Location: Cocos (Keeling) Island
This morning started off with a leisurely wake-up and a breakfast of prep talks and motivational speeches as the watch teams mentally prepared themselves for their toughest test as crew yet. The dreaded, the feared, the Tina-crafted Challenge course, this semester’s challenge course was so wonderfully hosted by the wildlife (there are no people here) of Direction Island. The challenge course tasked the watch teams to work together one final time before the new watch teams form. They had to solve riddles and exercises in order to find the treasure down by the rip.
Post lunch, Argo returned to acting as a dive operator, with groups being briefed, rescue divers rescuing, Advanced divers diving for fun (This is new and exciting given they have almost exclusively been taking courses so far), and tanks pumping. The rescue divers had to search for a missing diver. A part played today by a very small dive weight being almost completely buried in the sand (A role it performed with outstanding excellence) while having our resident Black Tip Reef Sharks joining us on our rescue mission. These sharks often provided distractions away from the search patterns being implemented.
Those that didn’t go diving ventured ashore to make use of the facilities of Direction Island, a gazebo, a swing, and a beach. All of which somehow have wifi, what a wonderful modern age we live in.