Location: Buccament Bay. St Vincent
Good evening fellow humans of Earth. Even though Sundays traditionally are a day of rest, we don’t know the meaning of weekends here. We had a jam-packed day full of dive diving resulting in some super sick new certified scuba divers! After learning that the entire island of St Vincent was, in fact, out of eggs despite me needing 17 dozen of them when I was provisioning yesterday, our head chef Stef, graciously served up some top-notch yogurt and granola for breakfast instead of the omelets that she had originally planned. Then we hopped right into diving. My dive group consisting of myself, Tate, Stef, and Quinn, jumped in first to complete their second and third open water dives. While Quinn may or may not have ended up going in a crazy circle when he was attempting a compass reciprocal on the surface, he, along with Stef and Tate, flawlessly executed their compass reciprocal underwater. They all also successfully took their masks off and put them back on all the way down at 50 feet. While we were gone for the morning, the rest of the crew got to watch the documentary Chasing Coral and got to learn all about the threats facing the world’s corals. We then got to explore a bit of the reef and saw eels. Baby spotted drumfish and schools of brown Chromis.
We then arrived back at the boat to a delicious lunch prepared by Stef’s sous chefs (Logan and Sofie). After lunch, it was Ash’s turn to take his dive group of Will, Sam, Lucy, and Teddy out to finish their third and fourth open water dives and returned to the boat as brand need certified divers! Then my group was up again to complete our fourth and final open water dive, which was mostly just a fun dive since they had completed all the skills earlier in the day. As we swam, I spent most of my time looking either at them or out to my left. Then halfway through the dive, to my surprise, I finally looked to my right, and BAM, there was a massive shipwreck right next to us. To my defense, it was a 515 pm quick dive, so it was getting a bit dim underwater, and the shadow of the wreck seemed like the sun continuing to go down. We spent a few minutes swimming around the wreck and then made our way back to the dinghy, where they surfaced as another round of newly certified divers.
Back onboard Ocean Star, we all ate dinner, yet again prepared by Stef’s sous chefs since she was diving all day, and gathered around the wet but cozy cockpit for the squeeze. Tonight I asked everyone to talk about moments in their lives where they felt proud of themselves. Our responses ranged from giving a speech at a climate change rally and biking a backcountry race in honor of a friend to making decisions to change things about their lives when they felt that those did not fulfill them anymore and graduating from grad school (mine) after a tough year. After our busy, busy day (and past few days), everyone will most definitely be sleeping well tonight. See y’all in three weeks!
PS: I have to say hi to my mom and dad and to Shaun because they’ll yell at me if I don’t, so hi guys (:
Picture 1: Drying on the companionway after cleanup while it pours outside
Picture 2: Happy dishpit in the rain
Picture 3: Tate and I being weird
Picture 4: Lucia also being weird with us
Picture 5: Lucia and Logan with the loose shaka
Picture 6: Me and my newly certified divers!!!