Location: Bequia
This morning I had the lovely job of waking everyone up at 7 am. I decided to play Jack Johnson’s “Banana Pancakes” on the speakers, which slowly did the job to get everyone up and ready for a 7:30 breakfast. For breakfast, our head chef Elder Gabe and his sous chefs, Will and Elisabeth, made rice with beans, scrabbled eggs, and plantains. Today was a big diving day! After breakfast clean up, group one (Katie, Beau, MG, Will, Zoe, Tim, and Audrey), led by Amanda Cole and Ben, did their underwater navigations for the advanced scuba certification right under Argo! As soon as group one was done and emerged from the water, group two (Elisabeth, Gabe D., Elene, Emma, Brina, Nolan, and Ellie (me)) jumped into the water to complete the same tasks. There are five tasks, and they involve: swimming 100ft while counting our kick cycles, swimming in a straight line following north, then doing a complete 180, and swimming back following south. The third task is swimming in a square using our compasses, then swimming back 100ft, but instead, this time, timing how long it takes. The final task was swimming away from Amanda and using the surrounding natural elements to navigate where we are.
The already advanced divers (Nat, Gabe G., Peter, David, and Nick) went for a morning snorkel at a nearby reef and saw tons of fish and marine life! They were led by Amanda Shuman. Once everyone had completed their morning swims/dives, we all gathered in the cock pit for a lovely lunch! Today for lunch, we had miso soup. After lunch, we had our second dive of the day under Argo practicing our peak performance buoyancy for our advanced diving certification. These dives were led by Amanda Shuman, Elder Gabe, and our very own Nat, who is getting her dive master certification! However, instead of group one going first, group two got to go first!! As for our already advanced divers, they got to go on a “fun” dive at a nearby dive site after both groups completed their buoyancy tasks. Before dinner, we had some downtime, and people got some work done, relaxed, or went for a swim. Completing another day on Argo, we had a spectacular dinner, which was amazing chicken, zucchini, chickpeas (for the vegetarians), cucumber and tomato salad, and homemade bread cooked by Max (our bread baker for the day)! After dinner, we had a logbook session where we filled out all of the dives we had done on our trip so far. Then everyone went to bed!