Location: Antigua
The morning started early for most of the crew on board, as when I went to wake everyone up, there were only four people left in bed. I think everyone was excited and ready to go for our ‘messy’ boat appreciation. After 78 days, Ocean Star was ready for some extra love. After a filling breakfast, the crew divided into teams: galley and bilge cleaners, sail removers, the top side crew, and dive gear cleaners. The galley and bilge crew got to work quickly, emptying out all of the galley cabinets to clean and organize them. Amelia volunteered to be the bilge fairy so she spent her days exploring parts of ocean star not many dare to go, she even found the mysterious lower laz that no one remembers from the last time they visited on Day 2 to store away suitcases.
The sail team started to remove and clean the jib and flying jib, with a competition beginning to see if the jib could be cleaned before Drew got the flying jib removed. It was a close race, but I think Drew might have won by a few seconds. Then came a task that may be daunting to some, but the sail crew took it in stride: removing and flaking both the main sail and the foresail. The “grandmas” (as Drew called them because they looked like grandmas with a blanket on their laps) took the challenge in stride and did some amazing flaking and rolling to stow the sails away safely.
The topside crew, led by Captain Bosch, carefully pulled themselves around the boat, cleaning Ocean Star’s haul. Though some may say leaving the paddle on Ocean Star was a mistake, Captain Bosch successfully paddled his crew back to ocean star using the scrub brush when they accidentally drifted away. As all this went on, the dive gear cleaners took to cleaning all the regs and BCDs that have been used throughout the semester and even had some time to hop in for a swim and to scrub the bottoms of the dinghies.
As messy BA came to an end after lunch, the crew prepared for one final anchor raise and short motor around to Slipway Marina, where we docked for the final time. As the night wound down, many took advantage of shore showers and access to some restaurants to get a cold soda while watching the sunset before dinner.