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Alpha 4, Charlie 3, Foxtrot 3 & Sierra 3 Day 13: Ending Ceremony To Celebrate All We've Achieved!

By wpdev August 22, 2016
August 20, 2016

Today, we left Long Bay super early in the morning. The staff motored us, so we got to sleep in a bit on our way to the Baths! We were all very excited about getting to this national park and checking out the beautiful beaches and land formations. We woke up at the Baths and ate our last real breakfast together. After breakfast and a little cleaning, we swam to shore. When we got there, we got an amazing geology lesson about the rock formations that make up the caves at the Baths. We got to hike through the caves and climb on some rocks. We came out on the other end of the caves and Devil’s Bay and got to hang out and swim around for a little bit. Then we snorkeled around the rocks and reef. We even found some octopuses! We snorkeled around to a rock called Jump Rock where we got to take turns climbing up a rope to the top of the rock and jumping into the turquoise waters. Once we got our fill of jumps, we headed back to our boats to eat some lunch and do a deep clean of the boat. We learned how to fuel up the boats, and then headed back to Hodges Creek marina.

When we got to Hodges, we got some nice land showers, and hung out bonding with our great friends for a final afternoon. We had dinner catered to us of mac and cheese and ribs. After dinner, we had an awards ceremony where we got recognized for our dive and sailing certifications along with many other feats. We also found out who won the chili cook off and Olympics. When the awards were done, we presented short funny skits for each other. The staff wrote lyrics to a nice song and sang it to us after the skits were done. Then, we sat in an appreciation circle and reflected on all of our positive experiences and the wonderful people around us. To wrap up the awards ceremony, we watched a really neat slide show of our pictures from the last two weeks. We went back to our boats and had the final boat meeting where we wrote airplane letters to each other. We stayed up super late talking and reminiscing. We were all sad it was the last day but so happy we had made such great memories together.

The greatest challenge during the program was staying entertained during the quarantine period. Not being able to leave your boat and not having a phone, which was a crutch against boredom, it was difficult at first to stay entertained.