Starting to Wrap Up in St. Croix
St. Croix, USVI
Ship’s Log written by AmeriCorps Deckhand Educator Rachel Whetten
February 29th, 2024
Last week was good! The weather finally cooperated with us, so we got some good sails in with the kids. When we weren't sailing, we were trying our best to keep the boat in good shape!
Monday saw two of us heading to the school to do in-classroom activities, while the rest of us worked on some maintenance projects. After lunch, I got to oil the main mast, which is one of my favorite jobs. It involved taking the throat halyard off the main sail and hooking it onto a bosun's chair instead. Then Hanna slowly lowered me down while I painted oil all over the mast. It was fun! Then I lowered Jess while she did the same thing on the fore mast.
On Tuesday, we had kids from Claude O. Markoe School aboard for a morning program. The kids we had this week were especially engaged and excited, and fantastic to work with.
On Wednesday, we had our education program in the morning, and then we got a luxurious hour and a half off before our sunset sail.
On Thursday, we did dockside programming in the morning so the kids could climb up to the cross trees. This was an especially encouraging group, and all of them made it farther up than they thought they could. One girl in particular got half way up and then got scared and said she couldn't go any farther. Her classmates and teachers kept encouraging her to take "one more step", and she took one more step over and over again all the way to the top! She came down with the biggest smile, and said it was her favorite thing!
In addition, I named this day Turtle Thursday because of the multitude of turtles that were seen off the side of the boat. The kids affectionately named them all "Shelby", and never got less excited to see Shelby's head poke up out of the water. They also saw a "big turtle" which turned out to be a mooring buoy, but they never got less excited to see that either.
Friday was another wonderful sail with the kids! They were really sad to leave and a couple gave us all big hugs at the end as we waved them off for the final time. This group was really wonderful.
The crew is looking forward to the last stretch of sails here in St Croix, with a change of scenery on the horizon for us. We'll be saying goodbye to St Croix soon, and we're all trying to make the most of our remaining time here. This island is beautiful, the people are wonderful, and it will be hard to say goodbye.
-Rachel Whetten
