Woke Up in Paradise!!!!

Location: Falmouth, Antigua

Woke up this morning after doing an anchor watch with Charles, with beautiful views of Antigua once again. As a skipper, it was my responsibility to wake up the crew bright and early so we can have breakfast and begin our duties on the boat. After cleaning up breakfast, we gathered in the saloon for our first leadership class. After a brief introduction to what to expect from the course, we participated in an exercise where each person from the crew picked a song that was played through the saloon speakers, ultimately creating a playlist of songs from the crew. You could tell everyone enjoyed listening to music from the crew. Shortly after, we divided into two groups; those who are already certified went on to the deck for dinghy training. The other half stayed in the saloon to finish up our open water education from the previous day. For lunch, we had lunch meat sandwiches with amazing views again. After cleaning up the lunch, we met back in the saloon for oceanography class with Leoni. in class, we discussed topics for our research project/presentation. I signed up to research fisheries not only because I am passionate about fishing but also because I would like to learn how fisheries have been affected over the years and what will happen with the fishing industry in the future. For our seamanship class, we learned about our own boat Vela and how sailing boats have evolved over the years; for the second part of the class (which was my favorite), we got to go on deck and learn the terminology and functions of our ship. After being done with classes for the day, it was finally time to take a dip!!!!! The water felt very refreshing, with a beautiful sunset covering us with gold. Maddy and Anthony, with the help of Smash, cooked the crew a healthy dinner (with some Pringles on the side). As a skipper, it was my job to come up with a question for our squeeze circle after dinner. I asked the question, “if you could domesticate any animal, what would it be.” There were many interesting answers, but my favorite was when Hannah said “giraffe” so she could ride it because it can walk over everything. To finish our day, those who are not certified will take a final exam for PADI certification and soon will be able to enjoy the underwater world.

Photo 1: Calum teaching leadership.
Photo 2: Shona giving Colm, Mackenzie, Ethan, Andrea, and Hannah real-life examples and a walkthrough of the boat and its’ terms.
Photo 3: Salties (Sonnet, Maddie, Valentina) dryers, and Freshie (Will) making sure we have clean plates for tomorrow.