USVI - 2009

As promised, a small blurb first about the sail to St John, USVI. When we left Great Harbour, Jost Van Dyke the skies looked ominous, with a whole bunch of small squalls looming. We had already cleared out so figured, what the heck, we won't have any problems - and we didn't really. I say that now and think of the last blog where I said we are better sailors now than we were then. This kind of showed itself because of course after we left JVD, it seemed all the squalls combined into a line to windward of us and then descended with a crunch.

We had the main and foresail up as we were sailing but the wind picked up quickly so we started to take the f0resail down but before I took the first full pull on the furling line, the wind and rain and total blindness hit us. We immediately turned into the wind to take the stress off the sails and keep us upright but we had left it a little late and I had to use all my strength and a few good primeval howls to bring the sail in. ho-hum, all in a days work.

We got to Caneel Bay, just around the corner from Cruz Bay, where customs reside, about noon. Practically the entire island of St John is a national park so there is no anchoring but the mooring balls are relatively inexpensive and very well maintained so we picked up a ball and went in to clear in and take a look around Cruz Bay. This is the capitol of St John and quite an interesting town although the prices and the kinds of shops they have are very much geared to tourists and cruise ships. Of course all of USVI is a very popular spot for american tourists as it belongs to the US, is fairly easy for them to get to and is duty free.

We stayed in Caneel Bay for 2 days and decided to sail down to St Thomas - Charlotte Amalie to be exact - to stock up and maybe do some Christmas shopping. When we were home in September Cheryl was thinking ahead and got me a Christmas present but of course I am very much into today and maybe tomorrow - further than that and I get confused - so I still had my shopping to do. Charlotte Amalie is the capital of St Thomas and is really kind of a neat city. We went for a long walk down the waterfront street and also checked into customs to ask for clarification on something we had been told by the Cruz Bay customs - that we didn't need to bother checking out when we left. The lady in customs said it was a good thing we had gone there because of course we do have to check out and knowing their paranoia, if we hadn't checked out they would have sent Homeland Security after us!!

After staying a couple of days in Charlotte Amalie we decided to sail up to Francis Bay on St John. This blog is running on so we will pick up the next blog on the way to Francis Bay.

On Caneel Bay