Foxtrot 2 & Sierra 2 2018 Adventures Day 4 – A Full Day Of Marine Science

written by mate, Meredith Davies
July 18, 2018

Today, the crews of Paso Doble and Salome awoke for a day full of adventures on board. With a break from diving today, we were able to have a pleasant sail as a full crew from Cooper Island over to Dead Man’s Bay on Peter Island. Students are beginning to improve their sailing skills and are learning new positions with every sail we have.

Today was our first time anchoring, and it was lovely having the whole bay to just Sail Caribbean boats. Upon arrival at Dead Man’s, students prepared and ate lunch with special visits from a few turtles, to gear up for an afternoon full of science. All of the students came together for a lesson on turtles, turtle tagging, and how Sail Caribbean and others are working to help turtle populations around the world. Once the students’ brains were full of turtle knowledge, we jumped in the water for our first turtling session of program. Unfortunately, we did not catch any turtles to tag this afternoon but the excitement of the students about the turtle tagging program was contagious.

Following turtling, Sierra students picked the projects that they would be working on for the duration of program. The projects chosen included water quality, fish diversity, coral health, and plankton. As the program progresses, students will conduct research on these topics and present them to the group at the end of program.

In the evening, students enjoyed showers and worked really hard to make a delicious dinner of barbecue chicken and mashed potatoes. Needless to say, there were no left overs tonight! Students spent the evening doing boat clean and hanging out on board. Boats ended the night with the completion of the full value contract during boat meeting. A great day of bonding was had on the Foxtrot and Sierra fleet and students are looking forward to diving and another sail tomorrow!