|
|
November 26th, Saturday - St. John, U.S.
Virgin Islands
|
As
the sun is setting over the picturesque islands of the
Northern Caribbean, the Boyle family is looking forward
to a relaxing evening by ourselves on our boat. It
seems we have been going non-stop since we arrived in
the Caribbean almost two weeks ago. We are in a
beautiful anchorage called Francis Bay on the northern
coast of St. John and plan on hanging out here for the
next couple of days.
The Baths proved to be well worth the trip last Sunday.
We secured Zia to one of the dozen mooring balls
available at the site and spent much of the day
exploring the nooks and crannies and pools of water
created by the huge boulders strewn along the shoreline.
No one ever explained to us how these SUV-sized rocks
wound up there, but they sure do make for a fun day of
exploring. In between the clusters of rocks are
strikingly white sand beaches. Unfortunately,
every one else thought it was a cool place too.
There were plenty of other tourists following the
winding path through the boulders with us. John
and Po Martin actually ran into some friends of theirs
in the middle of it! What a great "small world"
story.
We
made our way back to Cooper Island, actually sailing the
5 miles in a light breeze, for a sushi dinner on board
Blueprint Match. Michele had seen our pictures of
the tuna we caught on our ride down and offered to make
tuna rolls for us. We were amazed to watch her
whip up restaurant quality sushi rolls that we happily
wolfed down. There is a certain amount of gear
required to make sushi and Michele had it all. We
have plenty more tuna in the freezer so we are hoping to
hook up with them again!
Blueprint Match's galley is not the only thing that is
well equipped. Her arsenal of toys includes
a "third lung" which Paul offered to demonstrate to Joe
the next morning. It is a small inner tube holding
a gasoline powered compressor. It has two regulators
just like a scuba tank that are attached to 30 foot
hoses. You just hold the regulator in your
mouth and dive while towing the inner tube around.
It is a very simple way to cruise underwater. Most
of the interesting stuff to see is no deeper than 30
feet and although you are tethered to the surface, you
are unencumbered by a scuba tank. Joe and
Paul dove for an hour and saw some tortoises and plenty
of the ubiquitous snaggletooth barracudas on the reef.
After lunch at the Cooper Island beach bar, we were off
to the Bitter End on the Northeastern tip of Virgin
Gorda. This is where "Jaimie" will call home for
most of the winter. John will be traveling back
and forth between work in Annapolis and his family here.
Other friends, Bob and Kathy Wellen, who captain an
amazing 100ft Swan called Red Sky, were also expected at
the Bitter End on Monday. They had left from South
Carolina 6 days earlier and will also spend the winter
at the Bitter End. It is a resort property with
cottages for rent, a kid club, wind surfing, all sorts
of other small sailboats, a pool, etc, etc. They
have a small marina and offer memberships for boats
staying at the dock. We opted for a mooring ($25 a
night) since we don't plan on staying in one place that
long this winter. We'll go back and forth to visit
with our friends, but probably won't stay there long
enough to merit the $1000 membership fee!
The kids enjoyed a half a day of kid camp on Tuesday
while Joe and I lounged by the pool. We took the
night off and had a family dinner on the boat. The
kids were in bed by 7:30 and I'm embarrassed to say how
closely behind the adults followed. We all needed
the time off to recover from a grueling social schedule
that we had been keeping since arriving here on the
14th. It is great to have friends around to hang
out with, but it is hard to keep the pace up! We
are not as young as we used to be, after all.
It
was at a party well before we left Annapolis that we met
Kathy and Bruce Barlow. Kathy works with our good
friend, Adam Lewis. At a party at his house we
discovered that Kathy and Bruce would be in St. John
over Thanksgiving. We made plans back then to hook
up while they were down here and low and behold, it all
fell into place! We cleared out of customs in the
British Virgin Islands, making a special stop at Soper's
Hole in West End, Tortola, and cleared into the USVI in
Cruz Bay before making our way to Coral Bay on the
Southeastern corner of St. John. We anchored the
boat (it held on the first try!) and made our way to
Island Blues, the designated rendezvous spot. We
were a little surprised at not seeing a dinghy dock, but
luckily we were able to offload and find a place to tie
up without getting too wet. We were treated to a
fabulous dinner at the amazing house Kathy and Bruce
were sharing with their kids, Nicole and Steve, and
their friend Lori and her kids, Eric and Ryan. The
kids glued themselves to the TV set after dinner while
the adults risked life and limb to travel the 45 degree
hill back down to a local bar called Skinny Legs.
Coral Bay is a local's hangout and we enjoyed meeting
the characters who filled up the bar stools. Will
owns a house on St. John but works in New York. He
travels down here as often as he can to spend long
weekends on the island. Kathy and Bruce had met
Warren, the bar tender, over at Island Blues the night
before. We aren't sure exactly what his story is,
but he sure does get around! We keep expecting him
to show up here at the little campground restaurant!
At
long last, we reunited with our friends on Cenou on
Thanksgiving Day. The girls were over the moon to
see Celine and Anouk and we immediately hooked up for
lunch. We recounted our stories from the big
passage down, and shared knowing glances when talking
about the waves breaking over the cockpit, soaking the
poor soul who was on watch. Our plans for a pot
luck Thanksgiving dinner on Zia were quickly changed
once we realized that the restaurant that serves the
campground here was offering up the full deal for $23 a
head, $11 for kids under 12. We braved the
breaking surf in the dinghy and trekked up the long
staircase that winds through the jungle and up the
hillside to a wonderful turkey dinner. It wasn't
quite the same as a home cooked meal, but it was better
than the turkey breast lunch meat I had been planning on
serving!
Braving the surf on the way out was a little more
difficult in the dark. We took a good wave over
the bow of the dinghy that pretty much drenched us all,
but we made it out otherwise unscathed. One of the
other guests were not as lucky, as Claude and Rike spent
a good 15 minutes helping them bail out their upturned
boat and get it back out through the surf. We had
actually seen another dinghy suffer the same fate coming
into the beach before dinner, so we were very cautious.
Those little rollers don't look like much from the
beach, but they can sure wreak havoc on an unsuspecting
little inflatable.
The Maho Bay Campgrounds are part of the National Park
Service. They have several dozen small,
canvas-covered bungalows with Coleman stoves and coolers
that you can rent for $80 a night. I'm not sure
how many they sleep, but the set up at the park is
pretty amazing. The bungalows are scattered along
the hillside and connected by an extensive series of
wooden walkways and stairways that snake through the
jungle. The vegetation is lush and very green and
the tree frogs are everywhere. I'm sure there are
lots of other animals and insects that populate the
jungle, but you can't help but hear the tree frogs.
We haven't seen any yet, but we are hoping to before we
leave.
There are lots of good snorkeling spots and beautiful
white sandy beaches so we think we'll hang out for a few
more days. School is back on track so we are
hoping to catch up while all of you are out on
Thanksgiving break! Happy belated Thanksgiving to
you all. We have many things to be thankful for,
chief among them our friends.
With love,
Christy, Joe, Cassie and Juliana
Next entry
>>>>>>>
Many thanks to our
friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up
the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
|
|
