4 Virgins, Several Rum Punches 20 ft men dancing in the Street ... Its time to move on!
It is getting near that time of year when it is prudent to be south or north of here, so we are now making plans to head back down to Grenada, hopefully with a couple of stops in St Kitts or Nevis, Martinique and then Grenada, but like always, it is the wind that will finally decide where we are going – at the moment it looks like it might be straight to Grenada! So it seems 4 virgins (2 Spanish, 2 US) is enough for me in one year and those Brits will just have to wait ‘til next time around.
“So where are we?” I almost hear you ask – well just click on this link and you can find out! But here is what it looks like!
*Photo courtesy of Jim on SV Merengue
Now I am not sure whether I should say this as I think that where we are is one of the best kept secrets in the Caribbean – it does not appear in the cruising guides and quite frankly I don’t want it to. We have been here on and off for 3 weeks and it is fantastic. It is just near the University of the Virgin Islands (home of the Buccaneers) and the last stop on the Safari (local buses – more about them later) route and has almost everything a cruising yachtie could want – a beach to work on the dinghy (Debbie now has a clean bottom and has been patched so doesn’t need a blow job every couple of days) and other projects, public transport, rubbish facilities, a couple of food vendors and the obligatory loud Caribbean music coming from shore most days and night. Best of all it is clean calm water to swim in day or night. We have got the floatie lounge chairs with the drink holders out and bought some new noodles so we are set!
So what have we been doing for all this time since my last very exciting entry? Well a lot and not so much I think is the answer. On arriving in St Thomas, we decided to take advantage of the US link and shop on line for things we will need over the next 12 months and took a post box at Messages, Mail and More at Crown Bay Marina and hunkered down on the internet for a couple of days and blew our annual budget for boat parts and project parts amassing 20 orders from various ebay and internet vendors in the States. These included a new Blackberry with wi-fi, camera batteries, plumbing parts for the new solar hot water system (more on that later), sewing machine, thread, phifertex and canvas.......etc ...........etc ..............etc.........etc.................. etc..............
Now first chance we got (after some good advice from our friends on Sea Lion we jumped in Debbie and headed around to Honeymoon Bay to check out what all the hype was about – well it was a nice little bay with about 30 odd boats in it. We bought Debbie up on the beach and decided we might just spend the day relaxing here.
We swam relaxed (even sun baked on the swim platform in the middle of the bay) before retiring to Heidi’s Honeymoon Grill for lunch and a few rum punches.
We had great ham(/veggie)burgers and Karen imbibed the rum punch – (of course I almost abstained).
(Notice the straw is definitely pointing to Karen not me)
Whilst we were eating Bones – one of the local Pirate ships came in with a load of tourists onboard and served up lunch – we spoke with a couple of them and they seemed to be enjoying themselves but their 7 day Caribbean cruise (of which 5 was raining) was almost at an end.
You may ask why I am telling you this – but there is a point. Bones has a unique way of identifying their passengers with tattoos in the most interesting places!
Everyone was pretty tuckered out after lunch but on our way back to Debbie we were particularly impressed with this young lad who could sleep and drink beer at the same time – not a drip spilt!
We toured around Charlotte Amelie and spent some time at the local home depot and then we decided that it was time to cruise a bit. With our purchasing done we headed for St John’s for some relaxation and more. We headed up to Francis Bay on the North west of the island and took a mooring buoy at @$15 a night. Now these were nice and easy mooring buoys and after only 2 attempts we were held firm with no problems for some relaxing in this tranquil bay.
We went ashore the first day and did the hiking track to the old plantation house ruins – this was a cruisers hike – pretty flat and not too far (about 2 miles) and some nice views of the bay as well as an old house – Karen almost was tempted to start drawing up renovation plans but I managed to talk her round!
Next day we decided to go snorkelling out at Whispering Cays but unfortunately the chop and the wind were such that we could not moor the dinghy. So we headed back into the beach and tried the snorkelling there and it was pretty good! Took the new camera and took some snaps – I think I am getting better. What do you think?
Brain and Fan coral
Four Eyed Something
This one is named after my brother – Bar Jack
A Blue Fish (I know I am probably getting a bit technical with the names now)
Trunk Fish – these ones seem to like blowing the sand of my anchor???
The bay was busy with boat from about 4pm on with some interesting boats coming in from St Thomas
After 3 days here we tried doing the cruising thing and moved to Hawks Nest Bay a bit to the west near Trunk Bay (one of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean – my god how many times have I heard this – these marketing people should go to Queensland). We moored and spent the day relaxing in the bay and then the next day we jumped in Debbie – just a reminder, Debbie is our dinghy – and headed around to Trunk Bay. We moored on a dinghy rope about 600m from shore, donned our snorkel and fins (and shorty wetsuit for Karen) and swam to shore.
It was a nice beach and Karen looked fine walking along in her wetsuit – not quite the Hailey Berry from the 007 movie, but she still looks good to me – don’t know what the beachgoers thought tho’.
