Location: Ahe Atoll, French Polynesia
Good evening, Friends and Family. Today, my day began earlier than I would have liked when a certain someone woke me up at 12:48 am to reset the water so they could take a late-night shower. Luckily, I was able to get some sleep for the next two hours until my 4 am watch. When I got on watch, the wind had died down a lot, and so we started by dropping the main sailno better way to earn your morning ramen. The beautiful stars and sunrise were a great way to end our student-led passage.
When I woke up from my morning nap, we had a clear view of the palm-covered atoll. We needed to time our entry right because of the strong tides that occur when the lagoon in the atoll fills up. Our fearless skipper, Martin, with the guidance of Captain Nick, guided us safely into the lagoon. However, our attempt at mooring did not go according to plan. The moorings available were teeeeny tiny, and our beamy beast Argo was just a little too heavy, so we set anchor instead. I was in our dinghy with Shane, Kaitie, Gavi, and Stella, and much to our excitement, we got a lot of sunbathing time in between the mooring fiasco and the anchoring. Meanwhile, those on board Argo were having cheery conversations with us over our dying VHF radios. After we were safely on anchor, we got started on some much-needed BA.
While some of us worked on flushing out the grey water tanks, others were hard at work floating around with lifejacket diapers, cleaning algae off the hull. Aiden and I were given the task of scraping the barnacles off the stern. Long story short, it was a gruesome massacre. We took out the whole population. Whilst all of this was happening, our incredible divemasters in training, Will and Arthur, taught some difficult students all about the rules of the road for their open water snorkeler. All of this was very fun to watch and even better to see our friends succeed.
After our mini BA, people took some much-needed time to call home and check out what has been happening in the world. And Shane took this time to find out the depth the old-fashioned way, with a sounding line and free diving.
Ruby, our head chef, made us some nice Greek tasting food for dinner, which was delicious. We had nice green beans fresh from Nuku Hiva, lemon potatoes, and chicken. Unfortunately, however, Ruby and her sous chefs were cooking away during our third EFR scenario. Everything got crazy in the galley when Aiden pretended to stab Nacho with a screwdriver, and Shane came running in like a crazy person. We all stuck to our training, and all of the victims made it out alive.
All in all, it was a wonderful day to be back on anchor.
Much love to Mom, Dad, and the little doggies
XOXO- Sarah