Sailing the Virgin Islands
KWC ‘s 2010 Winter Term (Jan. 4-22) included a class called Leadership Through Sailing. Veteran sailor and criminal justice professor Ken Ayers took three students to the Virgin Islands for the trip of a lifetime. Below are words and photos describing their trip. (Stay tuned to KWConnect for regular updates.)
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Day One
(from the perspective of Professor Ken Ayers)
We set sail from St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. For the students, this was their first time in the Caribbean and their first time aboard a sailboat. Each arrive wide-eyed and full of anticipation of the adventure that lay before them.
On day one we set sail. Leaving St. Thomas to our stern, we set a heading South by Southeast. With St. Croix to our South and Puerto Rico to the west, we headed out into the Caribbean Sea. Light winds made our first day out easy for the students – there was no sea sickness aboard.
By mid-afternoon we arrived at a small island just south of St. Thomas – Buck Island. We picked up a mooring and settled in for the evening. First on the agenda was teaching two of the three students how to snorkel; within 15 minutes they were off to discover the wonders that are below the crystal clear water, including fish, coral, a sea turtle and an old wreck of a day long ago.
Buck Island is now part of the U.S. National Park service. It is an uninhabited island with a lighthouse, a bird sanctuary and good snorkeling, but the history of the island is a story of human misery. Prior to 1845, this island was named Buck because of the slave trade. St. Thomas, like many large Caribbean Islands, was very active in the business of slave trading. The slave ships would arrive at Buck Island’s natural harbor, unload the male slaves (the bucks) and send the women and children into St. Thomas to be sold while the males were left on Buck Island to be sold later.
As we sat at anchor that evening, we could sense the anguish of the families who had been separated, never to be together again.
Check out more photos in the gallery below:
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