Departure Eve Eve
Location: Antigua
It was a rather early morning on STV Vela as the fire alarm was accidentally set off at 6 AM by the breakfast. Thankfully, everyone mustered in the cockpit per training; sadly, reaction times were less than adequate as many had to find the nearest pair of shorts to throw on. Will, being the pure athlete that he is, was one of the first on deck... he didn't make a much-needed shorts stop, but his type 1 PFD provided ample coverage. The breakfast Sophia and Charlton prepared was delicious, making the fire alarm well worth it.
Proper 7 AM wakes up were completed, however, they were anything but proper as wake ups were done in the form of a rescue scenario. Allie had unfortunately misplaced some divers... and really needed the students to go find them. Everyone was up on deck once again with a fair bit of speed, but unfortunately, some mooning may or may not have occurred. The scenario was completed with everyone thankfully being saved, and an incredibly p[panicked Meg was eventually calmed down. After breakfast another rescue scenario commenced with even better reaction times, luckily this time I wasn't in charge of reviewing the whole scenario and could just be a crazed panic person. I was able to escape from four of my rescuers, and my final rescuer (Kaden) decided the best way to calm me down would be to repeatedly spray the hose in my face. Wow, did it work? We now have 11 new rescue divers on board... whoot whoot!
The students all head to shore for lunch except for Christina or Tina, if you will, as she and Freddie had to lead me on a Discover Scuba Diving dive. I once again took up my Oscar-nominated role as Prison Jake, in which I plummeted from a dive instructor into a notoriously bad diver. Prison Jake decided that Christina was really two names and that she needed to pick one for the dive (Chris or Tina)... Tina. The dive was a grand success, Christina and Freddie stopped all of my shenanigans from trying to walk on the bottom to fighting sharks. We now have three new Divemasters onboard, as Allie is also now a PADI Professional...
When the students returned from lunch, boat jobs began. There was a wide variety of jobs: flaking sails, cleaning grey water tanks, cleaning topsides, and cleaning food storage areas. The messy job portion of boat appreciation was a massive success, thanks to everyone's tremendous effort. This made me eager to test out the positive reinforcement theory. For example, when a dog does a behavior you like you give him a treat in hopes he will repeat said behavior. Now I'm well aware that the students are in fact human, however some on board possess the maturity of puppy dogs and so I ran to shore to buy ice cream for after dinner. Everyone was quite excited about the ice cream, and I'm rather hopeful that thanks to the ice cream the dogs were given, tomorrow's big day of boat appreciation will be a rather efficient one.