6
Location: Little Dix Bay, Virgin Gorda
Today, we woke up at the lovely hour of 7:00, which was amazing considering that we normally wake up 6:00. Our wonderful captain Anna McBee (otherwise known as BZ) woke up early to make stacks of pancakes for everyone. They were absolutely delicious. We got to put Nutella on them and in the end, it turned out to be a battle for the Nutella. Also, since BZ is crazy, she woke up at 5 am and decided to eat her brownie that had been sitting on the table outside for the entire night.
After breakfast and dishwashing, we split with the three rebuilding island life students on our boat and dinghied over to a beach that we had collected driftwood from a few days ago. From the surface, the beach is actually quite pretty. It has a bunch of driftwood up higher on it, but farther down it is full of lots of white rocks, corals, and broken shells. We spent about five minutes looking in our own little areas for any trash we could find. The lesson of the activity was that you could look at a beach and not see really any trash, but when you start picking up rocks and looking under things you can find a lot of things that shouldn’t be there.
We went back to the boat and watched four or five videos on plastic which really opened my eyes on how there’s a whole process to polluting our world and that it isn’t as “simple” as cleaning up all of the plastic in our oceans. We next had some free time and got to swim, tan, and do some flips on the dinghy. Our incredible shipmate Hayley was super brave and did a front flip for the first time! Once Juliet, Victoria, and Ava from rebuilding joined us back on board, we ate a delicious meal of Mac n cheese which master chef Maya made.
We then drove over to our next location, where we would be tying up with the other two boats and turtle tagging. We all gathered onto Elliot’s boat, Dallas Blonde, and had a debriefing on turtle tagging. It was finally time to do what we came here for. We jumped into the dinghies and began intensely searching for turtles. Halfway through our search, Juliet, Josie, Chase P, and I got to stop and just snorkel and play around in the water for a bit, which was really fun. One of my favorite things to do is to go down to the very bottom of the water and lay on my back just watch the waves from below. We were out for a little over an hour looking for turtles but unfortunately didn’t catch any.
After turtle tagging, we succeeded in doing something that GoBeyond had never done before. We were able to tie together all three catamarans which allow us to walk between all of them easily. Also, tonight was the best night for food out of the entire three weeks. Veggie Burgers!! I know that when most people think of veggie burgers, they thing of weird and gross bean things; trust me, I think this way too. But for some reason, the veggie burgers here are absolutely amazing. We had some people from Ewak come onto our boat and eat with us, and we had a fun dinner full of laughing, as always. We did squeeze, which I always love, and we now are doing dishes and blasting and singing along to some music. Tomorrow is the barbecue, and we are going to show all of ActionQuest our boat dance – lol. This was such an amazing day, and I can’t wait for what tomorrow is going to bring!
As always, remember: Live like Brum Brum