Colorado Springs School (Day 4)
Culebra, Puerto Rico
3/6/25
Hello from BUSINESS (B watch)! We awoke bright and early this morning at 0720 to haul up the anchor and sing a few shanties to get our day on the road. We quickly circled back to breakfast (frittata and fruit) and chores so that we could hoist the sails and get to moving. We presented our Creature Feature almanac today, featuring the creature (the Portuguese Man-o-War). Yesterday, we researched this siphonophore in the books we had on board, with a little help from Ms. Hanson’s Google once we got close enough to Puerto Rico to get a signal. After we finished almanac presentations, we did a short rotation through rest and relaxation, a knots lesson, and active watch including flaking the anchor chain (it was very heavy). We ate lunch of leftovers, tasty Spanish rice, and quinoa salad, sometimes known as everything in a bowl. Then, after lunch, we dropped anchor and prepared to head to one of the top ten beaches (Flamenco Beach!) for more swimming, a brief history lesson, some poorly-executed body surfing, and SMOOTHIES. Our crew reports that we found a top five pina colada smoothie, a brilliant strawberry banana blend, and some scrumptious coconut ice cream all at the same place. It was indubitably one of the top three beaches, and we also got to see two graffiti-filled Vietnam-era tanks. After we returned from the number one beach, we got on the boat and took to another swim call to desandify ourselves (that’s a good word!) and take a nice shower. Sand is our number one enemy/opposition/opp aboard the Denis Sullivan, so we had to be very careful to rinse our shoes, rashguards, and swimsuits to not track anything into our cabins. We are now preparing for MOVIE NIGHT on board!!!! We will be watching the English closed-caption version of Ponyo, which caused some heated debates with the Lilo and Stitch-voting crew, but we’re all super excited to watch. Finally, we have the honor of recapping our excursion to the bioluminescent bay, Mosquito Bay on Vieques, last night. This was the highlight of our ECS for many of our crew, so far at least. Chase says that Mosquito Bay was pretty sick, Keeton says “those who glow”, and Coltin was overjoyed to learn about the dinoflagellates which made the bay sparkle as we kayaked around and learned about the red mangrove tree. The further into the bay that we got, the more vibrant the glow around our boats became. It was an experience that we will never forget! The past two days have been epic. Business out!
