Location: North Sound, Virgin Gorda
To be quite honest, I really don’t know how to start this blog other than today, which has fully encapsulated the highs and lows that I experienced on this boat.
As we approach the end of our journey, we all start to savor the moments, as some of them are the last of the trip: the last time raising sails, the last time on passage, and my last time cheffing and writing this blog. I made a point yesterday and today to keep this in mindto enjoy all the moments since they aren’t going to last forever.
Our day consisted of not rather fun things, with fun things tossed in there to give us fleeting hope; light at the end of the tunnel, if you will. The not-fun things consisted of an intensive boat to bed (given that this is the last time we will be putting the boat “to bed” on the trip), navigation class practice exams (which take two hours), and then when you weren’t doing a practice nav exam you had the privilege of scraping barnacles off the bottom of the boat or scrubbing clean the top-sides of the boat. There were two good things today to keep us going: 1. was a boom swing, which is where the main boom of the boat is put out at about a 45-degree angle, jacked up, and then a rope swing is attached to the end of it where we could all swing off of the boat and into the water. This happened after boat to bed. 2. It Was a sign-out night at this beautiful and unique bar called Saba Rock (I’m looking at it as I’m writing this blog) which was given rave reviews from the staff members. However, while everyone was jumping and frolicking off this boom swing, I was working, oiling all of the wooden railings around the backside of the boat. Just myself, wood-oil, and an old t-shirt, working tirelessly in the sun while everyone else was carrying on having a grand time. I digress, though; we must enjoy all the moments since they aren’t going to last forever!
From there, we ate lunch. After clean up, while everyone was doing their thing, I had the grand idea of setting the tarp up to give us all a break from the scorching Caribbean sun while we were taking our practice nav exams. I navigated through the sweat dungeon, which is the laz, in order to retrieve the tarp. I didn’t mind banging my head on the 4ft tall ceilings thing and losing 5 lbs of water weight during what felt like hours in the laz (it was five minutes) because I had the thought of our great sign-out night ahead. Just the thought of the taste of a cold beer, maybe accompanied with some nice tapas-ceviche or so-, was all I needed to keep going.
I took my practice nav exam, and after two hours of fiddling with Bretton plotters and charts, Max, Ben, Catherine, and I cleaned the whole top side of the boat. This was a rather wet and soapy process as we dragged ourselves around the boat in one of the dinghies while scrubbing and rinsing the side of the boat. To be fair, this whole ordeal went a lot faster than I was expecting, only taking maybe an hour or so.
From here, I took a much-needed shower and spent some time with Ben, picking out a good outfit for the night. We settled on something rather “yachty,” as Ben put it. I set my outfit aside for after dinner to be sure nothing spilled on it. The stars were aligned for what was to be a great night; I worked up a strong appetite, a beautiful bar was on the agenda, and to top it all off, I was off of anchor watch for the night.
But then the news came. It was like standing on the brink of a long-awaited sunrise, only to have a storm roll in and shroud everything in darkness. It was like climbing a ladder towards the light, each rung a step closer to your hopes, only for the ladder to collapse beneath you, plunging you into a pit of despair. Nick gathered us all around in the cockpit to share that he had news that we were quarantined on this boat and not allowed to leave it for an unknown period of time because of a paperwork mix-up. It all came crashing down from those fateful words.
Highs and lows.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The situation with customs has since been cleared and was due to it being Carnivale in the BVI this week, a big holiday where everyone takes off work and processing becomes quite slow. Robert was quite frustrated with the canceled evening plans at the time of writing this blog, but the rest of the day occurred as always intended. Scrubbing the hull is a bit of classic Type 2 fun to give back to Ocean Star, and Robert volunteered to oil the cap rail as his boat-to-bed task, which he began slightly later than the other students began their tasks, and then joined in on the boom swing immediately following.