Location: Falmouth Harbour, Antigua
To start the morning off, I woke up the crew to the song “Best Day of My Life,” and it was indeed. Waking up to Nicole cooking us coffee cake was enough to get everyone up and moving quickly. After our breakfast, everyone set up their dive kits for our morning dive. Returning to the same sight as yesterday, everyone was still amazed by the great visibility and beautiful reefs. Group 1 saw an octopus and a large lobster. After the dive, we had a fun 30-minute surface swim at the end of the dive to get back to the dinghies, as our 50-minute dive clearly wasn’t long enough. When group 2 made it back from their dive, the dinghies were raised, and the anchor was lifted as we were off to return to Falmouth Harbour for our last anchorage before returning to the dock.
While underway, Nicole and her sous chefs Steve and Cat did not let us down with a delicious lunch of cashew chicken. With a swift clean-up and setting anchor, everyone but Caleb hopped in the dinghies for some time on land. Those of us who went to shore spent time hiding from the rain at a restaurant, enjoying some cold drinks and time to talk and relax after all of our studying for our nav master exam. With only 20 minutes of time left before we had to be back at the dock, we made the obligatory market run to stock up on snacks for the last few days. Most people walked out of the store with their arms full of chocolate and coveted Arizona, which seems to be the drink of choice for the boat.
Caleb remained back at the boat to do some of his divemaster training. Everyone has been waiting for today as he had to lead “new” divers through a discovery dive. Ash (aka Ashley), Steve (Aka Sid), and Sydnei (Aka Stevie) acted as new divers, and we were anxiously waiting to see how they would act. They did not let us down as we returned to the boat, and they were successfully making Caleb work hard to control the novice divers. As we climbed back on the boat, all we see is Caleb trying to keep Ash from jumping in the water without his BCD on properly and Steve and Sydnei in the water, having jumped in before they were supposed to. Everyone lined up along the deck, watching Caleb try to lead a group of uncooperative divers and getting a good laugh at the creativeness of our instructors.
To end the night, we had a dinner of burgers and fries that disappeared quickly. At dinner, Calum let us know that everyone had successfully passed their nav master exam, so we are all now nav masters. As people are cleaning up from dinner and I am writing the blog, we can smell Nicole’s Texas sheet cake that she is making us for dessert and that we will probably eat during our activity with Syd tonight.