A Skill Every Sailor Should Have- We DID IT! [Sailing Kittiwake Ep. 121]

I forgot how peaceful it is to go downwind. I'm Elena and this is Ryan. In 2017 we left the UK on our first boat, Kitty Wake. We lived on Kitty Wake for two years. Then, Skua came along. She's a Tayana 37 from 1976. We live on Skua on a budget and work online to keep traveling by sailboat. In 2020, we crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean. Now, we're exploring this beautiful part of the world. Welcome back. Last time, we left you at Sandy Island, a marine reserve located just off Carriacou. We're not going to bore you with everything we did there, but we couldn't not show you the highlights of the underwater world we saw near Mabuya Island. See you! The reef was too deep to look colorful on camera, but the sea was alive with tiny and big fish. With all this cool stuff in the water, we got carried away and forgot that the tide was going to change after an hour and a half. That was a challenge to get in that. As soon as we reached the far side of the island, there was a huge current. So, we swam against the current all the way back and, well, definitely got a workout in. We are off to Hillsborough and Anchorage just around the corner. Should be a couple of nautical miles. Such a cool little island with a fishing row. It took us just half an hour to move Anchorage. You're going to put the bridle on? Yeah. Once we knew the anchor was put, we went for a rare dinner out. We heard the cruiser's cafe was empty with outdoor seating and in a fantastic spot. It didn't disappoint. Good morning from windy Hillsborough. Windy and bouncy. Yeah, very bouncy. We have a really, really decent breeze today so we are taking advantage of it and sailing back to Tyrell Bay. Should be about an hour? Yeah, I think so. Maybe less. And hopefully we'll be able to sail most of it. We'll see what it's like around the headland. But we've been talking to someone in Tyrell Bay who can do some free diving instruction for us. So hopefully we'll get better at free diving. We'll get to go back and sort that out, I think. Super excited about that. And being able to dive deeper doesn't mean just that we can explore more of the sea but also we are able to retrieve our anchor if it's stuck at a bit of a challenging depth. So that's a really useful skill to have as a sailor, isn't it? Yeah, that and cleaning the bottom of the boat and checking on things if you need to clean your prop, through hulls. Yeah, all that kind of stuff. It's good being confident underwater. So yeah, it's pretty relevant for sailing as well. Really looking forward to that. Let's get sailing. Forward! I forgot how peaceful it is to go downwind. Here in the Caribbean you're mainly on a beam reach or a close reach. So this is really, really lovely for a change. This right here is Sandy Island, the place where we were in the last episode. Really amazing. So if you missed that you might want to go back to that episode after this one. Are you enjoying your steering? Yeah, very much. It's really nice when it's like this, huh? Yeah. Does take a bit of concentration steering downwind with the main aft. Especially because these islands are moving the wind about a bit so it could be a little bit on the ball but satisfying steering. And yeah, we're just kind of cruising along at three knots which is fine. Even though we haven't got very far to go. So peaceful. Yeah. I really want to go back there and do more diving. Well, free diving. Yeah. I think next time we'll go with the dinghy and just let it drift next to us because there was quite a lot of current, wasn't there? Yeah, it can be dangerous, I think. And we were lucky that our legs didn't give up on us. Oh man, it's so nice to have the trades back. It's so refreshing. And obviously sailing is way better than motoring. That looks like an abandoned house. It looks like a really cool spot to build one but I wonder whether it's not a very clever place to be in a storm. Access doesn't look great. And yeah, the access doesn't look very good. How's the anchor? Fine. I saw three lionfish. Oh, nice. Near our chain. Well, it's not nice. Well, yeah. Nice in terms of if we could spear them. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure whether you'd get told off. Like if we just got the spear gun and went down and shot those three lionfish and nothing else. If anyone came round, we could show them with spear gun holes in. Yeah, I guess. The problem for me is like our spear gun spear has the like flappy up bit. Yeah. And I don't think people tend to use those for shooting lionfish because it's hard to stop fish like sliding down. And then you've got like lionfish spine sliding down towards your hand. Yeah, you don't want to do that. People use those Hawaiian slings with three prongs. Yeah. You just kind of shoot it. After a long morning learning the theory and two practice theory tests, we were ready to start our paddy-free diver course with Lexie of Incognito Adventures. First, we had to protect our blistered toes. We did too many hours of snorkeling. Okay, first, we're going to go to Lexie's place for the theory. Are we starting at half an hour if you don't mind? The time now is eight o'clock. All right. Happy spearing. Thank you. Bye. Hey, Trini. How are you? Who is this dog? Who is it? A Lizzie's dog? Yeah. Have you seen the state of the beach? Good