Location: Bonaire
Hi peeps!
I think I can say that everyone enjoyed our last day in Bonnaire. The day started early for some of us who were dawn diving. For the rest of the crew, they had an additional hour of sleep before being awakened by me yelling “GOOD MORNING” in every room. I don’t think they enjoyed this part of the day, but I did :D. We then had a breakfast of yogurt and granola at 7:30. After breakfast. Everybody went down below for Emergency First Responder class. We practiced splints, bandages, and a few more things with a lot of laughter. Shout out to Elise, who absolutely mastered every skill and was helping all of our tables to do splints. Matt also told us about this dead woman he did CPR on in a training hospital, and believe it or not, everyone was laughing with a horrified faces. It was quite funny to see. After class, we did passage prep! Everyone was super efficient while I was completely overwhelmed by the list of tasks we needed to complete (in case you didn’t know, the skipper of the day takes care of distributing tasks and helps to complete them. However, when you don’t know what to do for at least half the tasks on the list, it gets really complicated, but hey, I managed to do it, and everyone did amazing!)
Passage prep took us about an hour (maybe more), and we had an early lunch at 11:30. Headchef Saskia and her sous-chef Dylan made us delicious quiches with salad on the side. After lunch, people all left the boat like running chickens for a snack run! Exceptionally, we had four hours on shore, which is the longest we’ve had so far. A lot of us, if not everybody, went for a final ice cream, a few souvenirs, and, of course, snacks! We divided into small groups, and some people went for the “lazy way” (or “brilliant way,” it depends on how you see it 😉 ) and called a taxi to go to the supermarket. We went for a waffle on a stick, and Daphne’s happy face was totally worth the stop. While we were walking in town, Steph, who was provisioning with Allie, had a little surprise in the supermarket they were in: they could only buy two dozen eggs per person. As we are a crew of 31 people, 48 eggs aren’t even enough for one meal. Fortunately for them, a few students were in the same supermarket and could each buy two dozen of eggs. This little episode ended well, like any happy story: we now have enough eggs!
After four hours of wandering in town, we got back to Vela to help with storing all the provisions. That was chaotic, but I would say it was efficient chaos and a really nice experience. Apparently, 50 cans of chickpeas aren’t enough, so we had many more to store away, and I am not even counting the tomato cans! Anyway, while a whole bunch of cans was being stored under the bottom bunks and while the refrigerator was being checked by an outsider, Owen, Alexis, and a few others helped clean the milk containers. Everybody was helping in their own way.
We then had a crash course on points of sailing and seamanship (I can’t wait to learn more about that 🙂 ), followed by dinner (pasta and bolognese sauce). It was really good. After dinner, we had our squeeze question, which was what is our biggest pet peeves, before getting ready to leave Bonnaire. We are now heading to the San Blas Islands and have a passage of 4 to 5 days ahead of us. According to Tom, this passage has the biggest sea state, so we might see waves of 5m (I am super excited about that!!!) Don’t worry. We will be clipped in, so nobody should fall overboard 😉
Have fun!
PS: Special hi to my family and friends!! I love you, and I miss you <3