12
Location: Sandy Spit, Green Cay
Hi from Hope! This morning started off with our first dive as certified divers. Addie, Gray, and Reese finished all their skills, but Charlie, Kiaan, and I had to do our final CESA. Luckily, we all passed, and we are finally certified open water divers! We saw a lot of cool animals on our dive, including yellowtail jacks and lionfish. Grace led Gray, Addie, and Reese, while Amanda led Henry and Chase in their advanced dive. My group was led by Tyler. We also all practiced our front flips and back flips underwater. Today was our chaos raft, so we headed to Glad to Be Here and Harbour House for swimming and watersports.
After breakfast, where we enjoyed cereal, we all got dressed and headed to the raft. Joey took Chase, Charlie, Gray, and Henry wakeboarding, while Addie, Reese, Maeve, Merin, and I paddleboarded and swam. We also played volleyball with the other boats and did front flips off the dinghies. After we all did watersports, we headed back to the boat for lunch, and we had Mac and cheese that Henry and I cooked. After we ate lunch, we cleaned up and then started sailing to our next anchor. We sailed for a while and all napped while we were underway. We have also been very focused on making friendship bracelets for each other, so we also worked on those while we were sailing.
After we made it to our destination, we swam for a while and jumped off the top of the boat. We all jumped together, holding hands, and got some really good videos. We also held a diving competition where Henry judged the dives and splashes of Chase and Charlie. Chase ended up winning the overall completion, as he had the smallest splashes and best dive form. After we all swam for a while, we got ready for our beach barbecue. We headed over in the dinghy and had a wet entry to get onto the island. The staff members cooked a great dinner with hot dogs, burgers, potato salad, baked beans, pasta salad, and cookies for dessert. We all walked on the beach and took photos together. The food was so good and we all really enjoyed the barbecue. We then headed back to the boat for night showers. We turned on the blue light underwater so all the tarpon and stingrays would come under the boat. It was so cool to be swimming with them at night. It was such a fun day on Hope, and we are looking forward to race day tomorrow!