Location: Guadeloupe
We bid farewell to the collection of small islands known as Les Saints this morning and got underway to Guadeloupe. Only about 20 nm north, Guadeloupe is a large French island which offers some AMAZING diving. Calum cooked a hearty breakfast, accompanied by Darien, as we lifted the anchor from the seagrass meadow below us. We motored the short 3 hours towards Pigeon Island, located halfway up the island. A bow watch was kept permanently throughout to give the helms person an early warning of any fishing traps along our course. Eli, Benny, and Nicole took the brunt of this workload.
Before arriving at our final anchorage, we made a short pit stop at a geothermal power plant outflow, a surprisingly well-known attraction in the area. It offered us some very warm swimming and some very interesting thermoclines. To have the best fun, you had to get over the potent smell of Sulphur wafting off the water. Kackie and I were not sure, so we quickly escaped back to Plaai. However, everyone else seemed to marvel in the water.
As we arrived at Pigeon, a dive boat was spotted on two buoys ~300m away, which piqued Meg’s curiosity. A spontaneous wreck dive ensued, which turned out to be quite amazing. I have dove a fair bit in the Caribbean since beginning my career with Sea|mester a year ago, and this was my 2nd or 3rd favorite site I have ever been on. There was such a fantastic assembly of fish, from all different trophic groups and a diversity of sizes. The whole boat was covered in a continuous swathe of fish, and swimming through these relatively docile shoals was special! A few highlights were a large hogfish coming to clean, a flyby from a wahoo, and two large French angel fish (how fitting). This got us all super stoked for the dives tomorrow at the Jacques Cousteau dive site on the Pigeon Island – from my experience, an equally fantastic site.
The evening was rounded off with a big roast and squeeze. Today I asked everyone to bring something as a show and tell. It is a lovely way for people to show things that are sentimental to them – Zac got out his photo album made by his sister, Olympus a toy and I showed everyone a St Christophers given to me by my grandma. That is not all, though tonight we voted for the students who would be taking over the boat in leadership roles for the student-led passage from here to Antigua in a couple of days.
The roles were filled as follows:
Skipper: Zac
First Mate: Talia
Engineer: Weisor (of course)
Navigators: Cecily and Olympus
Maybe you are asking what the title is about? Well, over the past week, a small stomach virus has infected around half the crew. However, for the first time since it arrived, it hasn’t claimed a new victim yet. The virus normally knocks the victim out for 24 to 36 hours, with Maddy and Sylver most recently just getting over it. Although a source just whispered Annie may be going down as I write, I am hoping it is fake news – there is a lot of that these days.
This will be my last blog with Sea|mester for a while – I will depart Antigua just after the students however I hope to be back in the near future.
Only 9 days left…. scary times!
Ben
To The Girl back home, I can’t wait to meet you, Dot, and Spot (my lovely dog Daisy just had 3 puppies named the girl, dot and spot).