Location: Isle Fourche
Hello once again, everyone! I am so excited to be back at my favorite position on the job wheel as skipper. Skipper days = best days!!!!! Wake-ups were a little different this morning because of the sunrise hike, so I unfortunately didn’t get to do the best part of the job, which is waking everyone up (Im sure most were happy not to be woken up by my loud music and screaming). Because I don’t do too well with early mornings, sleep got the best of me, and I ended up falling back asleep instead of joining everyone. Because of that, I will hand the blog off to C money, who won the sleep battle and made it on the hike…
Hello all, Corinne here. It was an early rise for the hikers this morning with 4:55 am wake-ups. Olivia, Alaina, Allie K, Amelia, and I woke up for the sunrise hike on Isle Fourche with Heather and Drew. We dinghied over to the island for a wet entry onto the rocky beach. The hike was steep and crumbly but pretty short. We passed many cacti and holes in rocks on our way up (which was in the dark with headlamps, so we poked ourselves a little bit). We got to the top of one peak and sat down on the rocks to watch the clouds turn pink over St. Barths. The view was incredible. We took some beautiful photos and found a tropical bird resting in a hole under us! He was fluffy and fat and can best be described as a melted marshmallow of feathers (according to Heather). We headed back down the mountain and saw a lizard and a red-footed tortoise on the path down. We hung out on the beach until Megaladon picked us up around 7 am (Meghan’s dinghy rides are the best). Back to you, AJ…
The hikers made it back just before breakfast. We had some cereal, yogurt, and granola to fuel ourselves for the long day ahead. Once breakfast was wrapped up, we all got our kits together to do more rescue dive training. We hung out for about 3 hours in the water at Isle Fourche bay. Rescue today was quite exhausting but so much fun. Heather and Drew taught us some cool drills that we got to practice on each other, like pulling an unresponsive diver into a dinghy and doing rescue breaths with a pocket mask. During the course of our training, we were greeted by some pretty cool creatures. What we have all been waiting for… SHARKs! We were all stoked to finally see a shark. Everyone has been hoping to see one, and today was finally the day. We were in the middle of a drill when someone yelled shark, and everyone simultaneously stopped and swam over as quickly as possible to see it. The little nursing sharks at the bottom of the seafloor totally made everyone’s day!
We also spotted some cool sting rays and a large group of moon jellies. Once diving drills were done, we hopped back on O-Star to raise both anchors so we could head back to St. Barths. Once we started moving, we got a nice rain shower to cool off while we ate our sandwiches for lunch. After cleanup, we were all pretty exhausted and sore from our long day of diving, so we got to chill in the saloon and hear a couple of presentations from THE Corinne F. Then, we learned how to use emergency oxygen and did some drills on deck. Once that was done, some of us wrapped up some school work, then turned on music for our boat showers and cheffing. While we were showering, we noticed the huge yacht anchored near us called Moonrise, and we did some research, which revealed that it belonged to the CEO of WhatsApp. The smaller yacht next to it, called Nebula, houses its helicopter (which we saw land) and other important vehicles that come in handy when you have a 200 ft yacht. (Side note: Mr. CEO Yacht Man, if you are reading this, please invite us over for a spot of tea!) We ended the night with a rice, veggie, and sausage stir fry. The squeeze question of the day is, “What is your biggest pet peeve?”. It was fascinating and quite hilarious to hear most of the answers. Some answers might have caused some light-hearted controversy. See y’all next time for my last blog as skipper 🙁
Miss everyone back home so much. Shout out to Lexi, Liv, Alisha, and Jordan!