Location: Freeman Bay, Antigua
Set an alarm for six this morning to watch the sunrise. It went off, and I went straight back to sleep. Im on a tropical island. It’s pretty much mandatory to see the sunrise at least a handful of times… however, I hadn’t slept in maybe 40 hours because of the flight, and I needed my beauty sleep for the sake of the crew.
As skipper of the day, I am in charge of waking the crew up. It was awkward, but I managed and received little resistance. I wanted to wake everyone up using the speaker from the stereo, but someone had taken (or lost) the AUX cord… which I believe to be absolutely criminal. We’ve been complaining about how we had no speaker for music the whole trip. Twenty people and you’d think SOMEONE would have brought one… anyway, breakfast is prepared and ready by 7:30 am on the dot every day, and we enjoyed some toasted bagels and cream cheese, frozen berries, and watermelon. We had a few minutes to talk and relax before clean up and then spent the next couple of hours on boat procedures and walk-throughs. We had lunch prepared for us briefly after that (around noon), which consisted of eggs, pico de gallo, oven-roasted potatoes, bacon, and some other toppings for breakfast tacos! They were great. Another quick cleanup followed, and it was time for the first boat move!!! Literally just around the corner into a bay, but at least there we were allowed to swim. We learned lots of things regarding how to function the anchor and how to use certain ropes. It was a short trip (apparently, it would be about a 20-minute walk…) until the anchors dropped down again. Then, after all of us were drenched in sweat, we got the all-clear to change into our bathing suits and dive into the swim test so we could all swim about any time we want. Four laps and a 10 min tread later, we all put our gear on to snorkel. It took me about 10 minutes to adjust to breathing and using the fins properly… I had never done this before, but it was very memorable. We proceeded into the evening with our first ocean showers (jump in the ocean, soap up, jump back into the ocean, then freshwater rinse with the hose) and eagerly waited for our delicious curry dinner (thank you, chefs!!!)
The night ended with our final clean-up, a 52-minute scuba theory video (we were all sweating and tired) in the salon, and quickly rushed up for the cool refreshing ocean breeze.
I’m personally ready to go to sleep, so I am gonna end it here, especially since I have my first anchor watch at 5 in the morning…yay. But honestly, a perfect second day. Oh, also, I saw my first jellyfish today! It was tiny and adorable.
Captions:
Photo 1: Group photo!
Photo 2: Breakfast
Photo 3: Bow view from the dock
Photo 4: ^
Photo 5: Salty pit
Photo 6: ^
Photo 7: Some fishies by the boat
Photo 8: Salty pit again
Photo 9: Deckies!
Photo 10: ^
Photo 11: Chefs getting clean dishes handed down
Photo 12: Our home
Photo 13: Dinna
Photo 14: sunset
Photo 15: Scuba theory videos (did we retain anything?)
Photo 16: Star watching on the Martingail
Photo 17: An even better quality photo of us on the martingail
Miss you all back home!