Location: Terre Du Haut, Les Saintes
Our day started off with a much-needed lie-in after three early wake-ups in a row to pack in as much Dominica exploration as possible. We only slept in until 7:30, which is probably earlier than many would choose to wake up on a summer day back home, but as an ex-sleeper until 1 pm myself, I think it is really nice to see just how much you can do in a day.
We had a breakfast of Eggs and Bagels courtesy of Chef Ben, which gave everyone the energy they needed to head out on the Indian River Tour, a boat tour of a brackish river. Students checked out the wildlife and performed water quality tests, both of salinity and turbidity, as part of a lab for their Oceanography course. They also got to see and go inside Calypso’s house from Pirates of the Caribbean.
They returned to the boat in time for a lunch of chickpea, quinoa salad, and homemade foccacia bread by Ben. It was delicious!! Then, it was time for the Navigation class, which is the class I teach. Navigation is quite a tricky class as it is typically nothing like any of the college classes any of the students have done before. Armed with a paper chart, compass, Bretton Plotter, dividers, and parallel rulers, the students learn various methods of determining their location at sea based on different information available to them, whether it be landmarks they can take a compass bearing to, the ships heading and speed, how the current is affecting the boat, or how the wind is pressing against the sails. So far, we’ve learned two methods. The dead reckoning, which is an estimate based on boat speed over time and what the person on the helm says they’re steering (not allllways the most accurate), and the 3 Pt Fix, where you plot the compass bearing, accounting for local deviation and global variation, of 3 different landmarks you can see from the boat, ultimately those plots intersecting and triangulating your position much like a GPS on a local scale. It’s a tough course, but you can always see the moment it clicks, and when it does, it’s an awesome skill to have and one that is increasingly rare in our modern world.
Then, students took ocean showers to cool off, and we did passage prep for our passage over to Les Saintes, a small group of islands belonging to Guadeloupe that exists just north of Dominica. The passage to Les Saintes was definitely the highlight of the day, appearing in many people’s appreciation at a squeeze. We raised sails and motored around the corner, where we were faced with big gusts of wind and a squall on the horizon. Sailing near a squall is quite exciting – one of those moments that makes you feel like a “true sailor” or a pirate. The wind picks up, and the boat heels over. The poor chefs down below balance lasagna that wants to become airborne. It is quite the active time for sail handling, sheeting sails in and out to depower them or power them up as the squall often creates bursts of strong winds and lulls of wind vacuums. A few big waves caused commotion on deck, and laughter rang out as we pulled into Les Saintes past the squall, eager to explore our new island.
The chefs bravely emerged from the rocking galley to serve up some lovely lasagna for dinner. The squeeze question tonight was to share an embarrassing story in 10 words or less, with the most intriguing ones voted on to hear the whole story. But I’ll keep those answers sacred to squeeze and not forever permanent on the internet.
We are stoked to get diving tomorrow! Rhianna, Max, and Jaxson are finishing their last dive for their Advanced Open Water course before they, Owen, and Will begin their Rescue Diver course. And the students who came to the boat, having never breathed underwater before, are working on completing their Advanced Open Water dives as well.