morning. No. What is it? Tons of sandbags. Oh, really? On the beach right here? Yeah. Let's watch that. So generally, your heart rate slows when you exhale. So you want to make your exhales about twice as long as your inhales if you can and if it's comfortable for you. And I like to keep my hand on my chest and my hand on my belly. So I'm feeling my belly first and then my chest. And when I exhale, it's my chest and then my belly. So it's a quick inhale. Time to take our theory tests. Lexie is marking knowledge reviews. There's always a lot of dogs in our videos. Yeah. Always a dog. We passed. Yes, you did pass. Very good job. All right. We're ready to go and try things out in the water. Do some breathing exercises. And we need to do it one minute and a half. I don't know if I'll be able to do it. You'll be fine. Just get your mammalian dive reflex on the go. Is that right? Google that, guys. All right. Have we got everything? Yeah. Dress to go. Fins. Weight belt. Mask. Let's go. This is Lexie's and Scott's 4x4, right? Jeep TerraTrac. Pretty cool ride. I wouldn't mind having one of these. We headed to the beach, which, for the first time since we've been here, was covered in sargassum seaweed. We did some exercises, such as breathing up and still acne, which consists of laying still with your face in the water and holding your breath. Ah, hello. You go to the camera. It is waterproof. It is waterproof, right? Yeah. And I was like, I'm... Eyes, like, are they water? My eyes sting a little bit, but... And this is... I know. I was, like, trying to sweep it away from you, but I was like... So I'm going to go ahead and demonstrate a breath hold for you. I'm just going to do 30 seconds. Okay. You okay? Is that how you do it? Yeah. Urge to breathe. What is this seaweed? It's a crab, that's what I mean. What? Okay. It's out. Oh my gosh. Should have kept that as well. Seaweed. Oh no. Are you okay? Yeah, I just lost my mom. You got it? I don't know if our liability form covers that. I am so cool, guys. When he... With the crab, I just freaked out. I just... Imagine... I was about... I was, like, rubbing it, and then you were like... Well, good job we've got this on video. Thanks, God. That's enough for two minutes. Bring it back. We also tried swimming on the bottom in shallow water. Then it was time to head out to deeper water. For the next two sessions, we tied up to a buoy and tried free immersion, which means lowering yourself down into the water by pulling on a weighted rope. Once we were confident descending into deeper water, we tried dynamic apnea, which involves finning down along a weighted rope without touching it, while being attached to it by our carabiner and line. We also practiced being each other's buddy, looking out for any signs of distress and helping the diver take those first fundamental deep breaths after a dive. Ryan got down to 15 meters without effort. I had various equalization problems with my ears, which I've had for years. It was great to have Lexi there to help me try different techniques to overcome my problems. I felt totally safe with her and her first aid box. By the end of the course, we both passed the paddock basic freediver. Freediving is so much cheaper than scuba diving. It requires next to no gear and it's a skill all cruisers should really have in case they get their anchor stuck under a rock in a remote anchorage. The cheap course fee is worth the peace of mind of freediving safely and knowing you can solve any hull or anchor problems without hiring a scuba diver. To celebrate our new qualifications, we went freedive at a popular dive site in Kariakou. What are we doing this morning with Lexi? We are going snorkeling slash freediving on Tropical Hill, which is down at the southwest point of Kariakou and it looks really cool. I saw a dive picture last night and it looks amazing. Was it like a pinnacle of coral? Yeah, so it comes up and then it's just like corals everywhere and fish and stuff. Nice. At least that's what the picture has promised. All right. Today, all the head scratching theory and the time spent waiting around on the surface paid off. We both felt light and free diving down to check on the reef and fish of Tropical Hill. The underwater creatures don't realize you're there until the very last minute and you can get up close to everything which truly feels like you are exploring this weird underwater world. That was fun, huh? It was really good. We saw an eagle right at the end. Yeah, really cool. Really good coral as well. Really cool formation and stuff. I personally find it more fun to dive on coral than on the line. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's more tough to duck out. Even while I'm waiting on the surface, there's like, oh, there's this nice fish and yeah. I think a big part of the line is like if you're going for depth, like there aren't the distractions of fish and things like that. Yeah, it's true. All right, we're ready to go. Back to the boat. Well, back to... Back to the dock. Are you sure? Oh yeah, it does look like quite a bit of stuff. You sure you don't want a hand? Okay. All righty, thank you so much. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, subscribe. Tune in next week to watch us join Lexi and Scott aboard their catamaran Incognito for a day sail and an amazing lunch on the beach. Wow, that's absolutely huge.