Life lately has been a whirlwind of holiday celebrations, sailing, and extra gusty Christmas winds.
We spent a solid week or so in total celebratory mode over at Christmas Cove, St. Thomas. …First there was a laid back Christmas, followed by Jereme’s birthday where we packed 11 bodies onto our tiny sailboat for a fun birthday bash, and then one seriously hilarious New Year’s Eve celebration complete with lighting expired flares and inflating old life rafts a la Survivorman style. You can read our bloggy friends recounts here and here. Good times!
And after all of ^^that^^ holiday craziness, our plans were to spend a day getting down to business with a few regular boat chores before sailing on to a safe harbor in St. John where we planned to wait out the blow over the next few days.
Well, you know what they say? A sailor’s plans are written in the sand. On a windy day. Lol.
Our plans started out just fine. We left Christmas Cove and moseyed our way over to Red Hook, St. Thomas to fill our tanks and grab a few groceries.
Unfortunately, that routine stop in Red Hook took a turn for the worse when we popped a hole in our dink at the fuel dock just as we were about to fill our jerry cans. Just dandy! We had to drop everything, fly back to the boat, put a temporary patch on the dinghy, and wait it out while the emergency patch dried before we could even finish up lugging water and supplies back to the boat.
Instead of it being just a quick trip in and out of Red Hook with enough daylight hours left to sail on to St. John, our delayed boat chores had us motoring back to Christmas Cove just before the sun set.
With our original plans now screwed, we decided to mix it up a bit more and, instead of heading to St. John, we figured it might make more sense to head in the opposite direction, downwind, and sail over to the big cruise ship harbor of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. We (ignorantly) assumed this would be a really great anchorage to wait out the heavy winds over the next few days.
So that next morning with winds already beginning to pick up, we woke up early and set out to make the casual 7-mile trip west to Charlotte Amalie. By 11am, we were rolling into the cruise ship harbor and were underwhelmed to say the least as we pulled in. We expected much better wind protection and were really quite surprised to find it wasn’t nearly as protected as we would’ve thought. We also weren’t overly thrilled with the idea of having to hang in this crowded, kinda dirty, and somewhat noisy anchorage with ferries and cruise ships running in and out of there on the regular.
So we did what any not-so-sane person would do and decided to backtrack our route and head back upwind PLUS tack on an additional 15 miles or so to make it all the way to the very east end of St. John — to an anchorage we had visited a few weeks prior and one we loved and knew for sure would be perfect to wait out the strong winds blowing through. We quickly dropped anchor in Charlotte Amalie just so we could better prep our boat for a more serious passage east (move the dinghy from the davits onto the deck, that sort of thing) and just as quickly weighed anchor to head back east.
Although we knew conditions were worsening by the hour and we’d be beating into the wind and waves for the rest of the day, this decision turned out to be the best one yet!!!
Conditions weren’t amazing that’s for sure, but they really weren’t uncomfortable either…and that, my friends, makes all the difference in the world. It was surprisingly a rather enjoyable sail over to Princess Bay (part of Coral Bay) St. John. We made the total 30-mile sail that day without issue and did it quickly no less! Yay us. :)))
We grabbed a mooring in the super secluded Princess Bay, where we were the only boat (minus our friends on SeaRah who joined us there for one night). We spent the next few days doing a whole lot of nothing. We put a legit patch on the dinghy, we gave Jereme a much-needed hair and beard cut, I organized some of my photo files on my external hard drives, Jer completed some required continuing education (online) for his professional engineer’s license renewal (fun times, lol), we dined on our good friends Chloe + Stefan’s boat, and we did lots of swimming, beach-combing, reading, photo editing, and music listening that we do on the regular!
We ended up splitting our time between Princess and Hansen Bays, two totally different scenes when it comes to anchorages and both fabulous for different reasons. After a few days in the SUPER secluded Princess Bay, we wanted a change of pace and sailed around the corner to Hansen Bay, which is a bit more beachy if that makes any sense at all. We spent the rest of our time enjoying Hansen Bay, the cute turtles that were everywhere, along with good swimming, and nice beaches that surrounded us.
>>Thanks for visiting LAHOWIND sailing blog! We’d love for you to get to know us and follow our story as we attempt to navigate a whole new world of sailing, as we cruise the Caribbean. …Learn more about us and our sailing + cruising adventures.
