Location: Great Harbour Peter, British Virgin Islands
Take on Me to a lazy morning wake up turned into an abrupt event when the entire boat had two missing divers right before our first Oceanography lesson for the day. All ten rescue divers hustled to the deck to find Steve and Alex missing and grabbed fins and snorkels as they hurtled themselves off the deck in hopes of bringing them back from a near-drowning incident. With a little chaos, lots of teamwork, and our resident panicked, diver Amy threw us a curveball as she jumped in the water to “help” us out as we attempted to save our staff. Onwards and upwards, as they say. Plenty of time to improve our skills as we are moored here for a few days. After our rescue debriefs, we had Oceanography class with Alex and then more rescue diver stuff. In the water, we practiced getting an unresponsive, unconscious diver to the surface, patterns for finding a missing diver, and using a pocket mask for in-water rescue breaths. By the end, everyone was pretty exhausted. As we stepped on deck, the wind started to pick up, and our intuition told us a squall was approaching. I personally started to strip clothes off lines as water poured from the sky.
But truly and honestly, nothing felt better than when freshly baked baguettes that Mariah slaved over the oven for and almost got her finger amputated for arrived up through the gopher hole. Sorry for the photo of cheese, but the aesthetic was just too perfect. After lunch was another oceanography speech by Amy on ocean pollution, and then we had study time! While some chose to nap on the bow (Owen), others used this time to finish presentations (myself) or work on group research projects due tomorrow (everyone else and yikes), or study for the Nav test in two days (Evan). To be fair, everyone got work done today, which is a pretty impressive feat, in my opinion. Tomorrow is our oceanography quiz, and research papers are due tomorrow. Also, a fun dive, yay! The views here are absolutely spectacular!
s/o to Carter for collecting data for our group at 6 a.m and Bella for letting me use her laptop cause Powerpoint hates me
-Sage
P.S to my family and friends, I am alive, well and my foot is healing quite nicely. It turns out I can remove loads of toxins in my life.