Echo & Ocean 2018 Adventures Day 1 – Arrivals
written by Social Media Coordinator, Ryan Smith
May 29, 2018
Our Sail Caribbean team has been hard at work in the past couple of weeks, building up our beloved base and most importantly, prepping for the arrival of our first student crews of the season, our Echo and Ocean college age programs! Our early arrival on-island staff squad moved about with extra pep in their stride today, knowing that students would be climbing onboard by the afternoon. Days like today are a habitual amount of collected chaos, with many moving parts maneuvering amongst each other, even from two different islands (USVIs and the BVIs). Although the day can be rather long and tiring for our traveling students, at the end of the day, it’s almost palpable that it is also the beginning of something gigantic.
At our base, operations, office staff and sail staff awoke with the sun and went about the day prepping the boat, inventory, provisioning, the works! One of our leadership team members headed over to St Thomas via ferry to greet arriving STT flyers while EIS student arrivals were greeted by none other than our Founder/Director Mike Liese.
When we were all together back at Hodges, students and staff transferred duffel bags onto their new floating home, a 45′ foot catamaran named Moselle, and man, is she a beaut. Everyone was eager to get off their feet and settle in to their space, meeting their crewmates along the way. It wasn’t long before we all were enjoying a delicious meal of chicken, rice and ‘slaw, freely devouring it from the cockpits of our new abode, among new friends.
Following some much enjoyed replenishment, students sat attentively as an infamous “Mike Talk” was delivered, naturally by Mike Liese himself under the moonlight, where he outlined our Sail Caribbean policies, standards, and expectations during each and every program that we run.
Each boat’s crew then held their first boat meeting within their yacht’s salon. During the boat meeting, the crew can get better acquainted with each other and had brief introductions to different aspects of the program, such as the roles on the duty roster and ship’s logs. After wrapping up the meeting, students were quick to relish in the opportunity to rest up from a long day of travel, and in anticipation of leaving the docks the following morning. Look forward to the crews’ boat photos prior to leaving docks in the next trip update for Day 2, or have an early look for yourself by checking out our Sail Caribbean Facebook page!
