Monday, January 7, 2013

At a dock…..at Crown Bay

Well, it has been a lovely past five days at Christmas Cove, I have snorkeled the reef nearly every day and saw lots of fish and rays in the bay. We were able to enjoy spending time with Charles and Leslie who arrived the day right after we did. Jim and I had a great Kayak adventure all around the bay on Thursday. Yesterday the Rays were especially exuberant and we saw at least 6 jumping out of the water. During our afternoon swim we also saw a southern ray and spotted eagle ray just under the boat…very cool. One of the special things about this place is the fact that you can see the sunset into the sea here..The first two nights we were here we saw the green flash…Spectacular.

Two nights ago Ocean Jedi showed up with their guests and after a small drama with their anchor which required Frank donning scuba gear and jumping in the water, and Denise giving us a shout to ask us to pop over and lend a hand, we were able to visit with them and have some Wookie Juice…mmmmm!

A lot of day boats come in to this place to let their guests have a swim and enjoy the great snorkeling. One such group is a dingy tour group who generally tie up to one of the moorings and then raft all the dingys together and hop off to swim. On Friday the tour group came in, but there were no moorings available, so we offered them to tie off of our stern, since we were very close to the reef. The guys running the tour were really appreciative, and shortly we had 10 or so dingys all strung together off our stern. They were a very nice group of people, mostly from the cruise ship, and we visited with some of them and the crew running the tour for about an hour. Then, their time up…they un-tied one by one, and they were off to their next adventure.

The winds have been getting higher and higher these past few days and last night was a pretty bumpy, noisy, rough night. The mooring can went boom, boom, boom, the ferry wakes were rocking and rolling, the wind was howling and we were alternating not sleeping and, well, not sleeping most of the night. This nervousness was exacerbated by the fact that a day of so ago one of the moorings broke loose late in the after noon, and started drifting toward the shore….with the boat and owner unaware. A shout alerted them, and they were able to grab a different mooring for the night…however it did make me slightly suspect about the reliability of these particular moorings…I guess free has it’s downside. This morning the radio traffic was full of missing dingys. One call for south of St. Thomas, another for near Water Island, and a third woman who got on channel 16 and proceeded to claim her dingy was stolen, as the line was ‘clearly severed’ … yeah, and 25-30 knot winds all night couldn’t do that?!

We headed west to Charlotte Amalie (thank goodness, as the swells are from the east and the biggest ones about 9-11 feet!) to come into the dock at Crown Bay. It is shopping, cleaning, watering, and provisioning time for us…Louise will be here on Wednesday!!! The people here are unbelievably friendly and we are happy to be back here with them…and back on the convenience of a dock…which some people don’t enjoy…but we happen to love the balance. We can’t swim…but there are cruise ships just behind us on the massive cruise ship dock, the containerships off to one side, and airplanes taking off overheard. There are also ferrys running thru here all day long, as well as mega and minor boats coming in to dock, take on fuel, pick up passengers, etc. A very busy, busy, fun place to be. And tonight…its all about the IRISH! 8:30 is right about bed time for me…but I vow to stay up and watch at least SOME of the game at the bar just steps from the boat! KTM…This could be it! GO IRISH!!