Location: Barbuda
Today was quite a nice day if I do say so myself. We started with a bomb breakfast consisting of chocolate chip banana bread crafted by head chef Ethan. After we finished eating, we cleaned up and worked a bit on getting Ocean Star ready for a day sail over to Barbuda. Once clean-up was finished, the Advanced Open Water group headed to the beach with their compasses to practice some underwater navigation skills onshore. When they returned, we finished passage prep and cast off the dock lines to go sailing. We quickly got into groups and self-lead sail raises.
All in all, it took about 25 minutes, much better than the 50 or so on day one. The crew is definitely learning; by the end of the trip, we should definitely be able to run Ocean Star on our own. Once all the sails were up, we split up into watch teams and headed out. The chefs headed down into the galley to make lunch; that’s always an adventure while underway. We ate and then continued to sail onward to Barbuda. We saw the thin sliver of land appear on the horizon (when I say thin sliver, I mean it; the tallest thing on this island is a palm tree), and within the hour, we had all hands on deck to help with sail drops and anchoring. We anchored just in time to catch a beautiful sunset and have a few minutes to hang out before dinner. Dinner was a Hungarian dish by the name of paprikash, and it tasted pretty good. After dinner, we had a quick oceanography class followed by some night showers, which I found to be a lot of fun. After that, it was off to bed to get some sleep before tomorrow’s busy day.