Location: Falmouth Harbour, Antigua
Howdy from the rockin’ and rollin’ Falmouth Harbor. Tonight the crew will find out who has their sea legs and who will need to keep working on them. Today has been a chaotic but very informative day. We all learned what a sandline was, but more importantly, we learned the importance of not sucking it into the prop of our 67 ton home on our way out of the harbor. We quickly learned how to handle fenders, distribute weight on mooring lines, and what to do when almost everything goes wrong while surrounded by multimillion-dollar mega sailboats and yachts. Once we figured all that fun stuff out, we were finally off. Ocean Star made her initial trip with our crew out of the gross water of the harbor into the blue glacier Gatorade water of Antigua. A quick trip around the cliffs, and we came up alongside Argo, waving and blowing our horns to the other shipmates. Anchors set, dive kits put together, and lunch demolished, the shipmates getting certified jumped off the boat for their first open water dive. The already certified divers did some free diving around the boat and baked a birthday cake for Meg! Happy 20th Birthday, Meg!
The crew also took their first saltwater showers, which quickly turned into who could swim under the boat, backflips off the bowsprit, and a Pitbull dance party. Pitbull has been the theme of the day, we only know about 10 lines to every song, but that stops nobody from having his wonderful songs stuck in our heads all day. “It’s going down, I’m yelling timber”…maybe not the best thing to be singing as we are hoisting anchors and heaving halyards on the mast, but it’s all good.
The night ended with some quick rain showers, a massive sea turtle sighting, a very off-key but lovely rendition of happy birthday, and some yummy chocolate and vanilla birthday cake. Between midnight anchor watches and random big waves, everyone is a bit anxious to see what the first night in a rolling boat will bring.
Spirits are high, and people are excited as we are settling in and getting to know each other. Very competitive Uno games, bracelet making, and funky conversations in the dishwashing pit are all helping with that. Did anyone else know that whales eat moose? Cause I for sure didn’t.
Photo 1- Addisen, Erin, and Johnny cooking up a cake in the galley
Photo 2- Rainbow!
Photo 3- Grady, Henry, and Addisen doing some galley cleaning
Photo 4- Celia, Keaton, and Johnny free diving and climbing around the boat
Photo 5- Henry with his double thumbs up after diving
Photo 6- Saltwater showers
Photo 7-Time to go diving!
Photo 8,9,10,11- More saltwater shower adventures
Photo 12- Birthday girl Meg with her cake
Photo 13- Celia after running a very muddy anchor chain
Photo 14- Sandline dilemma waiting
photo 15- Erin on gopher duty
Photo 16- Antigua is beautiful!
Photo 17,18- More diving!