Summer passing fast

Current location: D’Best Cup, Sopper’s Hole, West End, Tortola 18°23’7’’N 64°42’5’’W

The past three weeks have been filled with such an unreal amount of activities and happenings that all my memories blur together. Session two of the summer working for ActionQuest seems like a distant memory, and it has only been a day since it ended. Today was my day off, my second one since coming down to the British Virgin Islands in the beginning of June. I feel slightly exhausted and mentally checked out after everything that happened this session. But I know that I will be ready for new students arriving tomorrow, because of the importance I may have in their lives. Looking from afar it may seem that I only work with teenagers sailing around and doing cool stuff with them, but the reality is that we as staff give them tools to build themselves a future that they want. Of course we don’t get through to every one, but for those times that we do, every sleepless night and struggle on the way turns in to minor details without importance. As cheesy as it sounds, that is the reason why I am here, and it is such an empowering experience to make another life breathe easier, even if only just for a day. That is to have succeeded.

So what did go down during those 21 days on program? Perhaps most notably our steering broke down again, and then again. I dare to say that I at this point is the most experienced staff with emergency tiller steering and steering problems. Because of our steering problems, we ended up switching boats, which in itself is quite an endeavor. Me and four other instructors certified over 45 students with scuba diving certificates and survived numerous inconvenient jellyfish attacks. We sailed around all of the islands in the British Virgin Islands with an amazing crew of 12 shipmates plus three staff members and I took our Skipper for his first breath under water. I fixed a head and found myself being sprayed with poop and standing in half an inch worth of collected feces (by far the most disgusting experience of my life…), and I learned how to fix a generator and the fridge unit. We also hot wired the shower drain pump and probably lost more than a dozen plates and bowls over board. Shipmates did the usual stuff – sailing, scuba diving, marine conservation lectures and learning how to survive on a boat. This session went by fast, yet when I was in it I felt overwhelmed by everything that needed to be done that I never seemed to have time to do. As a newly employed director I found myself playing “catch-up” a lot, but I hope that this session served as a good preparation for the next one – session three, last one of the summer, bring it on, I am ready for you (not).