They have set up a snorkelling trail which helps us amateurs
and gives a an idea what we are looking at and where we are going
The trail was interesting, but even with the shorty on Karen can only go so long in the water without a smoke
After the smoke and a rum punch (me) we strolled down the beach and swam back to Debbie who was happily still on the mooring. Well let me tell you – I don’t know how she did it but she was a lot further out than when we swam in (or so it seemed).
Next morning we dropped the mooring and headed around to Caneel Bay and picked up another mooring – god we are getting used to this – will we ever anchor again???!!!
Once safely moored (10 minutes versus our 1 hour when we anchor) we decided to head into the resort, check emails on our new blackberry and have a rum punch (see a theme developing?). Into Debbie we go and pull up at the dinghy dock and get told to put out a stern anchor on the dinghy – never done this before but I figure it can’t be too hard until I watched the guy next to me throw out his anchor and all the rope with it (fortunately it was shallow enough that he just stepped out of the dinghy and walked out and picked it all up. Never the less I made sure mine was tied onto Debbie and I threw it out – the rope was far too long to stop Debbie from head butting the dock – but it was out there!
Well we checked out the resort and then headed to the bar – checked out the prices of the rum punches and headed back to Debbie, deciding we could do it better and cheaper from Where II. I mixed up a good punch in our thermos (yeah I know - you thought it was for coffee), grabbed our unused deck chairs and headed to the beach and had Matt’s legendary rum punches as we watched the sun set.
Next morning, after some internet, we decided that with crappy weather, we might as well be back in St Thomas, so on came the iron gennaker and we headed back to Charlotte’s armpit – shopped, checked the mail and headed to Brewer’s Bay. Here we spent time with our new friends Merengue and Sea Lion.
We all decided that since it was on we should head back to the Armpit for Carnival – Karen and I had visions of the joy of Grenada Carnival so were quite excited and planned to enjoy the fireworks from the foredeck in the main harbour.
After anchoring at the back (of course) of the pack we headed in for the festivities (both of us with our dancing shoes on (Karen still believes a white woman can whine and grind – I’ll give her the wine bit but not the grind)
Well the wait was long and the US Virgins turned out to be a good description of the Carnival whilst they called it Bacchanal (means wild orgy) – it was well organised, slow, more beauty queens and majorettes than I have ever seen and after a couple of hours we decided to have lunch and then head back to the boat – not before we saw 20ft dancing men. I would say that the US is to be highlighted in the name of the islands and compared to Grenada – the mas bands were really virgins... Apparently we weren’t the only ones – we met Sea Lion for lunch and Merengue on the way back to the boat!
Ok – maybe I was a bit dismissive about Carnival so here are some of the photos of what we saw.
Carnival Queen
Runner Up
Miss Photogenic
Majorettes – with a Michael Jackson Tribute
Another Queen – got too many to know what this one was
Local radio personality – just for the record I thought she was cute (Lisa Bonnet look alike) – no other reason for the photo
Miss USVI – very cute – but sounded very American - oh and they all have the wave!!
Ok I reckon Mum could have been in with a chance if she had stayed longer
Enough with the queens already
Ok maybe one more....
Of course Steel pan with feeling
The Fruity Fraco Man
Fine looking Gentlemen
Speech
Police and military were everywhere for crowd control – overkill from where I stood....
More majorettes but at least they look like they are having fun!
Like I said 20 ft men – I wasn’t drunk ok....
The fireworks were fine from the foredeck.
With carnival over we headed back to Brewers and waited for everything to arrive catching the most comfortable (when it is not raining) public transport in the Caribbean – the safari to pick things up from Crown Bay.
We worked on building our solar hot water collector from bits and pieces that we bought and scavenged from rubbish (the base is a polystyrene fish food lid) and got ready to head south.
Almost ready to put it together (main tool to the right of me)
Every Engineers secondary instrument of construction – the hammer!
Almost together and reaching for the main instrument of construction – you will need to wait and see the finished item!
Before we left it was time for me to have a haircut, the last one being a “national guardesque” cut in Puerto Rico but I thought since I now cut and colour Karen’s hair (and girls I do a good job) it was time I braved letting Karen cut mine. Now the last time I tried this was on the Atlantic with these results!
But with a little coaching (I paid a fare bit more attention in the barbers in Puerto Rico) and a bit of nervous screaming at her to not ruin my devilish good looks – this was the result! She’s come a long way baby!
Well the wind looks as good (light with slight seas) as it is going to get for another week for us to make a break for it so we have decided to motor sail to Nevis or St Kitts to start making our way south to meet Al and Boofa so we said goodbye to Merengue and will leave tomorrow
Matt .. You and Karen are living the dream! What a ripping entry, I had the whole office involved in this story.. thanks for taking the time to record it. It must be a pain sometimes to take time out from paradise to keep connected. It's worth it for me though... I'm following the journey with great interest. And yes your pix are improving under water and above!
keep up the blogging!!! mark
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HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO US?!
Great blog
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This was just what I needed to perk me up. Here I am pounding away on the computer at 7.10pm on a Thursday night (yes they do work me that hard) and up pops your blog. Much better than working.
McDougall Donovan get that fag out of your mouth!!!! I luvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv your blogs. Keep them coming and keep safe. xoxoxoxo JB Mama
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