9
Location: Marina Cay
Hello friends, family, and everyone else reading our trip blog!
After waking up to a nice egg and blueberry brownie (brownie because they are made in brownie pans and not cupcake tins) breakfast I was told today was the day we were sailing away from Anegada. I’m not going to lie; I thought it wasn’t going to be very eventful because I was the skipper and that meant I had to do the sailing. I hadn’t ever helmed a sailboat before this day, so I thought it was going to be a little turn here, a little speeding up there, and a nice smooth stop into the mooring ball. Boy, was I wrong. I had to keep certain islands to my left, specific mountains to my right, and the degrees gauge near or around 230 degrees magnetic at all times. Not to mention that the steering wheel is stiff and takes a lot of physical effort to turn- especially when Elliot is telling me to “hard turn right” or “aggressive turn left.” But, I did it, and I had a lot of fun manning the ship! Also, I now have a new appreciation for people who handle the driving aspect of boats because I realize how much effort goes into it. After our sail to Beef Island, the rest of the boat went to shore while I stayed back and cleaned out Jackson’s backpack. Why may you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Yesterday after turtle tagging David asked me to put the Gatorade powder by a backpack to be carried back to the boat, and I decided that since Jackson loves it so much, he should carry it. I fastened the lid, stuck it in his backpack, and thought we were set to go! Little did I know that the lid was going to come off quite easily and completely drown his backpack in blue powder. He said that when he opened it, a blue cloud came out…and I felt SO bad. Don’t worry, everything has been washed with fresh water (one of our most finite resources) dried, and nothing was ruined in the process! Moving into the afternoon, we sailed to an island with these incredible rock formations that formed super large half circles perfect for snorkeling. When I say incredible, I mean incredible. The water is a brighter blue than imaginable and the rock formations have these lines and shapes so unique that these coves look like the places advertised on Facebook as “Top 10 secret treasures of the world”. David, Koko, Angela, Myles, Yousef and I went off on one of the dinghies and found a separate area to snorkel where Yousef thought he saw two sharks (which were just tarpon fish) and Koko, and I saw a SQUID! Though it may not sound THAT exciting, you’re hearing from someone who had never seen a squid in the wild before, aka it was really exciting. We finished the day off with some fresh water showers and a surprise fish attack on route to picking up fresh food. Yes, you read that right, a fish attack. David and I were going to pick up the fresh food when a shiny, foot-and-a-half floppy thing came flying into the dinghy, courtesy of a staff member from a different boat. Not only that, but the fish had teeth, and I mean BIG teeth. So of course we went and threw it at the students in the dive boat next to us, as good cordial people would do. *Don’t worry, no fish were (seriously) harmed during this process.*