Follow Our Journey! Alpha & Tango 2 – Day 13

Written by Nora E., Social Media Coordinator

The alarm for mates and captains blared at an early 5 am yesterday, before the sun even rose. On this day of program, we have staff wake up early and motor the campers to The Baths. The Baths is a national park on Virgin Gorda Island- about an hour motor from Trellis Bay. It is a collection of giant boulders that are formed in a way so that you can hike and snorkel through them. We call this a ‘hikel’. After a good breakfast, the campers got their swimsuits on and snorkel gear ready. They jumped in, started their snorkel, got to the beach, and then hiked the other way around through the boulders. The Baths is unlike any other place on Earth because of its rock formation.

After the fun morning at the national park, the fleet motored to Cooper Island. There, they started cleaning and packing their stuff up. Once they finished with that, they had time to swim and go get ice cream ashore. Also, those campers who needed to do their practical tests for American Sailing Association (ASA) certifications sailed the Colgates from Cooper to Hodges Creek Marina where everyone ended up after wonderful dockings done by our captains and the skipper of the day.

Once at Hodges, the kids worked super hard to make their boat shiny and clean and had a wonderful hot meal dinner of ribs, mac & cheese, and steamed vegetables. They fueled up for their skits that each boat would be performing that night! Every boat really showed us their creativity and sense of humor, the themes included: a lettuce eating competition, a cookie plague, a trial for who put chicken in a locker, a reenacting of a docking, a dance to a song from The Lorax, and a game show!

After the skits, each boat won an award and then I made a slideshow of all of the photos from the session. It is my favorite part, personally, because I love to see all of the kids reactions to memories of their time here. Following the parting words of Mike last night, the kids wrote airplane letters and went to bed because it was another early wake up for departures.

It was a somber morning at Hodges Creek as we said goodbye to amazing campers that we have had the pleasure of teaching, learning from, and getting to know these past two weeks. We hope they all have an amazing school year and we hope to see them all on the docks next year!