Location: Underway to Nevis
Today was an eventful day preparing for our first passage to Nevis. Today I was the skipper and started the morning by waking up my fellow crew-mates and getting them up for the busy day we had ahead of us. We sat down for a bagel breakfast after Amanda and Joey went to go do Joey’s 1 and 2 dives for his open water certification. After that, we cleaned up and got busy preparing the boat for our passage tonight. Smash went to go do some provisioning for the next couple of days as we prepared the boat. The crew and I have spent all morning and afternoon cleaning, battening down the hatches, and fueling the boat to get ready for our sail over to Nevis. We learned how to prepare the ship for passage, and that contained all of us getting put into Watch Teams for tonight as we sail overnight for our first time. Five people for each group and the Watch Teams take turns alternating shifts for who is on duty and who isn’t. The Watch Team that is on duty will be on for 3 hours and off for 6 hours, and then it will go to the next watch team. This cycle repeats until we have arrived at Nevis. After preparing the boat for passage and unloading groceries. Q, Lauren, and I went for a quick swim. Then we were ready for lunch. We had a make-your-own sandwich station and cleaned up after lunch to go over to the dock to fuel the boat and get underway on our passage.
While we were waiting for the boat to be fueled, we went through boat check walk-throughs. These walk-throughs showed our Watch Teams what we would be doing while we are on duty later tonight. Every hour while on passage, your specific Watch Team has to do a boat check. The walk-throughs of the boat check, which was just a slower way of showing us our jobs for the night, contained many items. Some of these items we have, are a logbook of engine room equipment, checking our coordinates while sailing, maintaining sails, and making sure the boat is ready for up to 40 knots of wind and 40 degrees of tilt, to name a few. We also prepared the sails for our passage and learned about the PFDs we had to wear while we were waiting for the boat to fuel up. Once the boat was fueled up, we finished preparing the sails and got on our way out of English Harbor and out into the ocean for our passage.
Once we were out of the bay, we started fully putting up the sails and successfully completed a very new and fun task that many of us hadn’t done before. We are currently on our passage to Nevis, sailing at a nice speed of 10.6 knots without too much lateral shift. It was a very eventful and fun day spent with all of the crew. The leader of the crew has been a huge help to us since the beginning and I am thankful we have so many good teachers and students/friends on this trip. I’m excited to see how the passage goes tonight and am excited to get to the new island tomorrow as well. I enjoyed being the skipper today as you are basically the boat mom for the day. You wake up everyone, help people out with their jobs, take pictures and make sure everyone is having a great time. I also can’t believe I have already been on this trip for a week, as it feels like it’s only been a few days. Everyone is great and fun to be around. Overall, today was super busy, eventful, and fun, and I can’t wait to see what other adventures are in store for our crew as we continue to sail across the Caribbean.
P.S. As I was just finishing this up, we saw a group of dolphins swimming near the boat and in the distance on our passage to Nevis. Super cool; I’ve never seen a dolphin in the wild before.
Also, I love and miss you, mom and dad! I can’t wait to tell you all bout the trip when I get back home. I hope you both are doing well and are having fun back home. Love, Evan.