First day on the water

Current location: The Bight, Norman Island

I feel like I have accomplished more in a day that I normally do in a week. I am currently sitting at the navigation table in our boat Celestial storm watching my students watch the first section of the PADI open water video. I find myself trying to look back at my day and just a couple of hours ago feels like a life-time ago. Our day started out with an early wake up and a dock talk run by our company director Mike. An hour or two later, after having run around like stressed chickens getting all the last bits that needed to be done finished before sailing away. We sailed to a set of caves on Norman island. In these waters there are a lot of pirate history. The caves we visited today used to be used by Captain Black Beard himself to pillage ships that passed the area. The pirate ships would force merchants ships to take the route passing these hidden caves, where life-boats filled with pirates and guns would come out and cut off their passage. The merchants couldn’t turn back due to the pirate ships chasing them, and had to pass the channel by the caves, where they would be boarded by the pirates in the lifeboats. The pirates had a system of letting the people in the lifeboats know when to start the blockade. In one of the caves there is a skull attached to the wall. I don’t know his or her story. Maybe he/she was a pirate. In the 1970s gold coins were found in one of the caves, from the times of piracy. After our snorkel in the caves we headed to the Bight, and ate dinner and cleaned up (which sometimes can be quite the project). And now here I am, teaching scuba academics to my shipmates. Tomorrow will be just as busy, and I can’t wait