Early Alpha Day 5: Where The Wind Blows
written by Early Alpha mate, Erika Florian
June 13, 2017
Today, we had a very relaxing and fun morning. We all woke up at 7a.m. to a bagel breakfast with a special treat of Nutella! After breakfast, we all shuttled to shore on Norman Island to do a little hike with the whole fleet of four boats. The view was absolutely beautiful, and we all experienced our first dabble in Sail Caribbean’s True Course curriculum. Plenty of bonding is underway and we all enjoyed playing activities at such a cool look out and summit.
After the hike, we all headed back to boats and dropped our mooring balls to sail upwind to Great Harbour on Peter Island. Our skipper of the day did a wonderful job at the helm, while leading the charge on tacking, and picking up our mooring ball at the final destination!
After our awesome morning sailing upwind for the first time, we moored our yacht and prepared a delicious lunch of pizza quesadillas. Then we split up into two groups and half of us went diving! We didn’t go so deep this time, but we got to take off our fins and do flips off the sandy bottom. It was amazing! The other group did a marine biology lesson and then went snorkeling. They said afterwards it was super fun; they swam in a “shoal of fry” and even saw a green turtle sleeping!
When we came back to our boat, we had some extra time before dinner so we did some boat yoga and had boat showers. Spaghetti Bolognese for dinner was delicious and once some chores were completed, we settled down with a boat meeting. We talked about some goals students have for this trip. Some included feeling more comfortable with scuba diving, becoming more fluent with sailing, and being able to recognize marine life.
We finished off the night by showing everyone the bioluminescence right off of our stern of the boat. Each person brushed their hands through the water and were in awe by the beauty of the illuminated ocean. Seeing them all so happy just warmed my heart, and reminded me yet again why I love sharing the ocean in all of its forms with these students!
