Location: Deep Bay, Antigua
Well, here we are in a deep bay, aptly named after its immense depths underneath the boat. As I write this, we’re currently over 5.3m of water, god only knows what crazy marine life is going on underneath us. Actually, I can go check. Bear with me one second…… it turns out it’s mostly sand and seagrass. The day officially began with my unorthodox way of waking people up. I chose to actually wake up people with a gentle, soothing voice instead of blasting music very loud, which seems to have been the main choice for the trip thus far. I much prefer a gentler wake up, which, as my nan used to say…”You can whittle down a tree to small nub but don’t expect your pancakes to perfect” it’s okay I don’t understand it either, but she was quite a lady, anyway speaking of pancakes which brings me to breakfast…I know what you’re thinking. We had pancakes, but you would be incorrect. We had French toast, breakfast sausage, and fruit made expertly by head chef Hannah and her sous chefs. What a way to start the day.
Soon after breakfast, a marine biology class was taught by the Captain or Steve, one of them did it, and it was about Marine Mammals. Everyone loves marine mammals, dolphins, whales, manatees, all of those cool, charismatic species. I’m more personally into the plankton. You have to respect that drifting life. Anyway, once everyone woke up from my wonderfully monotone voice from teaching them various things, everyone hopped up on deck. Strange expression that no one was hopping whatsoever. Instead, all the shipmates were putting scuba together in order to go explore the neighboring wreck of The Andes. It was an old tall ship that came into St Johns only to be turned away due to the fact it was billowing smoke from its holding area, they came round to Deep Bay, and upon opening some hatches, oxygen got in and fully ignited the stores of tar and such and it sank in place. Remember earlier the crazy depth of deep bay? Yup, it sits in around 6m of water with part of it sticking out the water.
My oh my, we’re not even at lunch yet, well here we are now, lunch was a beautiful assemble of tacos, truly delicious and what’s needed for a post-dive workout, I myself could only look on as I had to return to shore to get stitches put back into my hand and was informed not to eat lunch….bummer.
You may be worried at this point, not for my hand, but I can hear you thinking, “if he was onshore, how does he know what happened the rest of the day” fret no more, my avid blog readers, for I made the schedule and gave myself a thorough briefing this morning. The afternoon was undertaken in my absence and consisted of the continuation of the rescue course. I know more about diving. The shipmates continue to expand their knowledge of self-rescue, rescuing of others, first aid, etc. Hopefully, it will never be needed, but they will be ready should they ever be called to action.
Upon my return later in the afternoon, dinner was had another Michelin star effort from Hannah and the sous chefs. After squeeze the shipmates were treated to Seamanship where they cont’d to learn all things navigation, 3 point fixes, set and drift, and all that good stuff, enough excitement to make your heart pop out of your chest like an early 90’s cartoon character. After Seamanship, they were free for the evening to study, chat about their favorite pokemon? the meaning of life? is there any life beyond our own planet? or what their favorite shape of pasta is? I just assume these are things they discuss.
Anyway, I do hope all of you that read this are having a wonderful time and I will speak to you again for 18 days. Better get that timer going.
Steve/Captain
Picture 1 – A real picture of UFO’s beaming someone up
Picture 2 – Caleb preparing some meat
Picture 3 – The notorious salon gang leader Ian throwing some shapes
Picture 4 – Some rather unhelpful locals who didn’t guide me very well to the clinic, but my oh my, are they cute
Picture 5 – Some frigate birds hovering and plotting to take all of our food