I would like to make a very strong safety recommendation : I notice that you wear open toed footwear: flip flops when you are climbing around sharp surfaces, like coral and wrecked boats. Please, please, please don't do this! In my 2 years out there, I saw many colleagues scrape or cut their feet – ever so slightly. In that climate and with the tendency to go in and out of the water regularly, it is a great way to develop a serious and very painful infection that takes months to clear.

I saw this happen again and again, and I was gasping and wincing watching you guys climb over all that rusty sharp-edged metal and coral.

May I suggest very strongly that whenever you are ashore, you wear something that covers your feet and toes – a reef runner type of shoe. Something that will protect your toes and heels from being scraped. Your skin is the battle ground, and your feet are precious. You can't sail if you are limping around with an infected foot. If you break your skint, in those latitudes, you MUST cover it and treat with antibiotics immediately before things get out of hand, like I witnessed many times. Up in the high latitudes, (North America, Scandinavia) you can get away without doing this because the cold water keeps the bugs down. Tropical waters are breeding grounds for them.You can get scrapes on the outside and back of your foot that you don't see or choose to ignore in norther waters, that will most certainly become infected and very painful in tropical waters. Then you're out of action for days.

I know it's time consuming and frustrating to put proper footwear on each time when you're eager to get ashore, but compare that to the time and pain of mending a cut or seeing to an infection, and it's really a sensible investment of time.