Location: English Harbor, Antigua
Hello!! We made it onboard!!!!
This morning was a very early start for me, waking up at 3:45 to be at the airport by 4:15. As I stood in line to check my duffle bag, I could already recognize other Seamester kids by all the dive gear strapped to backpacks. Once on my first flight, I watched the most beautiful sunrise over Boston Harbor as I gave myself a pep talk trying to convince myself that no, I wasn’t going to lose my luggage, yes, my covid test was going to be acceptable for immigration, and that there is no possible way Argo would leave with me stranded somewhere on Antigua (although there are certainly worse places to be stranded). Three hours later, I had landed in Miami and found my next gate swarming with friendly faces, everyone eager to land in Antigua and finally starts our voyage.
Thankfully, everyone landed safely without any complications other than a fuel overflow on our airplane that resulted in a two(ish) hour delay as they cleaned up the spillage, emptied out some of the fuel, and allowed the monitors to reset. While we were all waiting for our luggage at baggage claim, names were being passed around as well as many reminders of how small of a world it is. For example, two people went to high school together. They didn’t know that the other was on the trip until they ran into each other at baggage claim, two others live on the same street in D.C. and have never met, and the best friend of my boss on Martha’s Vineyard, MA is a very good family friend of a boy who lives in Colorado. We all piled into taxis and watched the sunset while driving to the marina.
We are now all aboard Argo, showered, sanitized, and slowly moving into our cabins while figuring out the boat’s layout and our jobs. Everyone is unsurprisingly very friendly, and super duper excited to get into the groove of things 🙂 Tomorrow morning it’s my job as Skipper to wake everyone up at 7 AM, which is something I’m slightly concerned about considering it takes an average of 5 alarms to wake myself up, but hey, we’ll see how it goes!
Pictured: Early morning airplane sunrise!