Location: Young Island, St. Vincent
Morning avid readers, I am back on a brand new trip, new shipmates, and a new me with a fresh new pandemic outlook on life; nah, I am the same. Anyway, we survived our first and most perilous passage from Antigua to St Vincent. Rallying the watch teams wasn’t hard as the passage was full of excitement and adventures. Great sunsets, sunrises, waves, some wind was the goal, and the passage didn’t disappoint. Excitement was in the air when dolphins were seen, however only by one person, Henry, and therefore without any actual proof, the existence of said dolphin cannot be confirmed, think of it as a Schrodinger’s Cat type situation but with a dolphin and its also not in a box, and actually, now I think about it Erin saw it, and she is a trustworthy source of information. Anyway, as we made our way down the coast in the early hours of the morning, we were greeted with some nice calm waters in which to bring down sails and get out mooring lines in order to set up home for the next few days while we await our COVID tests and finish up some dives for the advanced divers.
Under the gentle purr of the engine, I pulled up to our mooring just off young island, not very young, I would say, given the size of the rock, I would estimate it’s at least 90 years old, that’s older than my dear old nan was, she was a good lady (most the time). Xenophiles had established themselves all over this beautiful rock structure to which our sister ship in the company Argo could be seen, you remember her from a previous blog where she features in a photo, that’s right features, don’t forget who the main act of this show is, it’s all about the Ocean Star. I motored up to our mooring, which involved an early morning dive by Ash to recover the mooring line. Luckily during this time, he had his own excitement and was confronted by an octopus. Ash had this to say on his encounter, “So there I was, minding my own business, and all of a sudden this mini Kraken creature came at me like a thing possessed, it flared out at me to intimidate me, but I wasn’t having any of it, I tried to flare back at it and scare him away, but it didn’t work, luckily I had some whole milk in my cereal that morning, and my dairy intolerance kicked in at the right time and successfully made my own Ink cloud if you will to disappear within” a truly startling encounter that honestly would be worthy of a scene in the next blue planet documentaries.
Obviously, after all this excitement and the overwhelming nature of the first passage, the crew was given till lunch to rest up. Vegetarians were in for a treat at lunch with stir fry and spring rolls being served, and it was delicious. Excitement then continued in the day as marine biology followed after lunch, that’s my class, we learned about various types of gastropods and mollusks, did they absorb any information, I guess Exam 2 will let us know the answer to that. Still, only a few were asleep while listening to my beautiful monotone, so I’ll take that as a win.
Youthful perseverance kept the day steaming ahead as class was followed by giving ocean star some love; no, we didn’t make mini ocean stars, we just gave her a good old clean from top to bottom, she got us all the way here safe and sound the least we can do is show her some love back. Overlooking a single aspect of BA would make Ocean Star a sad boat; the tasks included such activities as cleaning the full deck, the topsides, the down below areas, and much much more (not really just those 3 main areas I mentioned. Unlikely trio Celia, Erin, and birthday girl Addisen tried to make a break for it in the dinghy to land to celebrate her birthday (they actually let go of the boat and drifted aimlessly away, I only know because I heard the panicked screams of “Brahhhhhmm” being yelled, anyway they made it back and got taught a good lesson by myself on the use of lines and tying themselves to the boat.
Keen and hungry folks then eagerly awaited dinner, which Erin and her sous chefs did a great job of. I never fully understood sloppy joes and who Joe is and why he is happy to be referred to as sloppy, but each to their own, anyway they were delicious. Silence fell over the group as we then finished up with a squeeze. Sang happy birthday and ate some lovely gooey chocolate cake, which for me was delivered by hand from Ash, such a sweetie.
After dinner, we went to bed,
Bye
Picture 1 – Not so young Island Featuring Argo
Picture 2 – Tantalizing view of St Vincent
Picture 3 – Chefs preparing Food for the cattle.
Picture 4 – The cattle grazing
Picture 5 – Liam levitating the anchor ball with his biceps