This past week with our son.
02 March 2017 | Christmas Cove. St. Thomas, USVI
Bill/Partly cloudy
It's now March 2 and our time with our son is drawing to a close. He leaves for Oakland on the fifth and we are making our way back to Charlotte Amalie now in Maho Bay on the north side of St. John. It's our fourth time here as it's a well protected anchorage in the US Virgins. Actually, it's part of the National Parks system so no anchoring is allowed. Moorings only at a cost of $26 per night unless you're a senior citizen(us) so we get it for $13. It's blowing like stink outside all from the east so with us tucked into the east side of the bay, it's a good place to be. The winds started a couple days ago and it's forecast to continue for the next week with winds up to 30 knots, all from the east to northeast.
When we left Charlotte Amalie back on the 16th, we stopped at Christmas Cove on the east side of St. Thomas where we had a nice pizza from a boat that makes and sell pizza from noon to 1800 each day. At about $28 per pie, it's not cheap but it's a good pizza and out in a cove with other boats, it's a nice perk to be there. We expect to be heading back there this afternoon for one last visit with our son.
We first headed for Jost Van Dyke where we checked in to the British Virgins Island chain and visited the "Soggy Dollar" bar, the birth place of the "Pain Killer" drink, a great tasting drink that sneaks up on you quickly and after a couple, it get hard to move around but they go down easily($7.00 per drink).
From there, we went to Sandy Cay, a nice deserted island a few miles east that a lot sandy and a lot rocky that's part of the British National Parks system. You can tie up to a mooring for two hours before you are supposed to get off for another boat but no one really does and there is rarely any boats waiting. We walked the beach and up into the rocky section of the island along with several other boat parties. From there, we went back to Diamond Cay, where we spent a good bit of time earlier when we came to BVI. Good snorkeling with lots of coral and fans. Our son brought his aerial drone so he and I went ashore and launched it. It was amazing how the cove looks from 1000 feet up. The camera could see all the reefs around the island. I'll be posting some once we get them downloaded into this computer.
From Diamond Cay, we had planned on heading from Brewers Bay on the north side of Tortola but the winds and north swells just wouldn't allow it as the swells were going straight into the small cove crashing on shore. Instead, we continued north east to Marina Cay on the far northeast side of Tortola. We spent the night there again in some swell laden water on anchor with lots of boats taking advantage of moorings at the marina.
The next day, we hoisted sails and made for the north sound on Virgin Gorda, a very protected large bay with lots of anchorages and resorts to visit. We spent several days weather bound beside Richard Bransons new Moskito Resort on (had been Mosquito)Moskito Island. He's developing a very nice place and even while more is being developed, you can reserve a spot for you and your 20 best friends for just $31,000 pounds a night!!! We considered it but since we didn't have 18 more people with us, we decided to pass. Speed boats and ferries for the workers came and went at all hours of the day and night. Once the winds changed, we moved over to Leverick Bay on the south side of the bay and dropped anchor. It was time to rent a car($58) and head south for the "Baths", a huge bunch of granite boulders that are only located in this one area, the south side of Virgin Gorda. Matt took along his drone and we got some wonderful shots along the way at overlooks and at the "Baths". There were tons of boats on mooring buoys there but as luck would have it, it was closed to swimmers and the cruisers as the swells and winds made it dangerous to enter the water. Sure glad we didn't take Zephyr down. It would have been a big dis appointment. Instead we walked the beach and under and over the boulders and still had a good time. We did a bit of shopping for t shirts before leaving. Groceries were purchased to add to our larder. We attended a show given by Michael Beane at the resort with jokes and music and lots of fun that night. The next day, we hustled in and did our laundry before heading out to the Bitter End Yacht Club and resort but grabbed a mooring buoy at Saba Rock. Cheaper and if you take a mooring you get 250 gallons of water and a bag of ice for free. What a deal!!! Since we were so close, we also dinghied over to Bitter End which we had visited back in 2005 where we chartered a boat here. We'd bought shirts there before but this time, we just didn't find anything we wanted(except booze and wings at the bar). Boats came and went getting their water and ice, some that hadn't spent the night there. It was a bit of a madhouse with people at the helms of charter boats that had no idea how to bring them to a dock or get away from the dock when done. We pitied the dock man having to pull in the boats as they swung around at the dock. As one boat left, another started coming in but the boat that was leaving(a big power catamaran)just cut right in front of him blocking his way to the dock. What an idiot. We got our water and ice and went around the island to just north of Prickly Pear Island and dropped the hook for a night or two.
