Alpha 3 2015 Trip Blog- Day 10
written by mate of Xeres, Alex Armson, Brought to you by the crew of Xeres
July 31, 2015
Today, Kat was our skipper of the day, Allegra was the navigator and Nick was the mate. The morning began with breakfast burritos made by Charlie and Polli. We then sailed off the mooring ball with winds of 30 knots! Kat did a great job of controlling the boat in these challenging conditions. The gusts were as strong as 40 knots, but we reefed the main sail and jib, and Kat showed us all how great she is at the helm. Charlie and Sydney were great at controlling the mainsail and bringing it to a close hauled position so that we could jibe safely.
Our destination was Trellis Bay on Beef Island, where we successfully picked up a mooring ball and went for a truck tour around the island of Tortola. We got really delicious fruit while we were traveling around called “good nips” which were like giant grapes inside a lime skin. We also got ice cream, which was amazing. We arrived back at the boats for lunch then divers went for an Open Water dive. Nick, Sydney, Davis, Kat, Andrew Lewis, Sam, Allegra and Charlie went diving to Diamond Reef which was incredible and saw barracudas. They are now all officially certified Open Water divers! Meanwhile, Jeremy and Andrew Lee went to shore to explore, and then went to the catamaran called Spyglass from our Foxtrot program. There, they had a shark lesson from the kids on that boat and went snorkeling.
All the Sail Caribbean fleets had gathered at Trellis Bay for the night’s full moon party. At 7:30 p.m., everybody shuttled to shore for the huge gathering. It was great to meet so many people from different fleets and everybody had a great time! There were giant fire balls burning in the water which were made by Aragorn, a local artist, and a live band playing. Today our crew did a great job of sailing downwind and cleaning up, but we need to improve on paying attention.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”133″ gal_title=”Alpha 3 2015 Trip Blog- Day 10″]
