Location: Underway to Nevis
Oddly, I’m really not a morning person in my “real” life, but alas, I planned many an early departure to squeeze all we can out of the last few islands and the last few days we have with this bunch on board right now. And there’s just something special about getting the sails up as the sun rises and starting our morning looking out to a new island ahead of us. This particular morning began in Statia around six, where the staff Emma and Las buzzed around the deck, getting dive gear away and dinghies ratcheted before we could lift anchor and depart. Around 630, Freddie went down to the student cabins and played his classic drum and base to wake everyone up to get ready to sail. This was a big win for me, even after all these years I still don’t love doing wake ups when I’m skipper, so shouts to Freddie for that one. All the beans quickly made their way up on deck, oddly raving about their wake-up because it amped them to get sails up and get underway. We got both anchors home and waved goodbye to Statia as the sun rose over Mount Quill. We were expecting a bit of a bumpy ride as the wind was coming essentially directly from our next stop, Nevis, but it turned out a bit calmer, which was a nice surprise. We got lucky with some good wind shadow.
After we were off and away from Statia, breakfast was served and cheffed up by Kip, Emma, and Frida. We had eggs, yogurt, and *hash browns*!! The hash browns were quite the hit as we haven’t actually had anything similar to them all program, which makes my job as provisioning lovely because it was supposed to be bagels, but there were no bagels, so there were hash browns instead and a boat, of very happy humans as a result. Breakfast cleanup wrapped up, and the students headed down below for some final bits of class-ish stuff. With Allie in Leadership, Nate, Kaden, and Tom did their destination presentations. That was followed up by a mini marine bio class, which consisted of a brief about their seagrass scuba lab, which they did in the afternoon once we arrived in Nevis. The rest of the passage over consisted of Nate manning the bow, looking out for fish pots to make sure we didn’t run any of them over, and Emma and Las trading off on the helm as we sailed past St Kitts and onwards towards the Nevis Peak.
Right before lunch was ready, we dropped anchor, put Vela to bed, and got her very quickly into dive mode to prepare for our afternoon. Lunch was then served, which consisted of ham and cheese quesadillas, rice and beans, and a corn salad. Then, it was time to get in the water. The students were tasked with surveying the seagrass underneath Vela by both snorkeling and scuba diving. The first half set out diving first while the other half snorkeled above. Along four transects, they took data on the species of seagrass present and how much of the sea floor the different species covered. The divers were tasked with the zoomed in data while the snorkelers were looking more at the bigger picture. After the first group of divers got their data, they swapped it with the snorkelers to give everyone time to do both types of data collection. Once Stina was done, I got to steal her to work on some Dive Master things. As we near the end of the program and are back to places we are allowed to dive on our own, we are chipping away at the rest of the requirements she has. Right after the lab, it was time for her search and recovery workshop. We went down, and I hid a few objects for her to find using different search patterns. After completing that successfully, she had to tie a bowline, a sheet bend, and a round turn with two half hitches, all underwater. Then, her last task was learning how to use a lift bag and successfully lift a 20-pound weight belt from the bottom up to the surface, all of which she absolutely aced.
Before Stina and I hopped in the water, the staff had devised our plan for the student’s next rescue scenario. Before Stina surfaced with her lift bag, Meg and I all chatted about the plane underwater. When I say chatting, I mean I wrote Meg and Stina various things on my slate to explain that Meg and I would be unconscious underwater. Stina, after bringing her lift bag up and safely passing it off to someone on deck, would start to panic about her missing friends. Allie, up on deck, who was a part of the plan devising, would also start to panic and jump into the water once Stina started panicking. Before we knew it, Meg and I saw Benno and Kaden emerging in the distance on their way to save us! They each lifted us up to the surface and passed us to their friends, who were waiting there to start rescue breaths and get us back into the boat. Meg was brought into the dinghy, and they started CPR on her. I came too after a few rescue breaths and was very confused and asked a lot of questions, which Frida and Mads answered reassuringly. All the while, Charlton was attempting to manage a panicked Allie, a task not for the faint of heart, and Emma was on deck taking care of Stina. Overall, it was a good showing for a rescue scenario, but with this course, we hold them to very high standards, so there are just some details that need buttoning up before we can officially call this bunch certified rescue divers, which just means more crazy plans to devise too catch them off guard and test their rescue skills in the next few days. After the scenario was done and debriefed, Meg and I got to hop back in the water, again with Stina, but also with Allie and Freddie, both of whom are also in the midst of completing their divemaster on board. This afternoon task was reactivated, which meant that Meg and I got to role-play people who haven’t been diving in years, and the three divemaster candidates got to brief us and go over skills with us and then take us on a little fun dive, this time to check out the anchor.
As we surfaced, dinner was being gophed up, and everyone was pumped. Kip and friends had made chicken tikka masala and naan, a biiig crowd favorite. We all got our bowls and settled into the cockpit when Mads somehow chucked her whole bowl onto the floor of the cockpit, making quite the art piece and covering herself and Will in tikka masala. They had a quick swim to the sauce and re-filled their bowls in time for a squeeze. My question tonight was, what is something you’ve picked up here on Vela over the last three months that you’re going to take home with you? A classic is always calling the heads (bathrooms) when you go home and are not on a boat anymore. Every group has its different sayings and jokes and bits that persist throughout the program, but I may or may not have admitted last night that this miiight be my weirdest group in terms of sayings and bits, and there will be lots of funny words and sayings and stories that will make it far past day 90 for me from this group. After dinner, it was time to head to shore, try our luck, and find a nesting leatherback sea turtle. The nesting season of leatherbacks is from March to May in Nevis, so we are at prime time. Unfortunately, they came back with no turtle sightings that night, but they got to see a leatherback nest made the night prior and see just how massive a leatherback sea turtle is. They also learned about turtle conservation here and the struggles they deal with with Nevis when trying to protect them. Unless you’re Sophia, who did laundry at 1030pm, when she got back, everyone went off immediately to sleep after a turtle walk on the beach.
The last 23 days have come and gone so quickly, we’ve moved speedily up the lesser Antilles island chain and are just next door to our final destination of Antigua. 90 days always seem so long when the students first arrive, and everything is unfamiliar. But somewhere, somehow, it all goes by so quickly, and these people who were strangers a few short months ago are now people who maybe know you better than anyone else in your life. People who you’ve told things you’ve never told anyone else or who you have too many inside jokes to count. It’s pretty crazy to think in a few short days these students will be stepping off Vela, maybe for the last time in their lives, and will go off into the world quite changed individuals. Whether it’s new best friends or a new path for their entire lives, these boats change you more than you ever think they will. This group is a special one in their own right, but for me as well. They’ll be the last group I’ll have on board Vela after spending the last year and a half here. I’m trying not to get too much in my feels but if 90 days on here changes you, imagine what 17 months does? Vela has become me, now third, home here at Seamester. I still remember writing my last blog when I was moving from Ocean Star to Vela last spring. I remember how much I had fallen in love with O Star, and it was bittersweet to be leaving. At that point, I couldn’t imagine feeling that way about Vela, but here we are. I’ve met some of the greatest people on this board over the last year and a half, and she’s safely brought me across all three oceans. It really is crazy how lucky we are to do this for a living. I am quite classically awful at goodbyes, and this one won’t be any different, but somehow, I am also returning home again, back to Argo, where I first started when I worked here, in Fiji, one of my new favorite places in the world because of the experiences I had there with Seamester. So, just like the students, I’ll be soaking in every moment of the next week on the program and making the most of my last bits of time on board Vela.
Signing off for good (at least from this ship’s computer)
Steph