Location: Salt Island, BVI
This lovely morning in the BVI started out strong with an early cruise to today’s anchoring point at Salt Island. After a delicious oatmeal breakfast, the scuba divers set out to explore the wreck of the mammoth Roan nestled in a vibrant coral reef teeming with adorable triangular trunk fish, lionfish, trumpet fish, puffer fish, and a few barracudas here and there, observing from the shadows. Later, the bright afternoon sunshine
filtered in between the gentle waves. Below, the divers enjoyed the company of a huge and chunky stingray, many more adorably small and oddly shaped fish, and baby sea turtles. At the same time, Celia and I were learning how to splice from Calum, which cumulated in our successful installation of beautifully clean, pearly white permanent sail ties on the bowsprit for the flying jib sail.
In the golden evening light, the whole crew, students, and staff together, joined to share a well-seasoned dinner and some very hearty laughs over sea-themed puns. And we were fortunate enough to be able to celebrate Will’s 20th birthday, accompanied by an amazing chocolate cake. For “squeeze” tonight, the question was, “What would your death row meal [or last meal] be?” to which the answers ranged from family’s smoked salmon and cream cheese on an everything bagel for Maya to a ridiculous quantity of medium rare steaks for Leo to a 16oz decaf mocha with oat milk and two pumps of caramel flavoring from the specific Starbuck’s shop in the Life and Sciences building at UW in Seattle for Emma. The night finished up with the daily sing-a-long session during after-dinner cleanup and our first Leadership class that gave an introduction to the course.