Crazy courageous morning

Monday mornings are usually so boring and annoying but this one was different. I was back at courageous sailing center for the second time, this time I didn't get lost. That morning I was determined to catch anything so I partnered up with two campers to teach them how to fish. They were about 12 and 13 years old and taller than me, but who isn't? Anyway we ran out of bait that morning and so we used hot dogs but the girls and I knew we wouldn't catch anything so they wanted to check out the crab traps on the dock. We put our life jackets on and head down. The traps had been there for years so they were a struggle to pull up. We weren't just pulling the trap, we were pulling mud, sea squirts, and seaweed. There were so many crabs and we caught two baby spider crabs. Super cute. Further down there was an even older lobster trap. You could tell it's old by the rope that was crusty and dirty. It took more than 3 people to pull it up. Andrea and I tried pulling it up ourselves but we couldn't so we gathered as much people as we could to help. Eventually the entire camp got involved.

It went downhill from there. We tied another rope to the rope that was attached to the trap and pulled. We threw it over the railing where the campers were, everyone grabbed on and pulled and pulled and pulled until... *SNAP*. The line broke! Luckily one of the counselors caught it before it went all the way into the water. We re-attach the ropes and pull harder and *SNAP* and with that it was gone forever. The team effort put into it was wonderful and we were all so sad we didn't get to see what was inside the trap, if there was anything. It was one of the most exciting moments at courageous.

Challenging Day

Hi everyone,

So last Monday at Courageous, instead of Grace, we had Kristen join us there for the day. Kristen had no idea of how things at Courageous works because it's a little different from other sites. Every Monday we get a new group of kids. So last Monday when Kristen joined us, she thought we had bait. With that being said, we had no bait to start off the morning with some fishing like usual. As Kristen ran to Tedeschi to grab some bait, Kharlyiah approached me with two girls that wanted to go down the dock to pull up multiple lobster traps that we have there. The four of us put on our life jacket and walked down the ramp to the dock. When we pulled up three of the old traps, one of the girls pointed out a fourth trap that none of us knew existed. Apparently, that fourth lobster trap had not been pulled in atleast two years so now this is when the challenge begins. 

I was not dressed comfortably for that challenge but I did not care. All I worried about was trying to pull up that trap because we were all anxious to see what was in it. When I tried pulling it up alone, I just couldn't because it was extremely heavy. All of the girls decided to help and it still would not come up so we thought it was getting stuck under dock. We kept trying and trying and trying and did not give up. Some of the staffs from Courageous tried helping us and they gave up. Instead of me giving up I came up with an idea of tying a rope. The staffs from Courageous ran to get a rope so Kristen came down the dock and tied the rope to the lobster trap's rope. Now this is when we put all of the kids at work. We threw the rope up across the pier and had atleast 15 people pulling the trap from up there. They were able to pull up most of it but the rope from the lobster trap snapped. Luckily, myself and a staff from Courageous who was still down the dock, were able to save the trap from sinking. Now this is where it gets more challenging. The two of us are holding on to a little bit of rope trying to save the really heavy lobster trap but all you could hear was me screamming for my fingers that was getting scraped off and yelling for some guy staffs to comw help us out because I couldn't hold on to the rope anymore. A guy staff from Courageous came down and tried tying the rope they had to the little bit of rope on the lobster trap that was left and I dont know how he did it but he just did it. So we threw the rope up and across the pier again and had the kids, Sam and Courageous staffs pull it up one more time and that's when the old lobster rope snapped again. This time we were out of luck in saving the trap becausw there really was no rope left to grab. The lobster trap sunk after 45 minutes of trying to pull it up and that's when we all gave up. I could not thank the kids and their staffs enough for the challenge. This was the most fun and productive day we ever had at Courageous.

Until the next challenge,

- Andrea Lopes :)

Week one

Week One of the summer is always fun and exciting. I was working at Courageous Sailing in the morning, then in the afternoon we'd go to Carson Beach. The first day, we didn't have as many kids due to the fact that it was raining and it was humid.

Fishing at Courageous

But as the day went by, the sun started to come and we started fishing with the Step 1 kids (Younger kids). The day was slow, we didn't catch anything, but the kids still had fun. The said the most fun part of fishing was the casting. After the fishing we played games with the kids. We played games such as "uncle sam" and "taping". Overall it was a really fun day, and kids said they had fun and can't wait to come back next week.

Some of the campers at Courageous

Till next time,
Abdi