Top Secret stuff from sea

A lot has gone down in the past few days to fill all yall in on.  First of all, I have a friend the ship from Arizona, she goes to SMU.  After we got back on the ship in Mauritius she noticed bruises on her hips and she said she never really bruises.  Over the past 3 days she has noticed more and more bruising all over her body.  She got blood drawn and tested and finds out that it is some blood disease called ITP (unknown cause for low platelet count).  There is a very slight chance that it could be some sort of leukemia.  So 2 days ago when she had it tested they told her she would have to leave the ship and go home from India, because it is important she get it taken care of.  Then yesterday we increased our speed because it became more serious.  We anchored this morning about a half mile off the coast of a tiny US Navy base island in the middle of the Indian Ocean called Diego Garcia.  US and British Military came on the ship through the 2nd deck gangway, where I was waiting with a few other kids to see Sophie off.  It was a pretty amazing thing to see how seriously the two militaries took it.  They had their huge guns and even a Schatzi on board.  I went up to the 5th deck to look around and our ship was surrounded by about 9 of those small fast rescue boats, a few of which had machine gun turrets mounted on the side.  This island is very protected and apparently a place which the captain has wanted to stop for a long time because it is so secretive.  This is a place where I will truly never be again in my entire life and it is amazing to think that here in the middle of nowhere, there is a US military base, with Americans stationed.  Anyways Sophie and one other girl with an infection, were taken off of the Explorer onto one of the military ships and brought to Diego Garcia island, where they will be flown directly to Singapore to get treated.  Hopefully she will be okay but her Semester at Sea is over we think.  As terrible as it is, the situation she is going through right now is so cool with the military taking her on their top secret island and flying her all the way to Singapore.  She truly is in the best hands possible.
Also, I wish I was up last night because apparently some cool things were happening on deck 5.  My friend was up there at around 2am and said there were men dressed in all white carrying fire hoses around.  She went up there and asked what they were doing and they told her that they were going through a pirate territory and on lookout with the extremely high pressured hoses.   They told her that was the other reason we were moving so fast as well because our ship moving at full speed of nearly 28 knots can basically out run any ship on the sea and we were trying to get through to the safe military area.  Pretty amazing that you hear about stuff like this all the time on the news and meanwhile the ship I am on is taking precautions against it.