Disaster has struck. I was woken this morning at quarter to six by a local fisherman. He was standing on the beach, shouting at the house, "Hey, mon! You're boat's done, mon!"
Coming out of my drowsy stupor, I couldn't figure out what he meant. But I knew it was bad. Waking my roommates, we ran outside to see what the trouble was. And there, washed up to shore, upside down and in a sad state, lay our beloved boat, Cheeky.
Other expedition members slowly filtered out of the house to find the wreckage. A state of shock overtook the group as the realization that our boat, our link to the dive world, was gone. The captain took it the hardest and blamed himself for the catastrophe, though he couldn't have done anything to prevent it.
Quite simply, the waves that had started picking up yesterday reached a crescendo overnight, and one of them must have caught the boat just so, flipping her over. It was purely a matter of providence, as none of the other boats in the bay seemed affected. It took us a few minutes to remember that we had left equipment on the boat. Oxygen tanks, a spare cylinder, and weight belts had been swallowed by the sea. Life jackets and other items with any buoyancy were already starting to wash into shore. We collected what we could, and are already planning a recovery dive for the sunken equipment once the water clears.
Between the lost masks and snorkels (a phenomenon that has struck the expedition like a plague), the bruises and scratches from being thrown into the beach by rogue waves, and now our boat and equipment, I'm starting to think we've angered a god or two. Certainly, Triton has it out for us.
A local fisherman walked up and down the beach blowing on a conch shell, calling the other villagers to help. With some serious muscle power, Cheeky was turned right-side up, pulled up the beach and lashed to a tree, there to await word of her fate from the office in England.

Dejected, we set about breakfast and morning chores. With diving clearly off the schedule for today, we in the science course grabbed books and flashcards and sat down to the algae lecture. Once over, with nothing better to do, we sat outside on the porch to study. It was a weird sort of day, with the pervasive feeling that someone had just died. For the staff and long-term volunteers, it was as if someone had.
Studying was punctuated with cries of "What's that? Just there, something washed up." We'd take study breaks to walk the beach, scavenging for our lost gear. So far, we've recovered the captain's chair, several cushions, almost all of the life jackets and the benthic line.
Late morning saw the project science officer gathering a group together to work on the puppet show. As part of a children's community fun day that's been planned with a neighboring town, Coral Cay is organizing a scavenger hunt and puppet show to spread the word about reef conservation. The script for the play has been found, and those volunteers that are participating spent a large part of the day practicing their lines and making the puppets. The fun day happens to be the day I leave, so I won't be around to take part. While they worked on the project, I walked the beach again to see what else had washed up. I even had permission to go outside the boundary lines. Very exciting.
After lunch, a group of us were sitting in the grass behind the cottage (there is no beach to speak of as the sea has completely taken over). Lazing in the sun, studying algae and coral diseases, I heard the chime of the ice-cream man. Who else plays tinny Christmas carols in the middle of eighty-something degree heat? Sure enough, a few minutes later the hippest ice-cream man I've ever seen pulled into the drive.
It wasn't Joe. It was Rasta Man, driving a truck with a freezer strapped down in back. He got out of the truck shouting, "Ice-cream, mon. Who wants some ice-cream?" He had a red, yellow, green and black striped shirt over red, yellow, green and black striped baggy shorts, with a Rasta beanie finishing of his ensemble. Toting ice-cream on a hot day and bringing an infectious smile to our depressed camp, his magic lightened the mood considerably. I couldn't help but think he was Father Christmas of the Rastafarians.
The rest of the day went quickly. Even the video we had to watch as part of our Emergency First Responder course wasn't as bad as I remembered. It was bad, as all training videos are, but I was able to find some unintended humor in it, making the hour and a half pass more quickly.
And we got good news during after dinner announcements. With Cheeky in her grave, the organization has decided to rent a boat for us until she can be repaired or replaced. As diving in the Caribbean isn't that great at the moment, and since the rental cost is the same, we're getting a boat over in Speyside tomorrow, on the other side of the island. The Atlantic is supposed to have better visibility, better coral and bigger fish. Hurrah for Speyside!

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