Tango 1 Day 11: Some Friendly Competition Never Hurt Nobody

written by Tango mate, Marina Chissus
July 4, 2017

Today, we got to sleep in a little bit as our captain Richard and mate Sarah navigated the boat to Long Bay, Beef Island. On the way, we all got up one by one and raised our sails together. When we reached Long Bay, we searched for a place to anchor and spotted a nice sandy patch to for us to make home for the night. Then, it was time for a break and some cleaning. After, we enjoyed making a proud team flag out of a pillow case to represent our boat in the Olympics games that would take place on shore today! All of us contributed to the beautiful masterpiece.

Everyone started shuttling to the beach as it became time for the Olympics! Our competition included both the Alpha and the Tango programs. The Olympics consisted of four games: dizzy fender, tug-of-war, burry your captain and synchronized swimming! The game dizzy fender is like dizzy base ball bat, but one also wears snorkel fins and a mask. All of us were so fast that Tango won the event! We also won a tug-of-war match twice against an Alpha boat!

The next event entailed 15 minutes allotted for collecting as much trash as possible that we could find on the beach to then bury our captain and decorate him/her with. We all hunted and gathered and then dug and piled, getting as creative as we could with what we were turning our captain Richard into. At the end, he was turned into a merman! Lastly, we ended with synchronized swimming. We did spins, flips, jumps and twirls — it was a blast!

We all started to get hungry after all the hilarious games came to an end, so everyone headed back to their boats for a yummy lunch! We had a nice rest before we went back to the beach to meet and engage with the local YEP BVI (Youth Empowerment Program) kids from Tortola. We had fun teaching and playing with them on kayaks, paddleboards, and Picos. Some of us even took the YEP kids out sailing on our boat Miss You! It was so exciting for us to teach them what we have learned throughout the program. Everyone was smiling and having an amazing time on Long Bay Beach!

After all the YEP kids left, we had a delicious BBQ provided for us by Sail Caribbean’s office and operations staff members. We ate all the yummy grilled goodies so happily to replenish our energy for tonight because — oh yeah — it’s Fourth of July!!!

We then got trucked over to Trellis Bay for a Fourth of July Fireball party at Aragorn’s Art Studio on the beach! Every program that Sail Caribbean has running was invited to the event. We got to meet up with our friends from other boats, and meet new kids too! A smoothie and soda bar was available for all to get fruity blended drinks and a DJ bumped tunes for us to dance to. Everyone came together to rock it out on the beach as we watched cast iron sculptures be lit ablaze in the water.

Once we danced all that we could dance and limbo-ed as much as we could limbo, we started to get ready to go back and began shuttling everyone back to our anchored boats in Long Bay. Once we were all back on our home boat, we nearly immediately passed out. It had been a long, fun, unforgettable Fourth of July!