Friday, July 7, 2006

Sail Caribbean: First weeks on the Charlie Program

I'm emailing from Soper's Hole on the West End of Tortola. Soper's Hole is the place Blackbeard once made his home. Nothing too exciting has happened so far this year, but here's the general overview:

I'm working on the Charlie program this year which is the Sail Caribbean program that emphasizes scuba diving. On more than half the days, the kids on my boat will leave for about 3 hours to go scuba diving. This is pretty cool because it allots me a few hours a day of free time, which is something I never had on Bravo. The program is a little bit smaller than Bravo, but is still pretty sizable with 6 student boats and one staff boat.

Almost all the boats that we used last year got shipped to Greece by Sunsail, but a couple remain including my boat Pine! Even more uniquely, Pine happened to be assigned to the Charlie program, so I'm psyched to captain my old boat again. I'm the only captain this happened to work out for. My mate is a girl named Allison and so far things have been working out great, although there is the potential for things to go sour since she's from New York and a Yankees fan... We are about 2 weeks into this session with a week to go, and I have a really good boat. I have 6 boys and 5 girls (almost all the other boats only have 3 girls...the scuba program is the only one that has more boys than girls).
So things are going well. The staff on Charlie is really awesome. Many of them are dive masters and I think (if I'm still on Charlie next session) I'll start getting some dive certifications.

That's all for now! Hope all is well!
Greg (Huey)