USVI Day 10 - Back to St. John.

Short journal entry for the last day, but lots of pictures. I never actually mentioned in the journal, but I think it was Day 6, as we were settled down in the bay we had all to ourselves in Vieques, when I said to my fellow Kinjites, "Isn't it great that Island Yachts had that 10 days for the price of 7 deal?" I know that sounds like a badly-written ad, but it was so, so nice to be on Day 6 and looking forward to another nice day of sun and warm air and blue water, and then another and another after that, instead of having to run back to St. Thomas the next day so that we could hand our boat back bright and early on Day 8. 10 days was magnificent - enough time to really unwind, get into the rhythms of being on a boat, savor the experience properly. It was still a little sad to be sailing back to St. Thomas on the 25th, knowing we'd be flying back to our normal lives on the 26th - but 7 would've been far too short. 

1/25 - Last full day on the boat, so time to get back to the environs of Red Hook. Wind was nice again, so we did quite a bit of sailing. I started the morning with a search for a knife we'd accidentally dropped overboard while washhing dishes the night before - my mullet buddies were delighted to see those yellow fins again, followed me around the whole time I was in but were most unhelpful with the lost knife, which remained there. Off the mooring at 8, under sail by 8:25.

The sail was lovely, lots of tacking and splashing as we headed upwind. TQ did most of the driving, I took lots of pictures - spent a lot of time trying to get the perfect sploosh picture (when the bow hits a wave and the spray goes flying), and also got some nice shots of Ship Rock, and the airport, and planes, and a schooner out for a sail.

No moorings in Christmas Cove, and we just didn't want to spend too much of our last day fighting with the anchors again (and we now had enough wind that an improperly set anchor was going to be a big problem) so we came on over to St. John and have picked up a mooring ball in Caneel Bay. Lovely spot; my one disappointment here is that although the Spitfire is here on her mooring, and a few items left out to dry on the lifelines say that Capt. Greg and Capt. Barbara are around, they weren't aboard when TQ and I took the dinghy to drop our mooring fee in the payment box. Too bad!

Last night on the boat, so we'll have dinner off of whatever's left.

Note of explanation about the folks on the Spitfire: Capt. Greg was the one who first hired me to work on the schooner Adirondack early in the summer in 2002 - he was hanging out with my Pier 63 friends John and Jean on their boat, the Laissez-Faire, one afternoon when I stopped by; he was talking about how he was a little bit short staffed on the schooner for the season, as of yet, and then he looked at me and said "Would you like to work on the Adirondack?" and I said "I don't know how to sail" and he said "That's OK, we'll teach you" and that's exactly what happened. It was great, I'd been going through a bit of a bleak spot in the wake of both September 11th and my resignation from Manhattan Kayak over the winter (voluntary but horribly depressing) and a part-time job working on one of the prettiest charter boats in the harbor was just the thing to set me back on an even keel. Capt. Greg ran the boat, Capt. Barbara handled the office, I really enjoyed working for them. They eventually left the Adirondack when they got the opportunity to run the Spitfire (a lovely Alden sloop) at the VERY exclusive Caneel Bay Resort year round; the timing was extra-good for them because about the same time, the rules at the 79th St. Boat Basin were changing to be much more restrictive of liveaboards (they'd handled their seasonal housing needs by living on their boat, sailing south in the fall and north in the spring). I haven't been very good about keeping in touch with them and since Caneel Bay hadn't been part of the plans, I hadn't even told them I was going to be there - but when we did end up there, oh, how I would've LOVED to surprise them! I actually kept an eye out for activity as long as we were up, but they must have gone out for dinner with friends somewhere. Their dinghy was back in the morning, but at that point we had to be getting the boat back to Red Hook. Another time, maybe.
Anyways - here are pix from the last full day. Click for slideshow view! Leaving Culebra under dramatic clouds, then sailing back to St. Thomas, passing Sail Rock, then the airport and harbor at Charlotte Amalie (amazing the size of the cruise ships in there), and finishing at Caneel Bay, St. John. 

USVI Day 9 - Culebra - Culebrita - Culebra

1/24 - Another dawn start. Today, we were headed for the neighboring island of Culbrita and we'd been told by one of our guides at the bioluminescent bay that there were plenty of mooring balls but that it was a very popular weekend day trip for boats from Puerto Rico, so you had to get there early to snag one. We had a fine, if short, sail over, it's only about 5 miles away so we'd planned to motor over, but we actually had a nice breeze and were happy to sail instead. 

The first spot we checked, on the southwest side of the island, didn't have any mooring balls, so we headed on around to the other side where we found a few boats already moored and plenty of mooring balls. It was day use only, but last night's mooring was so nice we were fine with going back to that.

We moored and hiked up to the lighthouse that stands at the top of the island. 

Neat old ruin - sturdy brick, with tall windows and black and white stone tiles on the floor; we all thought this must have been a pretty neat place to be a lighthouse keeper. 

TQ, Kat, Dave, Jenn and I all looked up in the old tower and then walked over to look at the view near the modern structure that replaced the old light, 

and then we heard Lenore call "Hello!" and turned to find her waving at us from the top of the tower!

- so then of course we all had to take turns going up there (not enough room for more than a couple at a time).

Lots of critters on the hike - a flock of goats, and tons of hermit crabs, and big shy lizards, plus some interesting giant cacti. And of course lovely views from up on top. 

A few shots from the walk back down

Eventually we headed back down, and when we got back to the boat, Lenore and I decided to go snorkeling again. We swam over to the big reef on the west side of the bay, which turned out (surprise surprise) to be another very nice snorkel spot The water clarity was pretty good, the reef was healthy (and shallow enough that I didn't feel like we were going to get run over by an incoming boat, of which there was getting to be a steady stream), and there were plenty of I saw a new kind of fish for this trip, trumpetfish, in blue and yellow. 

I started getting peckish pretty quickly though, it had seemed a little early for lunch when we got back from our hike. I'd just told Lenore that I was ready to head back to the boat, TQ and Kat showed up in the dinghy - while Lenore and I had been snorkelling, that steady stream of incoming boats had steadily filled up the bay, and the decision had been made to run back to Culebra a little earlier than originally planned. 

Another nice but short sail brought us back to the same mooring we'd left behind at dawn; we picked it up around 3 and then spent a quiet afternoon there swimming, snorkelling, and floating around with pool noodles and refreshing beverages. I actually decided to go for a swim swim, I'd mostly just been snorkeling but since this was such a nice quiet place with such lovely water temperatures, I decided to get out my goggles and do a little distance - don't know how far I went, it was measured out in "First I'll go to that boat over there, and then I'll cut over to that mooring ball, and then I'll go back to the Kinja". As I approached the Kinja, TQ came out to meet me - I wish I'd had a camera on me because he was floating on his back, wrapped up in a pool noodle as a sort of floating armchair, with his Tilley hat and his shades on and a beer in one hand and his camera in the other. He was wearing flippers and started motoring along next to me, grinning and taking pictures - do you know how hard it is to swim when you're cracking up? First few strokes with him I kept stopping to laugh - finally I just closed my eyes for a few strokes to get back into the rhythm and we went on back to the boat together.

Dinner on the boat, using up the leftovers. More turtles around!

Another very, very nice day.

Click here to read more about the Culebrita Lighthouse.