St. John

[Kevin's Post]Friday morning we left Culebra for St. Thomas. In hindsight we probably should have waited another day or so to leave, but we were getting stir crazy in Culebra waiting to go. We had a pretty miserable crossing, the 18 miles took us nearly 6 hours limping along on one engine into the wind. Yep, we could have walked there faster. The forecast was for 12-16 knot winds with 2-3 ft seas, but instead we had 18-20 knot winds and 4-6 foot seas. It was not pleasant. But, we made it to Charlotte Amalie without any issues and were happy to have our friends on Iguana Dance buddy boat with us for the slow trip.

This was our first visit to the mainland of St. Thomas, so we anchored off of downtown Charlotte Amalie in order to do a little exploring. St. Thomas is a duty free island which subsists primarily on the spending of cruise ship passengers. Walking down the main street of St. Thomas, it is strange to see that nine out of ten businesses are jewelry stores. There's probably 100 of them in a single city block. It is amazing that there is enough demand for all of them to stay in business. Especially since all of them claim to be selling their wares at a 75% discount (ha). All of them have salesmen standing out front trying to lure tourists inside with discounts and air conditioning. They all seemed mystified that we weren't there to shop for jewelry.

We stopped into a waterside bar to cool off and learned that in the evening would be a big christmas celebration with steel pan bands, a boat parade, and other festive activities. Normally we're on the boat by dark, but decided to make an exception and come back ashore to check out the festivities. We had a great rib dinner at a place we picked pretty much at random (Tavern on the waterfront). They had a live jazz band crooning christmas songs which put us in the holiday spirit. From our table we could see the boat parade. It wasn't much of a parade, since it was only about 5 boats, but they kept circling to give the illusion that there were more boats, so it lasted quite a while. After dinner we wandered around a while listening to the steel pan bands and eventually there was a parade down main street with a couple marching bands, floats, and lots of baton twirlers. It was a good time, but it eventually started pouring and everyone took shelter, things slowed down, and we headed back to the boat.

Overnight, the wind shifted more to the south and the Charlotte Amalie anchorage started to roll making it very uncomfortable to be on the boat. So in the morning we decided to get off the boat and explore St. Thomas a bit. St. Thomas has great public transportation, you can get pretty much anywhere on the island for $2 and closer destinations for only $1. We took the safari bus all the way to Red Hook (on the east coast) and back which gave us a good orientation to the island. We also stopped by the Independent Boatyard marina to check it out since Iguana Dance was staying there. After our self-guided island tour we had dinner at the Fat Turtle at the Yacht Haven Marina and then back to another rolly night on the boat.

Sunday morning we left early to head to Lameshur Bay on the south coast of St. John to meet up with our friends on Seaman's Elixir. We hadn't seen them since leaving Grenada 2 years ago. They are doing well and it was great to catch up with them. We spent the afternoon snorkeling in the bay looking for lobster (unsuccessfully). Linda invited the whole anchorage over for dinner and made a wonderful pork tenderloin. A good time was had by all.

Monday we had arranged to go scuba diving with Steve on Seaman's Elixir and John on Sojourn. We tossed all the dive gear in the dinghy and took off for White Point about a half mile away. Neither of us had dived in almost 2 years so were glad to do a shallow easy dive to get back in the swing of things. It was a great dive site with lots of cool canyons and walls. Since it was pretty shallow (max depth 45 feet) we were able to stay under for almost an hour. We didn't take the camera this time, so sorry, no pics.

Tuesday, after going ashore and exploring some of the nearby trails, we headed over to Coral Bay where we are now. Coral Bay is a small hippie community on the east side of St. John. Walking through town we met a guy selling hot dogs who claimed to have walked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon barefoot in 1975, "When I was a hippie". I guess he's not a hippie anymore, so sad. The Coral Bay anchorage was perfectly flat until dark, then it started to roll like hell so neither of us got much sleep. Today we continue our search for a flat anchorage.