Location: Saba
Good Mooring and hello Saba!
Last night was very exciting. Bennitt, Dre, and Will caught and dissected a tuna for their research project. We look forward to finding out the results at dinner tomorrow. Later in the middle of the night, the members of Watch Team Royale (2): Val, Wax, Will, Mack, Colm, Leoni, Calum, and myself welcomed us into Saba at 4 am. It was an eventful watch; we struck the sails, had bow watch to avoid lobster traps, and tackled the mooring. Saba in the night was a magnificent sight, but not as magical as it would be the next morning.
At 8 am, I rallied the troops to start to the eventful day. We quickly had breakfast and met on deck by 8:30 to flake sails, wash down the deck, take off the halyards, and get out dive gear. After being covered in salt for days, it felt so good to finally have a clean deck again.
After a quick boat appreciation, we had study hall until lunch. The chefs today, Maddie, Katie, and Anthony, whipped up some quesadillas for lunch, which everyone was looking forward to. After eating a delicious meal, it was time for some more activity. Half of us got the opportunity to go diving while the other half had their Navigation Master Exam. There were 2 dives today off of Saba. The first was a deep dive, and the divers went almost 100 ft! I saw a nestled turtle, said Mack and Maddie got excited to see a MASSIVE lionfish, but they are an invasive species, so we arent too excited. The secondary dive, which was supposed to be 25ft but 70 ft, seemed to be more of a challenge for some divers. Anthony, for instance, got really excited about sharks and turtles and ran out of air so fast I had to use Smashs secondary air source. Bennitt says, it’s thoughtful of them to let us experience decompression sickness first hand. (No divers got decompression sickness, and all followed safe diving practices!) All in all, it was a successful day of diving. Back on the boat, the other students were still finishing up their NAV exams; I heard that it was almost as rough as the diving.
We ate dinner after looking at goats and a gorgeous sunset. The chefs made a delicious banana pudding to go along with tonights squeeze. The question was, what would the noise of your horn be if you had one. I wish I could recreate some of the answers, but its just impossible to do them justice on the blog; you can ask some of the crewmates to recreate them when they are home. But until then, catch you in the Caribbean!
Your highly qualified first mate,
Sonnet
p.s. Happy half birthday, Skye!! We are almost old.
Photo 1: Goblet of Fire Skipper, First Mate, Engineer, and Navigator picks.Girl Gang
Photo 2: Sunset in Saba
Photo 3, 4, 5: Messing around with the camera during diving
Photo 6: Greg posing at the bow
Photo 7: Katelyn brushing Val’s teeth
Photo 8: Morning Boat Appreciation
Photo 9: Meg in the laz
Photo 10: More B.A.
Photo 11: Val on the lines
Photo 12: Pano of Saba