First day I capsized a lot. I didn’t know how to work the O’pen BIC sailboat yet. When we tacked, I wasn’t quick enough to get to the other side, so we capsized. Then for fun, we turtled it. To turtle a boat is when the mast is straight under water and the bottom is up facing up to the sky—it’s completely upside-down. But it’s easy to flip the O’pen BIC back over. When it’s turtled, you climb up on to the bottom. Then you stand on top and pull the dagger board to flip it back over.

After I got the hang of sailing the O’pen BIC on the first day, I did really well. I learned how to control the sail. And let the sail loose when I needed to and pull the sail in when I needed to. We were sailing and racing other boats. We had to go around a red marker and a white marker. Me and my friend Sebastian made it to the red marker first on the second day.

Tristan had fun too. But we didn’t race together.

After each morning of sailing in Prickly Bay, we had lunch together on the beach, and went over to a dock. We jumped off the roof of the dock house. I tried touching the bottom with a pencil dive, but it was too deep. We could do any dive we wanted to with our skill and willpower. One guy said he needed to get “into the zone” and then he did a front flip and back flip off the diving board.

We also jumped off the little dock and someone stepped on a sea urchin. They guy pulled the spine needle out as soon as he could. Then we said no more pushing, and all jumped when we wanted to.

The last day the wind was crazy. I sailed on a hobie catamaran and went 9.7 knots! We went so fast. Then I went to the beach, had a snack and we all had a competition of who could make the best sandcastle. Me and Hamish made the biggest and coolest one.

It was an awesome week. I had a lot of fun.

*The author of this post is Bodin. He’s 8 and this is part of his homeschool!