Delta, Day 14: St. Eustatius

Written by Riley Addison

Edited by Meredith Evridge

A new morning, a new adventure for the Deltoids! We were gently awoken from our dreams at seven. With a quick breakfast in our systems and a top-up of water for the boats, we breezed out of St. Kitts. For today’s sail, the fellas and ladies were on separate boats for the sail. All males adopted Zanzibar while the gals claimed Mayotte. The sail was eighteen nautical miles from St. Kitts to St. Eustatius, and it was on the windy side! All hands were on deck and eyes alert.

Just after noon, we anchored at St. Eustatius and prepared chicken caesar salad for lunch. It was a delightful and healthy meal that we gobbled up. We took our boat showers after lunch. It was relatively early for showers because we had allotted time for going to shore, shopping, sightseeing, and dinner. Well, that was the plan at least! About an hour into our St. Eustatius excursion, it started raining. Pouring rain! We had only seen some of the town and part of a fort before we started seeking shelter. With several hours to kill, and nothing being open as it was Sunday, we decided to stroll around in the wet conditions and see what fun we could make out of it.

Now, this would be a tall order for any crew, but we had just the students and staff to make this quite a gas. We had the pleasure of seeing lots of local wildlife! Cows in the streets, mountain goats bleating at anyone who would listen, chickens, and dogs chasing chickens. We saw more of the town as well, exploring the streets. It was fun because we were a crew who were close and knew how to turn a potentially disappointing situation into a memorable adventure.

Our tummies began to rumble so we popped over to our boats to change into dry clothes before our meal. We looked forward to a meal on shore. Being seated in groups, we had the option of seafood pasta, goat curry over rice, chicken tenders, or pizza. All the food was well prepared, tasting like down-home cooking, and it felt special to have a meal where the horizon stayed in one spot! No dinner clean, either! We let the chefs and wait staff treat us, and we thanked them repeatedly!

After the sun set and the entrees rendered us satiated, we returned back to our home boats at eight o’clock. We set up camp on deck and watched lighting in the distance. It was a QNOB (quiet night on board) and Delta fell asleep.