were for… Turns out it was for challenge three, which was both a mix of musical chairs and a scavenger hunt. The objective of the game was to have your team find as many water bottles that were hidden in the sand and end up with more than the other teams… If you did not find a water bottle, you were out. For the first round, the pink team found 6 bottles, green found 4, and blue only found 3. For the second round, the player count dwindled down to 13, and pink was the most prominent team with six out of their eight players out playing… However, there were only two water bottles to be found this round… and against all odds, the two players to grab a water bottle were Dylan J (team blue) and Paul (team pink). After this round, we had the finale; both team blue and team pink were supporting their players heavily, and tensions were high as we were all eager to see who would take the victory. As Shane yelled, “Go!” Dylan J. and Paul both raced at full speed towards the dinghy in order to find the bottle, and after a brief struggle for control, Dylan J. came out victorious for Team Blue.

Following that challenge, JD and Caleb went on a side mission with Nacho through the forest to find enough coconuts to last us for the next 18 days at sea (the deck is now full of them!). Abby was busy locating exciting island life, such as the hermit crabs, and was super stoked to have a lizard come out of a shell and crawl on her shoulder. Next, we started challenge four: Trivia! On team blue, we divided up our knowledge, and Dusty was especially helpful with his knowledge of Greek Mythology (who knew Argo was named after a constellation). Banks and I specialized in knowledge about Argo (apparently Argo has 7 compressors onboard), while Lucy and Dylan J, who were on Jen’s watch team, helped with the questions about her, and Capri was especially useful in ranking the age of the staff onboard. Tiger was especially useful for remembering all of Rachel’s Broadway plays she worked on. The results were in: the blue team came in first, followed by the green team, and lastly the pink team. After trivia, we went straight into the final challenge, which was a relay race event. The objective of the challenge was to be the first team to dig a hole deep enough for one member of the team to get through, where they then raced to the dinghy and jumped off it (the dinghy was once again covered in soap). The player then ran back to the rest of the team and tagged in two other players to do the same thing, but also grab a dive weight belt from the bottom of the sand; they then tagged in the fourth, fifth, and sixth player to go through the hole and jump off all together. Lastly, they race back to tag in the final player, who races to the dinghy to perform a backflip off it. Pink team completed this challenge first (with August performing the backflip) followed by green team (with Dylan V. performing the backflip) and lastly, blue team (with Banks performing the backflip). After we completed this challenge, we finally learned our fate… In first place, Pink with 46.5 points; second place, Blue with 46 points; and in third place, Green with 44 points. After the challenge course, Nacho, JD, and Caleb came out of the forest and wanted JP, Miles, and me to help grab the 36 coconuts that they found for the boat, and we took turns loading them into the dinghy, with Miles carrying 6 coconuts at once at one point! After we got back onto Argo, Capri and Lucy started to prepare dinner, and the rest of us started to relax, with JP taking a nap at his usual spot on the bow. However, that did not last for long, as we rescue divers in training were thrown into another rescue scenario, this time with Skye and August pretending to be panicking siblings as their “aunt” Jen was nowhere in sight and needed to be found… Gus, Zinnia, and Banks ran into action as they rushed to get their dive gear on to help find Jen, while some boats around us found Skye and August’s performance so real that they also tried to jump in before we told them it was just a rescue-diving training. Riley ran boat support, grabbing emergency supplies while Kares and Capri tried to calm down Skye and Caleb tried to calm down August, while I was on the dinghy providing support. Fortunately, this time, we were able to revive an “unconscious” Jen and calm down Skye and August, and we passed our first Rescue Scenario. After that, Capri resumed cooking dinner, which was burger bowls and potatoes with focaccia. After dinner, we all took an ocean shower where Chiara surpassed her fears and managed to do not only one, but four backflips off the boat, which were her first ever! After that, we had our first optional meteorology class, for those interested in learning about weather and its impact on sailing; it is a mandatory class for those taking PSCT, but JP, August, Hannah, Dylan V, and Gus all came as well to learn. Hannah also helped explain the Coriolis effect to the group as she was knowledgeable and was eager to share.

Another wonderful jam-packed day on Argo.

Dear Mom, Dad, Ella, Boeing, and Maple, I am having a great time here on Argo, and am really enjoying the time I am having… The atoll we are at is beautiful and has a lot of cool dive sites next to it where we can finish our dive certifications. I miss you so much and can’t wait to see you in December! Love, Wynn