Location: Les Saints
Hullo! Today started early for me, with a 5-6 am anchor watch. During said anchor watch, some rowdy fishermen came full speed at Vela, which was quite concerning, but eventually, the shenanigans sort of stopped(one of them did jump in the water and swim around a bit. Eventually, Emma, an early riser as always, came up and started doing homework, which I joined her with after Freddie relieved me. At 6:30, our DiveMaster Trainees went for a morning dive, and at 7:00, it was time for wake-ups. While many people were already awake, cheffing or studying, one of my favorite parts of the day on Vela is hearing what music that day’s skipper uses to wake everyone up. The music choices of our crew never disappoint. Breakfast was delicious, with fried eggs instead of scrambled, which was mind-boggling at this point in the trip.
Additionally, during breakfast, we saw a waterspout, which most of us, if not all of us, had never seen before. It connected from the water to the sea and was wicked cool. A little sailboat got pretty close and started swinging wildly from side to side from the force of the wind. After breakfast and cleanup was bittersweet? Moment, as we took our Marine Bio final. Meg stuck to academic honesty and refused to give us all automatic 100s for being her favorites(unconfirmed rumor, started by us). It went pretty well, and then it was time for rescue diver stuff and then a rescue scenario. After rescue diving, we taxonomically classified bread, I mean, had lunch. Key takeaways include tortillas are bread, grain is the domain, bread is the kingdom, and there are various phyla: Dumplings, which include ravioli and untrustable, Sandwiches, Wraps(Burritos are in this one), and Subs(hot dogs and jersey mikes).
Dumplings do have to be fully encased in their bread; if anyone was wondering, after Lunch was Seamanship, where we took our International Crew Exam, which certifies us to work on yachts internationally. Sick. Then there was some alleged downtime before PSYCH! More Rescue Diver Scenarios. I’m not taking rescue diver, but I did enjoy watching others save people while munching on apples and peanut butter. They all seemed fairly competent, even if Frida and Emma were left to rescue Freddie single-handedly. Then it was time for group 1 to get kitted up and head to finish Advanced Open Water and do a fun dive, while group 2 did passage prep for the 5 am departure tomorrow. When they returned, it was group 2’s turn, and during our briefing, Freddie told us ridiculous lies about the site that everyone fell for before he cracked. The dive was pretty cool, with a few smooth-trunk fish, three eels, including a baby eel, and some sick sponges. When we were ascending, the sun was sitting low in the sky, which turned the water a gorgeous color and allowed us to see some jellyfish. We got back to the boat and took quick ocean showers before dinner and cleanup. Tomorrow morning will be a sunrise sail, and we head to Dominica!