Location: Falmouth Harbor, Antigua
Today we woke up at the normal time, 7:30. For breakfast, we had a delicious meal of eggs and sausage made by head chef Alexa. After the students had a tour of the Nelsons Dockyard Museum, and after lunch, they went to the beach (More details below). I, however, had a bunch of boatwork to get done. I started by finishing some cleaning on Genorator 2, then moved on to doing the main engine 250-hour service, consisting of changing the oil, oil filter, fuel filter, and checking the zincs. After that, I serviced the transmission, oil, and filter. While I was doing this, the crew was on deck doing some varnish projects and. safety checks of our SOLAS equipment. And Charlie was up the rig repairing the cockpit light, which got swatted off during our last passage by the main boom topping lift. After that, we had spaghetti for dinner. Here’s Teagan to talk about the students’ day ashore.
Hi everyone, it’s Teagan!! Nick didn’t get to go to shore with all of us today, so I get to tell you all what we did! We started the day in Nelson’s Dockyard, a super cute historic part of English Harbor. We went to Nelson’s Dockyard museum, where I learned a lot about the British navy in the 18th century. After walking through the museum, we all split up for lunch. Samantha, Hailey, and I explored more of the dockyard and saw some mega yachts before hiding from the rain in some of the cute little shops around the area. Once the rain had passed, we headed up the road to look for some snacks before we had to meet everyone to go to the beach!
On our way, we ran into Cameron and Matt, who had just come from the Budget Marine store, as Cameron wanted to get some line to make a bracelet. This inspired us to go as well, which turned into my favorite part of the day. We entered the store and asked the man working there for some very thin dynamite line. He looked at us like we were crazy, which, to be fair, we did seem a bit crazy. While he was getting me my four feet of very thin dynima, Samantha and Hailey got distracted by all of the different-sized shackles. We all fell in love with the smallest size one and are now proud owners of baby shackles, a wonderful souvenir to remind us of our time on the boat. That’s when Shane and Rachel walked into the store, there to buy line for actually important boat stuff, not just bracelet making. Samantha, Hailey, and I all purchased our little bits of line, and the man working at the store was a little annoyed, joking with us that we were turning him into an arts-and-crafts store, not a boating store. On our way to the beach, Samantha bought half a watermelon from a fruit stand on the road, and we all enjoyed biting off chunks of the cool watermelon as we walked down the road, again looking a little crazy.
Honestly, I don’t think there is a time when all of us on Argo don’t look a bit crazy. It’s become a normal thing aboard to shout 2 6 when you are doing the most basic of tasks or ask where the gophers are when a meal is ready. I can personally say I am not ready to go home and be around people who have never tasted how good a cold glass of water can be after 21 days at sea. Anyway, Sam’s watermelon was delicious, possibly the best watermelon I have had in my life. We were on our way to the beach and ran into Cameron and Matt again at a smoothie store, where I got one of the best-tasting smoothies of my life. This seems to be a common theme with a lot of food throughout this trip. Once we finally made it to the beach, Emily, Chloe, Teo, Alexa, Bryson, Amelia, and Liv were already in the water, happily splashing around. I immediately jumped in to cool off, and the water felt amazing. I enjoyed my time relaxing on the beach, reading a new book in the sun, while many of the others played an intense game of football. Ben had some spectacular catches, and Oscar almost ran me over to score a touchdown. Once the game was over, many of us ran over to an ice cream truck and enjoyed a scoop or two. Poor Matt had to buy a second almost immediately after his first, as after his first bite, his whole ice cream fell on the ground. We then all walked back to the dock and shuttled back onto Argo! Overall, the day was a blast, a favorite of many people on the boat!!