Posted in Boat Life, Caribbean, Sailing Blog, Sailing Love, U.S. Virgin IslandsTags: Caribbean, Coral Bay, Cruising, Hansen Bay, LahoWind, Princess Bay, Sailing Blog, SeaRah, USVI, Virgin Islands
^^hi.^^
1. We put a hole in the dinghy. Again. Don’t even ask. It was a rather annoying broken off and rusted screw that did us in at the fuel dock in Red Hook. :(((
2. On a brighter note, we were hunkered down around Coral Bay, St. John waiting out some crazy Christmas winds last week, giving us a chance to properly patch the dink (still a work in progress) and lay around while we continue to enjoy life as cruisers.
3. OMG, I almost forgot. Jereme did away with his lumberjack beard this past week!!! That beard is finito!!! I think we were both getting a little sick of it so we had one helluva hair cut fiesta at a tiny beach in St. John. What, you don’t do your own DIY haircuts on the beach? ;))
4. Have I mentioned that we are on a very interesting new fajita kick? They’ve totally become our new staple dinner since we pretty much always have tortillas, cheese, and sour cream on board. It just makes sense, you know? We use all three of those ingredients religiously around here. And I’ve found over the past several months as live aboard cruisers that peppers (and obviously onions) seem to last longer than most other veggies do around these parts, so we always stock up on those bad boys. Throw in any kind of protein — steak, chicken, fish — and you’ve got yourself a fajita dinner my friends. Usually we happen to have an avocado, salsa, and cilantro on board too making for one great little boat dinner.
5. That being said, I should mention that since becoming liveaboards, Jereme has finally decided he actually likes peppers + onions. Thank god!!!!!! He used to say they gave him heartburn so I went 7 years trying to avoid recipes that were heavy on either. It’s funny how things change, isn’t it. ;))
6. Has anyone tried the new (I think) confetti pop tarts? Yes, I realize we are far from health nuts around here. ;)) As much as regular confetti cupcakes are amazingly delicious, these, my friends, are so not. Don’t waste your time.
7. Why are so many of my Tuesday Tell-Tales about food? #personalprob
8. Our wifi situation continues to be a little bleak here in the Virgins. I’ve officially run out of Kindle books and have moved on to my emergency backup stash of paper books. :(((
9. Oh, and hello, did you see who made Sail Far Live Free’s cut of best sailing blogs?!?!?!?! So awesome! We love SFLF and couldn’t be more thrilled that a few folks find our bloggity blog interesting enough to read. Thanks for the blog love guys!
Happy Tuesday!!!
>>Thanks for visiting LAHOWIND sailing blog! We’d love for you to get to know us and follow our story as we attempt to navigate a whole new world of sailing, as we cruise the Caribbean. …Learn more about us and our sailing + cruising adventures.
Posted in Boat Life, Caribbean, Sailing Blog, Sailing Love, U.S. Virgin IslandsTags: Caribbean, Cruising, LahoWind, Sailing Blog, St. John, Tuesday Tell-Tales, USVI, Virgin Islands
Or so I thought.
Turns out, what I’ve been calling waterMELON bay all this time is actually waterLEMON bay. I know, crazy! ;))
Whatever you want to call this place, it has honestly some of the prettiest water in all of St. John! At least from what we saw after our tour around the island in December where we stopped at ten or so different anchorages along the way.
Waterlemon Bay might not technically even be an anchorage, but it is next door neighbors to the more popular Leinster Bay, and also home to Waterlemon Cay beach.
When we reached the northwest coast of the island, we really had quite the view of the British Virgin Islands with Tortola staring back at us from across the Sir Francis Drake channel. I had no idea how close the BVIs actually are to the USVIs. So close that I was bouncing back and forth between regular American AT&T cell service and the international BVI Digicel and Lime services.
The boat traffic (mostly sailboats and catamarans) here in the Virgin Islands is crazy too! We’ve never seen anything like it. When you look out on the horizon between islands, all you see is one massive line of sails moving about. It’s nuts!
