The Beautiful Virgins; US Virgin Islands
17 April 2015
Belinda & Kit
Photo shows a co-operative iguana posing in the mangroves
Position; 18 20.5N, 64 58.7W
View more pics at https://picasaweb.google.com/yacht.quilcene
St John - Solomons Bay;
St John is a National Park so no anchoring allowed. Buoys are provided and there's a raft with an 'honesty' pay station, suggested contribution $15 - not so bad really. Solomons Bay is a beautiful anchorage off a series of white beaches, and just around a small headland from Cruz Bay where Customs and Border Protection are situated. We dinghied ashore with our new shiny US visas and checked in. This involved form filling and having our fingerprints checked on a scanner, but it was a quick and easy process - and we didn't have to pay a cent!! This is the first place since Europe where there is no entry charge!
Roy & Mad were also checking in so we all celebrated our US entry with a happy hour beer; and there are no shortages of happy hour bars, restaurants and rum shacks along the waterfront at Cruz Bay!
We stayed a few days in Solomons Bay, with a day ashore when we took the bus to Salt Pond at the other end of the island - only $1 each way.
St Thomas - Charlotte Amalie;
This is the Capital of the USVI's and a busy port. Up to 5 cruise ships a day dock here and the large number of passengers descend on Main Street, where you can't buy a loaf of bread but you can buy diamonds, expensive watches and jewellery. Big names like Tiffany's, TAG Heuer, Omega, Rolex and Di Diamonds all have stores here. We wandered along Main Street looking in vain for a general store to get bread - all we got was pestered by people offering 'free gems' if we browsed in their shop!
For any provisions we discovered that the supermarkets are at either end of St Thomas Harbour, so it was a dinghy and bus ride in one direction or a dinghy ride in the other. As we anchored out in the Harbour and it was pretty breezy, going ashore was wet bum time again! On one of the islands there's a beach bar named the 'Soggy Dollar' - now we understand why!!
Roy & Madeline on Mithril discovered a 'Jazz in the Park' event was on so we all went over and spent a lovely evening enjoying the music. Once the Cruise ships depart tourists are few and far between so it was very much a local event. It was great to see the old folks up and dancing along with the young.
We had to pick up some charts and arrange to ship a couple it things in, so we took the $1 bus to Red Hook at the east end of the island. Business over, we had lunch in a small place more or less in the mangroves. Lunch was good but even better we spotted some prehistoric-looking iguana sunning themselves on the branching roots, in fact a notice was displayed 'Do not feed the Iguana'!
It was frustrating waiting for our package to be delivered - the ship it should've been on arrived and we were given the paperwork but the parcel had been left on another island! It was almost a week after the due delivery date before we had the package in our hands! However it as a great relief to get it as one of the items it contained was charts for our northward passage to the Bahamas. Yes, they should be available on the USVI's but it was just our luck that they were out of stock and couldn't get them for a month!
By now Mithril had moved on; we expect to catch up somewhere as we're both heading north to the US.
Going ashore one evening we saw/heard a great street band playing outside a bar named ‘Big Cahuna’s. I think they were called ‘Das Soul’ – the music was a cool mix of Reggie/Jazz/Soul – not at all like most of the thumpingly loud Bob Marley take-offs we keep hearing! They were so good that were persuaded to stay for 3 happy hour beers – almost a record!
However we were delighted when Balvenie arrived and anchored nearby. We'd last seen Mark and Amanda in Mesolonghi, Greece in 2009! We spent a lovely evening aboard Balvenie, along with Ian and Fiona off 'Ruffian'; it was great to catch up with everyone's news and swap cruising tales. ...and Amanda made a delicious pizza to go with the sundowners!
Next day we headed off to Brewers Bay, a quiet anchorage at the west end of St Thomas (quiet except for the close proximity of the airport runway!). However the hills were green and the water clear and blue so we jumped in and gave Quilcene a quick bottom scrub which gave us a huge appetite - just as well as it was Friday and Kit made one of my favourite curries!