Christmas Cove, St. Thomas, USVI

[Kevin's Post]We flew back to the boat on Monday with Amanda's dad, so of course we woke up Tuesday morning to pouring rain. A perfect day to head over to Culebra (sarcasm). Actually the winds were forecast to be very light so even with the rain we knew it would be a fairly easy trip over. It kind of drizzled the whole way over, but as soon as we picked up our free mooring it started coming down in buckets, we could only see a few hundred feet. We had planned to go all the way to Isla Culebrita, but we got a late start since we had to pick up the cat from the vet, hit the grocery store and return the rental car. So we called it a day on the west coast of Culebra where there is excellent snorkeling. It eventually stopped raining and we were able to do some snorkeling and grilled up some chicken for dinner.

The sun was out Wednesday and we got an earlier start. We headed over to Isla Culebrita en route to St. Thomas. There were large breaking waves on the reefs on either side of the entrance to the cove on Culebrita which made for an exciting ride in. We could see that past the reefs it was fairly calm so we went through and picked up another one of the wonderful free moorings they have here. The surf on the beach would have made landing the dinghy challenging so we decided to just swim ashore to have a look around. We were the only boat there and had the island to ourselves. Within about 20 minutes a group of teenagers walks out of the trees onto the beach complete with beach towels, frisbees and other beach toys. I asked them where they came from since they obviously had no boat. They said that they had been dropped off on the other side of the island. They were soon followed by about 20 others about half of which were screaming kids. So much for having the island to ourselves.

After swimming back to the boat, we headed off to St. Thomas, about 25 miles to the east. On the way we encountered probably the biggest seas we have ever seen on the boat. The swells were 10-15 feet, but they were far apart so it was a very gentle motion. We had fishing lines out but didn't catch anything. We knew our friends on Adventure Bound were anchored over on the East end of St. Thomas so we headed over to Christmas Cove to join them. It was good to see them and catch up with them over beers.

Where we are:
Location=St Thomas, USVI
Lat=18 18.720
Lon=64 49.928