Anyhoo, we spent a short afternoon dinghying around the gorgeous bay and scoping it all out before making the excruciating 6-mile trek (I’m obviously kidding on the excruciating part) over to Maho Bay…just in time for the resident bay hosts to greet us at our boat with their handy money envelope. Any USVI cruisers out there know what I’m talking about. ;))
Bay hosts are basically citizen volunteers that police a bunch of the park anchorages throughout St. John. They specifically occupy the bays with National Park Service mooring balls, where the going rate of a mooring is $15 per night. Not all of the anchorages have a bay host at the moment, but you’ll know one when you see one. They typically fly a green park service flag and will, without a doubt, dinghy over to your boat to inform you of any and all park rules along with making sure you are aware of the mooring ball fee…as if the huge sticker on the mooring itself wasn’t a dead give away. Or better yet, the floating “mooring pay station” in the middle of the anchorage. But I digress.
We spent a nice afternoon soaking up the sites around Maho Bay, which is also insanely gorgeous by the way. After taking Oliver to shore late at night and meeting face to face with yet another beach deer, we headed back to the boat and found ourselves engulfed in massive tarpon swimming around the boat!
Without any cool underwater lights like some of the fancier boats we see, we busted out our trusty spotlight to watch the action go down. There must’ve been a hundred or more tarpon lingering in the waters below our boat. Bright neon orangey-red eyes stared back at us as we spotlighted all of the hungry tarpon lingering below. Writing this, it’s funny to note what having no internet or television access can do to an individual. Spotlighting tarpon for 30+ minutes becomes our choice entertainment for the night. Lol.
And this is where my recount of our visit to Maho Bay gets good.
The next mooring we dinghied ourselves over to the floating “Mooring Pay Station” to drop off our $15 check that covered our single night stay in the bay.
After carefully filling out the check, completing all the fields on the official envelope, sealing up the envelope nicely and then handing it off to Jer to deposit in the locked dropbox, what do you think happened next? Jer accidentally dropped the freaking envelope into the water as he was attempting to stuff it into the dropbox. Seriously?
Let’s just hope wet checks dry fine and no one’s worse for the wear because we went ahead and deposited our soggy envelope. Sorry Mr. and Mrs. Bay Host. We will try harder next time. :)))
>>Thanks for visiting LAHOWIND sailing blog! We’d love for you to get to know us and follow our story as we attempt to navigate a whole new world of sailing, as we cruise the Caribbean. …Learn more about us and our sailing + cruising adventures.
Posted in Caribbean, Sailing Blog, Sailing Love, Travel, U.S. Virgin IslandsTags: Bay Hosts, Caribbean, Cinnamon Bay, Cruising, LahoWind, Leinster Bay, Maho Bay, Mooring Pay Stations, National Park Service, Sailing Blog, St. John, USVI, Virgin Islands, Watermelon Bay
(Fish Bay, St. John)
Another day, another plush dog toy nearly lost at sea. This is our life. Lol. And some of the silliest memories I never want to forget.
Oliver does this amazing thing where he just exists and makes our lives better because of it. And that is precisely why we put up with his dropping of dog toys overboard every so often, and usually at the most inopportune times possible. ;))
Mr. Lion was nearly a goner just the other day before we swooped in to save his already-mangled little body.
If you have ever met Oliver in person, whether on our boat, at home in Naples, wherev, you know he has this hilarious personality trait that necessitates his needing to grab and possessively carry a toy for any and all excitement that presents itself. And to a dog, just about anything qualifies as an exciting event. ;)) If he hears a dinghy passing, then he immediately runs and grabs a toy and races up and into the cockpit to show off said toy to that unsuspecting cruiser. If Jer and I come back from being out somewhere, then Oliver is waiting for us at the top rung of the companionway stairs with one of his fav toys in his mouth. Without fail. It’s just his thing. He wants to show you, me, whoever, his toys. Always.
Well, as we were cracking some Foster’s cans at sunset to head out and dinghy around Fish Bay, Oliver was excited by the sheer idea of an afternoon dinghy adventure and decided that was the perfect time to release Mr. Lion (who he happened to be carrying in his mouth) back into the wild (i.e. drop him overboard).
