We
have said goodbye to Quincy and Sarah, left them at the ferry in
Cruz Bay, St. John, on their way to St. Thomas, to sample shore
plumbing, and get cleaned up for their flight home tomorrow. Just
when you get the crew properly trained, they leave. Isn't it always
like that?
We had a lovely historic visit in St.
Croix. We were running errands and exploring, and had split up,
so when I found myself back by the dinghy dock, I just habitually
checked the dinghy. Which was not where we left it, but had been
untied and shoved in the corner. Fortunately, it had not gone
awol, or been damaged, so I pulled it over to another section
of the dinghy dock and tied it on. When we all reconnoitered,
I told the others about the dinghy, so after we explored the
old fort, and before we had lunch, I said, I'll just check on
the dinghy, which was being untied by a local, as I spoke. We
all walked over and looked annoyed and outraged, at a local who
claimed that this was his reserved spot, although there are no
indications anywhere that any spots are reserved. This adventure
put some of us in a bad mood, and left us feeling less than completely
fond of St. Croix. We also started locking the dinghy to the
dock.
But the historical stuff on St. Croix is truly great.
The old fort, and the old government buildings are quite lovely. Also, this island
had the largest hardware store we have seen, and produced for me the much desired
oven thermometer. We also found some other supplies, including new swimming trunks
for Lance, because both of his had pretty much self destructed. Instead of renting
a car and doing a land tour, we decided to sail over to Buck Island, which is
National Park land. It has a snorkeling trail on a truly marvelous reef that
is called a Marine Garden. The anchoring spot is on a lovely beach, where one
party was photographing a model in various swim suits. They asked us not to walk
behind her on the beach, because they didn't want footprints in the sand showing
up in the pictures. Everyone else finished their swimming and snorkeling and
left, so Eaux Vives was the only boat in the anchorage. We had a beautiful and
peaceful evening in a truly beautiful spot.
The next morning, we sailed all the way back to the BVI,
6-7 hours on one tack. Over the next few days, we showed Quincy and Sarah some
of our favorite spots:
Little Harbour on Peter Island, The Baths and Drakes Anchorage on Virgin Gorda,
and we hit all the anchorages on Jost Van Dyke. New to us was Sandy Cay, a lovely
island off JVD, with a botanical tour of the
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island replete with spectacular
views where we took a leisurely circumperabulation resulting in many photos which
you will see in the next batch. We had a lovely sail circumnavigating Great Thatch
Island, where we manaaged to keep just ahead/outside of numerous squalls, that
tried to get us.
This morning, we took the dinghy to shore
to check out of the BVI. The Customs/Immigration office is supposed
to open at 8:30, but of course no one was there. The police department
upstairs said, we're a laid back island, he'll be here soon. We walked
around the small community and then went shopping at Foxy's, where
Sarah acquired a superior flamingo bag. We hung out on the dock with
Foxy, who had gone out fishing and brought back two kingfish. We
watched him cut up and clean the fish, while he told us about local
island politics (on an island with a population of less than 200!)
Around 9:30 the Customs officer arrived and we checked out. We sailed
over to St. John, managed to find a mooring in Caneel Bay, and loaded
the luggage in the dinghy, and motored over to Cruz Bay. There we
cleared into the USVI, and then found the ferry to St. Thomas. It
was close to 1pm and the ferry was at 1:15, but the ticket office
wouldn't sell tickets for the Charlotte Amalie ferry until the 1pm
Red Hook Ferry left. Since most people in line wanted tickets to
Charlotte Amalie, this caused the ticket seller to be constantly
annoyed.
Dancing Fish
In Maho Bay and Little Harbour, JVD, we see
the amazing dancing fish. Actually, you usually hear them before
you see them. A sudden low roar of splashing, where a school of 12
inch fish just start jumping wildly in all directions. When they
performed close to our boat, we could see that they were eating up
schools of smaller fish. We think they are Bar Jack. There are also
various flying fish and jumping fish. Flying fish take off in the
waves, and then look like hummingbirds of the waves as they spin
their fins around and sail 20-30 feet parallel to the surface, sometimes
crashing into waves. Jumping fish of various sizes suddenly leap
straight up 5-6 feet, and then fall down again in a graceful arc.
And then finally, schools of small fish leap out of the water in
unison, making silvery arcs over the water as they do their water
ballet. Lance commented to Mrs. Jones at Harris Place that something
must be chasing the fish from below to make them jump like that. "They're
not jumping", she said, "They just dancing."
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