We're actually sitting on the west side of a little island called
Water Island, which is actually inside St. Thomas Harbour, or the port of
Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. Two large
cruise ships, the Royal Princess and the Carnival Glory, are going by at
sunset. Royal Princess played
"Love Boat" with their horns, while Carnival Glory is broadcasting a
pretty acoustic guitar with a live singer that sounds familiar but we can't place.
We've seen Walter Piescik and Dana Dornebush into a cab at
the airport after a very fun week's visit, and shopped for more provisions with
Kristin of Silk Pajamas, and have had a lunch, and that's enough for a day. Walter and Dana are from Boston. We met them here in the islands on their own boat "Madness". Madness is on the hard in Boston waiting for snow to melt!
However, we see from the calendar that we have been naughty
with weblogs, and, since we have a signal, here she comes.
We arrived in St. John, USVI, on the 13th, after a rather
boring 15 hours of mostly motorsailing across the Anegada Passage. We snuck a few hours of sleep behind an
island of the BVIs before drifting across to check in before lunch in Cruz Bay,
on the far west side of St. John. We
found a very tight place to anchor in the bay, in an area where you are allowed
only 3 hours, and cleared customs and happily found a grocery store to provision. After that, we just cooled our heels in
nearby bays until it was time to pick up Dana and Walter on Wednesday, the
18th. During this time, we were able to
spend evenings with Joanna and Bill of s/v Baidarka, and Kristin and Terry of
Silk Pajamas, so it wasn't total isolation and "cooling our heels"
then, was it?
Still, picking up our two guests was the start of an
action-packed week that had us in quite a few bays, snorkel adventures, hikes,
and a few lovely eateries as well. We
had a wonderful time and got truly caught up.
It had been a few years since we had seen them.
At this point, we intend to continue exploring St. John, and
will start with an easy sail back to that lovely nature park island
tomorrow. We intend to tell you a little
of the history and the geography of the area in a future blog. St. John is like no other island we've been to. It's almost all nature park with mooring balls to protect the seabed.
We finally got rid of our wheat moth problem and haven't seen any signs for 12 days now. Let's hope that never happens again!
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| hiking in St. John USVI |
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| Walter and Dana and Laurie |
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| Playing on the beach |
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| Cute creatures people have made out of coral |
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| Laurie posing |
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| This barracuda (4 foot long) hung around under and around our boat for a full day! We nicknamed him Barry and enticed others to swim to our boat to take a peek. |
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| Walter was brave enough to swim with him to get close ups. |
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| Petroglyphs on a trail in Reef Bay dating back to around 500 AD with the Taino Indians |
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| Can you see the resemblance? |
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| 2 stunning spotted eagle rays that kept our attention for more than a half hour! |
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