Our biggest problem during this entire visit with our son was that we all came down with a cold of some sort, coughing and sneezing since the second day of his visit. It finally started to go away well into the second week of his visit but that didn't keep us from swimming and snorkeling. Well, just a bit as sneezing inside a mask under water is a bit tough, let alone coughing.
We left Prickly Pear and headed south west in good winds and back to Benure Bay were we dropped the hook and the next day Matt and I went hiking up the hill over to Money Bay and close to other inlets we could overlook. Snorkeling there is great so a god bit of time was spent in the water.
As time was growing short, we headed back down to Maho Bay(Monday, February 27) for the night with winds hitting into the high 20 knot range for the night as we had some errands to do in Crews Bay and me over in Charlotte Amalie on Tuesday the 28th. While Tracy and Matt did some shopping, I took one of the ferries from Crews Bay to Red Hook, on the eastern edge of St. Thomas. I needed to take one of the "Safari" taxis from there into Charlotte Amalie to pick up our new navigation chip for our B & G Vulcan 7 chart plotter. When we bought it back while in South Africa, I downloaded the nab info to go in it showing the north side of South America as well as the entire Caribbean and Central America. Well the download must not have done well as I never had access to every facet of what the program was able to do. A few weeks ago, now that we are in the US Virgins, I started exploring on the web about it to see if I could get an update. The charts we use are C-Map charts originally from Jeppesen. About two months ago, Jeppesen sold that division so I had to dig a bit deeper finding C-Map USA. I somehow found myself emailing the head of Customer Service and after hearing my plight, she agreed to send me a factory made set of chips for my plotter as long as I returned what didn't work. WOW!!!! Great news!! I might be able to use everything the program promised. Well the chip got sent but it arrived the day we left Charlotte Amalie and time was now running out before the Post Office would ship it back. I took the ferry and the taxi and picked it up on Tuesday. We stuck it in the plotter and bang, up she came with all the features enabled. I could now see aerial shots of all the ports and marinas where we would be heading as well as every bay we might anchor in. A big difference from what was already in the plotter. What great people to take care of us that way. So hats off to C-Maps USA for their service. I'll be back for more charts and updates when I need them. Wednesday, we motored over to Soper's Hole(winds in the mid 20 knot range right in our faces) where we checked out of the British Virgins Islands. Now BVI has a neat racket running. If you stay 30 days, you have to import your boat($200)!! Our first trip there was from January 31 to February 11 but the paperwork we had filled out said we would be staying till the 15th. Our mistake was not getting that corrected. This time, we entered on the 17th and would be leaving on March 3rd even though we were actually leaving on March 1st. So officially, we stayed 16 days the first time(actually only 12) and 15 days the second trip(actually only 13). That makes according to the paperwork, 31 days so we would need to pay as we were there "officially" over 30 days. Well since the second trip was only 13 days(it was March 1st, we got out with out paying. BVI stamps your passport when you come in and writes on the stamp when you think you will be leaving, not when you actually do, sometimes making the stay much longer than it actually was. They don't stamp your passport when you actually leave. So while we have actually stayed 25 days, should we go back and check in, we would need to pay the import duty on our boat. What a scam!! Guess we won't be going back and spending more money there!
It's now Thursday the second and we are back at Christmas Cove near the east end of St. Thomas for the night after snorkeling at Cinnamon Bay along the way over. We just finished our pizza from Pizza Pi, a local that runs a take out restaurant on his boat(PI) here in the anchorage. $28 for the pizza and $10 to have it brought over by dinghy. Very popular in this anchorage. It's really the only reason to come here as the island is private and there are no beaches and the snorkeling isn't that good. Tomorrow, the 6 miles down the coast to Charlotte Amalie and start reprovisioning and getting ready for our sons departure. It's been a great couple of weeks since he got here and time has just flown by. Once he's gone, it back to work fixing Zephyr. The list isn't that long but we have some things that still need to be ordered and that takes some time.