Programs Blog

Tuesday, November 4, 2025

At Anchor in Francis Bay, St. John

November 3 marked the day we came into St. John and saw mountains surrounding us from all around. No longer was it just open sea for miles. I could swear I smelled land, fresh air, and burgers. All of us were so happy to see land but we were even more mesmerized by there being other ships passing us and seeing people other than just us. Life on board lately? Well, we have now anchored in St. John near secluded beaches with calm waters. As one of the people who hit seasickness hard on this voyage (a member of what I like to call the LRC, or leeward Rail Club), I know that I am very happy to no longer be seeing the tables move back forth and to have them ungimballed.

This last week has been filled with more memories than I can count, starting off with Halloween with everyone dressing up and doing pumpkins and eating far too much candy, to us getting to this anchor dressing up real nice and doing a “sheet anchor” gallery walk. But one of the best memories we all can say we had was getting a swim call when the waters were just right in the Antilles current and then having another one once we got anchored. The one we had when we got to St. John included all of us jumping off the head rig into the water!!! 

Today, as I write this, is is now November 4, and we all touched land for the first time since Boston. I can say I have missed it dearly and forgot what walking up hill felt like on our way to this old sugar plantation for Craig’s class which was really cool to learn all about the history behind it. Today we also got to get our snorkeling practice in on one of the beaches! For about 2 hours, we just followed fish, sting rays, and were surrounded by schools of fish as we took photos and had fun practicing how to be good partners and researchers while snorkeling. But as the day came to an  end we get told that after dinner we would be able to call our parents on our phones for 20 minutes!! And we all got super excited!! We did cleaning up from the meal sooo fast and came up on deck telling them how ready we were. Our phones were on the salon tables waiting for us and we all rushed to them to call our families–we could not hold in our excitement. You could hear each one of us yelling through our phones so joyed to hear our friends and families’ voices from across the ship.

Izzi H., B Watch

Note for: Mom, Dad, Zoe, and Char. I miss you guys all so so so much!