Delta 1 Day 5: Student Check In!
June 29, 2016
We sat down with the crews from the Delta adventure to have them bring you the update direct from them. Here’s what they had to say!
Montlouis Crew:
After his 5:30a.m. workout, Joey, our skipper, woke his faithful crew up at 6:00 am. We then gathered to have a breakfast buffet of slightly overripe pineapple and bagels (breakfast of champions). We followed up our breakfast with a short venture to the caves to snorkel. Liz taught us about 5 common fish found at the caves, and we then went snorkeling through the caves to find them. An hour later, we dropped the ball and set sail for Nanny Cay. Challenge day gave us the opportunity to work as a real crew and sail by ourselves. When our sail was fully raised, the crew worked on identifying the points of sail, and trimming the sails accurately. Navigating to Nanny Cay wasn’t too difficult of a task for the excited team, but maneuvering around rocks and reefs became a challenge. When Montlouis sailed toward the marina, the challenge day came to a conclusion with a docking lesson from Curtis. The crew assigned tasks for docking the vessel, including roaming fenders, spotters and more. Docking the boat was successful, landing in a spot next to another beautiful vessel. After a thorough cleaning and a yummy lunch of pizza bagels, prepared by Billy and Kath, everyone spent time at the beach, shopping, and drinking fresh fruit punch. Drew spent her evening on an exciting night dive, while Kian, Julian, Billy, Kath, Sophie, Ben and Joey played a big game of Apples to Apples. The day was full of challenges, laughter, and group bonding experiences.
Meursault Crew:
Today was Challenge Day and Erin’s birthday! Challenge Day is a day where the Sail Caribbean staff members step aside and leave the entire day for the students to test their skills at leadership and sailing. This being said, it was up to the students to do all of the jobs that were required for the proper function of the sailboat. The skipper of the day was Isabelle, the engineer/ mate was Mark, and the navigator was Anton. The ships company woke up early at 6:00a.m. Immediately, we figured out that the staff were to be of no help to us today and were merely there for our safety. After making a quick breakfast of boat buffet (cereal, yogurt, bagels, etc.), we got ready to drop our mooring at the Bight to head towards the caves.
On our venture, there we had quite a few difficulties. The sailing was very smooth other than our captain, (Clodagh) first mate (Ben) and our Program Director (Cass) making things very “challenging”. Colby (Spotter) forced Ben into a lifejacket, while Mark (Engineer/Mate) assisted the other two into life jackets by acting like a flight attendant. Everything else was “smooth sailing” until we got to the caves. We missed the mooring ball the first time because of some confusion, but we learned from our mistakes. When we were done mooring, we were ready to snorkel our way to the second Delta boat Montlouis. When we got into the water, Colby was the first to dive in! He jumped in and started to look around and saw a barracuda. The crew started swimming to the second Delta boat and started their fish lesson. After that, the crew went for a nice snorkel and spotted many fish including an eagle ray!
The crew then set the sails again and set a heading towards our next stop, Nanny Cay. This stop is especially nice because it was a port with actual land showers! This beats the boat showers we take, which consist of jumping in and out of the ocean. After the sail, we had a docking lesson and a flawless docking led by Isabelle. After some cleaning, we got to go to shore and explore. Some people bought ice cream and other souvenirs while others relaxed on the beach. Then both Delta boats took place in a large provisioning session where both boats provisioned for the long sails ahead of them. Then, Micheal, Erin, Isabelle, and Mark went out for a night dive under Pelican Island while Anton, Eilish, Colby, and Isaiah stayed on the boat to socialize with friends. Finally, both boats got together on Meursault to celebrate Erin’s 15th birthday with a large cake! Happy Birthday!
