Location: English Harbour, Antigua
Hello, families back home! Hope everyone is well! Over here aboard Vela, we are all happy, healthy, and grateful to be living the life we’re living! My day started off with anchor watch from 12:00-1:30 am with Colm. Luckily we had a pretty easy watch with no rain, and we got to see a large yacht come in and anchor off of our stern. Valentina came up at 1:30 am to relieve us, and I went straight to bed. Before I knew it, my alarm was going off at 6:30 am, and I was up and ready to start off another great day. I decided I was going to wake the rest of the boat up by playing some country music, and eventually, everyone was up. It definitely took a few tries to get the boys up, though! The chefs, Smash, Hannah, and Will, cooked up some delicious pancakes for breakfast that were served with some yogurt and honeydew. After breakfast, we did clean up, as usual, then it was time for class. We started off with oceanography. It was lecture 5 and was all about marine sediments. We learned about the different types of sediments found in the ocean, where it comes from and why it’s important. After oceanography, we had leadership. Today was Colm and Katelyn’s turn to present their chapter, which was chapter 3, and they taught us all about the relational leadership model.
After this, it was time for lunch. For lunch, we had chicken caesar wraps which were amazing. After lunch, we did clean up and then brought the anchor up and moved the boat back to English Harbor, which is where we first started our trip to fuel Vela up. We were all up on deck to help get Vela on the dock. Once we were docked, it was time for us to all go down below for our last two classes of the day. The first one we had was marine biology, where we learned about multicellular primary producers. It was definitely very informational, and we learned a lot. This was our last lecture before our test that is coming up in a couple of days. After marine bio, we had seamanship. For this class, we started learning about the VHF radio system. We learned the phonetic alphabet, and we’re going to have to memorize the whole thing for the exam! My name would be kilo, alpha, tango, indigo, echo! After class, we had some free time to shower, walk around the harbor, and have some chill time before dinner. For dinner, we had veggie stir-fry made by the chefs, which was very delicious. For squeeze, my question was: “what is the most insignificant/non-relevant memory you have as a child?” and as you can imagine, there were some pretty great answers.
Now are all finished with clean up after dinner and are having some free time to hang out, get some work done and give some calls home as we leave for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines tomorrow, which will be about a 3-day passage. We should all get a good night’s sleep tonight as we are on the dock and don’t have anchor watch! That’s it for now; I hope everyone back home is doing well!
photo 1; Myself, Andrea, and Maddy
photo 2; Hannah aboard Vela
photo 3; Myself and Anthony
photo 4; Our beautiful home
photo 5; Bennitt giving me thumbs up
photo 6; Sonnet, Katelyn, Maddie, and Calum
photo 7; Charlie, Anthony, and Max
Photo 8; Maddie, Greg, Hannah, Megan, Mack, and Val