Alpha 2 & Tango 2, Day 6: The Wreck of the Rhone and The Docks of Nanny Cay
Written by Kyra Benforte
Edited by Meredith Evridge
Our day began at cheerful Cooper Island with a breakfast buffet and a busy morning. Our Open Water divers and our Discover Scuba Divers headed to the dive boat after breakfast to begin their skills and courses. Our non-diving counterparts motored around the corner to Salt Island where we went ashore for a short hike. It felt great to stretch our legs again and we had a lovely view at the top. The breeze picked up as we reached the summit, cooling us off. A short history on the Wreck of the RMS Rhone caught our attention. It was a royal mail ship that was wrecked during a hurricane years ago. Now, it is a famous dive site, and is visible from where we were on the mountain!
After getting some photos of our best sides and looking for sea-glass and bleached coral on the beach, we headed back to our boats and had lunch. Running through the pre-departure checklist, which by this time was getting to be quite natural for everyone, we prepared to drop the mooring ball and set our sails towards Great Harbor on Peter Island. It would be just a quick stop.
At Great Harbor, we met back up with our divers and our newly certified Open Water Divers!! After hearing about their adventures in the deep blue and congratulating them for how far they’d come, each boat made their own batch of delicious mac and cheese. Once all had been filled with that timeless combination of pasta and melty cheese, together the Alphango fleet headed to Nanny Cay. This would be our home for the night. We learned about docking, and after talking through the docking plan, all lines were fast.
Our fleet captain went around to make sure we had done excellent jobs with our deep cleans of the boat. We had! After getting the green light, we received our phones. There is great WiFi all over the docks so everywhere you looked, there would be a chatting camper that looked quite happy to be connecting with home! Handing phones back into the captain, we spent the rest of the afternoon taking turns with truck tours of Tortola and exploring the shops and beach ashore. It is always exciting to comb the snack section and bring back tasty treasures for the whole boat. We also received a new wave of provisioning and everyone helped carry it aboard, putting it where it belonged in the larder.
Land showers were one of the best parts of staying at Nanny. They are also air conditioned. Everyone enjoyed the cool, refreshing showers and then came back together for a dinner of fajitas. We played some games on the dock, had boat meeting, and powered down for the night!
