This is the last week of our current trip around the Caribbean, on Sunday all the students fly home and it will be a time for maintenance, training and rest aboard Ocean Star. To round up the end of the marine science courses, the shipmates spent this morning at a local school in the British Virgin Islands teaching the children about strange marine creatures and their ways of living and surviving in the sea. After a short lesson we split the group up into three and each section learnt about a different endangered species - turtles, whale sharks and Elkhorn coral. [View Full Entry]

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….maybe I’ll become a pro-surfer! Ok so I do have a little way to go, but I thoroughly enjoyed my day of surfing in St. Barths. The whole crew went to the beach to do a lesson and laboratory practical on wave formation and movement, and what better way to learn than by experiencing the waves first hand; attempting to surf them. We began by a quick introduction to waves and how they break, and then moved into a beach lesson on standing up on a board, before the students hit the waves to experiment with what they had learnt. I [View Full Entry]

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I have been far from communication this week, enjoying the best that Antigua and Barbuda has to offer on the water sports front. We left Nelson’s dockyard and motored through heavy swell to Green Island, a haven for wind and kite surfing on the west coast of Antigua. The next four days revolved around time in and on the water. Every morning I took a group of 2 or 3 divers out to the exposed side of the island, where the waves crash over the reef and send white water spray up into the air. We were attempting to track down [View Full Entry]

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On the 21st October 1805, England fought and won one of the most famous naval battles of all time; The Battle of Trafalgar, against the French and their Spanish allies. Muskets and cannons blazed throughout the exchange. Leading the charge was Lord Nelson, one of our greatest admirals, a man who gave his life in the course of the battle. Prior to becoming the commander of the British Fleet, Nelson was stationed in the Caribbean as the Senior Naval Officer of the Leeward Islands (the islands running from Saba south to Dominica). In this role he was far from the popular [View Full Entry]

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The beginning of the week was all about the French settlement of Les Saintes, a sleepy series of islands nestled just south of Guadeloupe. The crew of Ocean Star spent their two day stay exploring the quaint little town and hidden beaches, as well as sampling the delights of local bakeries and gelato cafes. Gelato is like the ultimate in ice-cream experiences; the chocolate is rich and gooey and the fruit flavours are like eating strawberries or raspberries straight from the bush at a pick-your-own farm! We left the Saints after a relatively short stay and moved north to Pigeon Island [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Dominica, the first of the Leeward Islands after a rather rough crossing from Martinique, which resulted in me spending a fair proportion of the trip lying down in one corner of the cockpit concentrating on not feeling seasick. If you have never felt seasick before, it is like being on a roller coaster where with every pitch of the boat your tummy churns around making you feel very queasy. The upside was that I got to work on my tan whilst feeling bad! Dominica is a very rugged and mountainous island, with high rainfall pretty much throughout the [View Full Entry]

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Imagine: you are stuck in jail for stealing a loaf of bread, in St. Pierre the bustling and busy capital of Martinique. It is the fashionable place for the French to go for their holidays and has been dubbed the Caribbean Riviera or Little Paris. But you get to enjoy none of this as you peer out through the barred window of your cell, looking out towards the harbour which is full of sailing boats loading and unloading cargo. The date is 8th May 1902 and disaster is about to strike! Late in the morning, a terrific rumble comes from the [View Full Entry]

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Sorry for the rather long gap since my last post, it has been a busy week on Ocean Star, with the shipmates exploring St. Lucia and learning how to do underwater surveys. St. Lucia is an extremely beautiful island, particularly when you approach it from the south: there are two mountains called Grande and Petit Piton that rise vertically from the sea and form part of a World Heritage Area, which means it is protected from further development or construction. We moored at the base of Petit Piton in the clearest turquoise water I have ever seen. Below us the reef [View Full Entry]

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The last few days have been spent on the island of Bequia, the most northern of the Grenadines. The local history revolves around ship building and whaling, although nowadays there are only one or two whales caught each year, and the only ships built are model ones. It is a beautiful place and I explored the main streets of the little town looking in all the craft shops, and discovered the coastal lanes in an early morning run. The model boat industry is based around one family, the Sergeant Brothers, who have perfected the craft of carving wooden replicas of the [View Full Entry]

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Going to school and living on board a boat provide a whole new set of challenges to both the students and the teachers - imagine trying to do your homework with your desk pitching and rolling with the seas, or fitting all your clothes in a small shelf by your bunk. In the past sailing boats were extremely cramped places with sailors lined up in hammocks swinging back and forth, and no private space or storage. Ocean Star is fairly spacious in comparison with only 14 people contained within her 88ft length, however we have all had to adapt to the [View Full Entry]

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