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Location: Sandy Spit, Green Cay
Today was a different day for us working for Preserving Paradise. We got to sleep in until around 7:45 AM in comparison to the 6:30 wake up for Rebuilding Island Life. For breakfast, my usual choice is the “Special K” cereal, but there was none left so sadly oatmeal became my last resort. As the skipper, I had to get everybody up and going because we had a big day planned with the children of Jost Van Dyke ahead of us. After breakfast, we took the dinghy out to the dock near Foxy’s where the kids were waiting for us. When we got there, we played a couple of games with them to burn some time and get to know them. By the time the games came to an end we all chose a partner to watch over and hang out with for the day, and my partner’s name was Derrick. After that, we took them to the other GoBeyond boat, and we started the motor to the dock at Foxy’s Taboo. There we spoke about how Irma massively affected the mangrove tree population, and we worked on planting more mangroves and picking up some trash on the beach. Derrick was in the 5th grade, and he was a hyper kid and was always running around the boat and going into the cabins to look around. He had me out of energy by the first 20 minutes of the trip, but he was a great kid. When we finished working on the beach, we got back onto the boat and motored to a tiny little island called “Sandy Spit.” The island was just a small beach which we swam at for hours and played around with each of our partners. We later sailed back to Jost Van Dyke where we dropped off the kids including Derrick. We cleaned up after the kids then took the dinghy back to our boat to get ready for the barbecue which was also on Sandy Spit. We were out of the water so we couldn’t shower and it was too late to shower anyway, so we just got changed and went. We had burgers and hot dogs at the barbecue where I met back up with my brother who I haven’t seen in a few days which was great. It was overall just fun and long day and one of the better ones out of the trip, and it was a great experience to help get the children to get off of their island and have some fun.