Location: Falmouth, Antigua
This morning as the final watch team woke up around 6 am, Antigua was insight! Back to where it all began! Before the final watch handover could take place, sails needed to be dropped and flaked. As the two watches worked together, we made fast work of the task at hand. It marked the end of our student-led passage and our time with sails up on Ocean Star. Bittersweet, to say the least. Corinne, Miguel, and Olivia, our student leaders for the passage did a fabulous job, and it was great to see how cohesive the ten of us had come. Most of us having entered the trip with limited sailing knowledge now confidently went about our tasks and exhibit high understanding of the lines and sails.
We were truly working together. As watch team one was relieved, the final watch prepared and dropped both anchors. Once we felt secure, many of us retreated back to our bunks for a final few hours of sleep. Before lunch, all sails were properly flaked and covered, and the boat was officially put to bed. As we had planned to be underway all day, we were expecting an afternoon of rest and recovery. But, as we should have learned by now, you can’t predict what may happen next. As Heather calmly explained something in the saloon to us, chaos had taken over the deck. We heard a yell from Freddie, and we knew the worst had happened. We were thrown into yet another rescue scenario. With panicking divers, missing divers, divers unconscious at the surface, stings, and even decompression illness, it turned out to be quite a stressful afternoon. Despite the week-long break from the last rescue diving training, we proved to be almost ready to handle anything. We worked well as a team and put our new skills to use. There was a slight mixup during our missing diver case, where we intended to locate a weight belt using a search pattern. After about 45 minutes of divers and snorkelers being in the water, we realized that the weight belt (one dropped in an early exercise) did, in fact, not have any weights on it. Despite the difficulties we faced, overall, it went well, and we are one step closer to becoming rescue divers! We are all looking forward to spending tonight on the saloon bench watching Finding Dory and soaking up our last few days aboard!