13
Location: Sommer's Beach, Tortola
At 6 am this morning, the entire deck of hammock sleepers was awoken by the sound of a fleeing dinghy and snickering coming from ours. As we peered over the edge of our deck, we saw our dinghy had been invaded by two members of Tropicool, a rival boat. With incredible quickness, our skipper, Em, realized which boat the two were from and promptly returned them to their own boat. On her way back, she realized that Breakaway, our mortal enemy, had stolen and displayed our pirate flag. With the speed of a seal team, Em cut the dinghy engine, drifted to Breakaway, boarded their vessel, and made her way to the flag halyard. As we all watched from the deck, she pulled down the flag without anyone from Breakaway noticing. She jumped back onto Shadow and sped away as Hedrick finally came up on deck. A little later in the morning, we joined forces with Breakaway to get revenge on Tropicool for handing out their students and having them pretend they didn’t belong to any boat. To do this, members of both boats armed themselves with eggs and launched a full-scale attack on Tropicool. We peppered the boat from bow to stern in yellow splatter, both on the outside of the hull and in the power tower. We retreated after our ammo had been exhausted and returned to our boat. A few minutes later, we had a quick breakfast of cereal and quickly got underway.
We headed toward Monkey Point to begin another long-awaited session of turtling. When we arrived, the first boat of students got into shadow to begin being manta towed. The first group was dragged over top of sweeping coral scapes populated by fish of all shapes and colors. After being dragged for a few minutes, a small turtle was spotted, but it quickly out-maneuvered the swimmers and made a speedy getaway to deeper water. Soon after, the next group on Shadow entered the water and began to be towed. They had less luck as they were swarmed with jellyfish that blanketed the surface, causing them to make a quicker return to the boat than expected. After this ordeal, we pulled anchor and began our travels to Beef Island.
While underway, our chefs prepared us a hearty meal of soup and toast, which warmed us up as the winds were whipping across the sea. After a 40 minute ride, we moored in the bay outside of Beef Island. We rode Shadow to the dock and began our shore time. People divided up as some called home, stocked up on supplies, or got food from local restaurants. Eventually, we all congregated at the small grocery store and began to buy snacks and drinks to bring back with us to the ship. The items that landed on the counter were a flurry of colors as each person had a diverse range of snacks. A crowd favorite was Oreos, as they make a great after-dinner snack. After a successful resupply of goodies, we again set off for another bay.
When we arrived at Sommer’s Beach, we dropped anchor and prepared for a barbecue onshore. We all quickly took a saltwater shower and got dressed. We piled into Shadow and sped to the beach just in time for burgers fresh off the grill. We all grabbed food and sat on the bottom sections of a rock outcropping spurting out of the beach. We all ate our dinner as the sunset over the ocean and made our way back to the boat for the night, always wary of any retaliation that may come our way.
XOXO
#Ti