We scrambled with our beers, jumped in the dinghy, and set out to save poor Lion before any untimely deaths occurred. Luckily, our rescue mission was a complete success and, after drying out for a few days in the cockpit, Mr. Lion is now resting comfortably back in the toy bin with his other stuffed animal friends. ;))
^^the start of a regular afternoon.^^
^^just minding our own business as Lion gets swept out to sea.^^
^^attempting to grab him, but it’s too late.^^
^^rescue in action.^^
^^rescue mission complete. kisses for all.^^
^^now we can sit back and relax.^^
^^finally getting a chance to pop open my own beer. sheesh!^^
>>Thanks for visiting LAHOWIND sailing blog! We’d love for you to get to know us and follow our story as we attempt to navigate a whole new world of sailing, as we cruise the Caribbean. …Learn more about us and our sailing + cruising adventures.
Posted in Boat Dog, Boat Life, Caribbean, Sailing Blog, U.S. Virgin IslandsTags: Boat Dog, Caribbean, Cruising, LahoWind, Oliver, Poodle, Sailing Blog, St. John, USVI, Virgin Islands
Fish Bay is one of those smaller overlooked anchorages that if cruisers looked a little closer they just might fall in love with the best kept secret around!
In St. John, there are tons of very notable anchorages, each extremely gorgeous in it’s own right and many of which are chock full of easy-to-use National Park Service mooring balls. Fish Bay, however, is kind of off the radar.
We spent our first three nights in St. John at Fish Bay, where most of the bay lies just barely outside the National Park boundary. As such, you are actually allowed to anchor here. This is pretty awesome considering many of the other “anchorages” do not allow anchoring and have hefty $15 daily price tags tied to their lovely moorings.
Fish Bay is a bit on the small side with no public access or dinghy dock since most of the bay is surrounded by private residences, vacation rentals, that sort of thing. (Side note, those private residences supplied us with some pretty decent open wifi. Just saying.)
We found a small beach that was perfect to land the dinghy and let Oliver use. Funny thing though about that beach is that it turned out to be home to a bevy of wild animals at night!
Seriously.
It had us packing multiple flashlights along with a machete on night two after being accosted by a group of beady neon eyes on our first night trip to shore for Oliver. We were taken aback (and totally unprepared) to say the least when we were met with several sets of glowing eyes staring back at us the first night we took Oliver to land (surprisingly we haven’t had that happen yet — that we know of at least).
After racing back to the dinghy and skipping Oliver’s potty break altogether on night one, we busted out some extra gear and even spotlighted the beach from the boat before heading to shore again. Turns out, those eyes were connected to several deer who made repeat appearances every night of our stay.
I did a quick Google search and, turns out, St. John is home to lots of deer, donkey, and even mongoose! So random. Jereme actually spotted a mongoose over at Great Lameshur Bay, but we have yet to see any donkeys.
It sure was a nice change of pace to find ourselves as the only cruisers/boaters in the anchorage all three nights we spent tucked in this great little harbor.
Our days were spent paddle boarding around the bay. Scoping out tons of baby sharks and other random fish. Watching TONS of turtles pop their heads out of the water literally all day long. And we snorkeled some pretty nice rocks along the outside of the bay that were home to lots of pretty fish and coral.
Fish Bay was definitely one of our favorite anchorages so far in the USVI.
>>Thanks for visiting LAHOWIND sailing blog! We’d love for you to get to know us and follow our story as we attempt to navigate a whole new world of sailing, as we cruise the Caribbean. …Learn more about us and our sailing + cruising adventures.
Posted in Boat Life, Caribbean, Sailing Blog, Sailing Love, U.S. Virgin IslandsTags: Anchorages, Caribbean, Cruising, Fish Bay, LahoWind, Sailboat, Sailing Blog, St. John, USVI, Virgin Islands
|
While it sounds like it was a bit of an ordeal to get there – it also sounds like it was well worth it! Everything always works out. Also sounds like a heavenly few days, particularly in comparison to December in the States. (even this southern “warm” part of the South…)
we have enjoyed following your blog through the past year. It gibes us the oppurtunity to libe vicariously through your pictures and stories. We have two sets of personal friends who arem oir home marina on Lake Ontario (just outside Toronto) that are sailing the Caribean now. So if you happen to run into SV Slow Waltz and Sv Mythago stop by and say hi, some really good people.
The pictures you post are refreshing as we sit inside with the fireplace on and -20c this morning.
If our plans come to reality we will hopefully be out there in pur Catalina 380 in 4 years or so.
Keep posting as it is enjoyable to read and experience through your blog