Saba - Leeward Islands

On 2/12/15, we were on our way to St Kitts & Nevis were my Dad, his wife, my sister - Heather & her husband would be spending two weeks visiting.  We were all provisioned and the boat was all fixed up...now we just had to get there.  At 4:25 PM, we arrived in Wells Bay, Saba.  Saba is only 5 square miles but reaches 3084 feet that rise almost vertically from the ocean.  Until the early 1940's, Saba was extremely hard to get to and everything came through Ladder Bay.  Boats could only land when the water was calm and all the cargo had to go up 800 steps.  In 1958, Joseph Hassel and the Sabans built a road by hand.  They now have an airport, much like an aircraft carrier landing, their hand built road and a tiny harbor.  Most people come to Saba for the spectacular diving.

St Martin

On February 6th at 2:30 p.m., we set out for an overnighter to St Martin about 90nm.  We arrived the next day at about 10:00 a.m. and anchored in Marigot Bay.  During the night our forestay broke.  It was a good thing we didn't have the jib up or we might have had a bigger mess on our hands.  (Jib - smaller front sail) We stayed for 5 days fixing things on the boat and provisioning for our next guests for 2 weeks. 

                                                             Gotta love those French!

                                       Simpson Bay Bridge, dividing the dutch and french side.

Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands

After Jim and Lynne left, we filled up with gas, propane and groceries.  We had 2 weeks until my dad and sister came down.  We had to go the furthest north we could get to be able to make an overnight crossing to St Martin, then 2 more days of sailing after that.  What that means is we had no time to waste.  On February 3rd, we started to work our way up through the BVI's.  Our first night was in Norman's Island, then we stopped at Virgin Gorda the next night.  We spent the day seeing the incredible land formations here!  This should be on the never miss out list!

                                                                       Racoon Eyes!!

There were so many pics that were beautiful, I had a hard time decided which ones to post!

Trip with Jim and Lynne

On January 23, 2015, Larry's brother and sister-in-law flew into St Thomas and spent an awesome week on the boat with us.  It turned out we had almost perfect weather.  A front had just passed and the winds hadn't picked up yet.  We took them to our favorite spot in Christmas Cove and let them snorkel with the turtles and stingrays.  Then we started to sail around the north-west coast of St John.  After 4 days, we sailed them to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, which is just north and east of St John.  Then we sailed down the east and south coast of St John and back to St Thomas.

I guess I was so busy that I didn't take many pictures of our trip.  I know they got in alot, so I will have to get them to send them to me and then update this post.  These were two anchoring spots that we stayed in while at St John.  Amazingly blue water, huh!

St John, USVI

We stayed in Christmas Cove for a couple of days and it was one of my favorite anchoring spots.  Turtles Everywhere, but this little devils were hard to get a picture of.

                              Larry and I  snorkeled side by side with these guys!  Awesome!

We got the news that Larry's brother and sister in law decided to come visit and would be flying into St Thomas.  We had 2 weeks until they would get there, so we decided to visit St Croix, one of the USVI's that are off the beaten path and not traveled by cruisers much.  It was 35nm south of St John.  The winds kicked up, so we stayed for 8 days.  We did some provisioning and walked around the town a bit.  It has the largest barrier reef in the Caribbean.  If the winds weren't so strong, I would have went diving.  We did go snorkeling off of Buck Island; which is also a National Park.  They had an underwater trail in the reef system there, but it was recuperating from the storms that have destroyed it.  Its nice to see the islands are starting to take measures to protect the reef. 

                                                          Buck Island, off of St Croix

                                                          Sailing Charter boat in St Croix

                                       
                                           Iguanas and chickens running around in St Croix

We sailed back to Christmas Cove, then St Thomas to pick up our guests.  In between and on days we weren't sailing, we worked on the boat and cleaned the bottom.

                                           Wow, Larry is amazing...cleaning upside down!

St Thomas USVI

 After a wonderful week in Culebra, we decided to get a move on, so we had time to see all the other islands.  Next stop...St Thomas, United States Virgin Islands.  We actually got a chance to put the jib up (small front sail) and arrived in about 6 hours.  We anchored just outside of the cruise ships on an island called Water Island, in Honeymoon Harbor.   I guess I shouldn't say near...it was at least a 20 minute dinghy ride in, when it was calm. 

This is the main cruise ship dock and center is Charlotte Amalie.  There is two pieces of land, one you can see here is Hassell Island.  The other just like it is Water Island.

Larry has a book of the top 100 Megayachts and he has been crossing them off as we see them.  Check out all those windows!  And we saw him later on in St Martin, so he does sail the thing.

The dinghy dock.  We should have just parked under one of the big ships stern and wouldn't have even got a drop on the dink if it rained!

                                        Our neighbors...and that cat is twice as big as ours!

I didn't think I would like this town because of the cruise ships, but it was cool to be right next to the big ships!  On cruise ship days, the town was crowded and this is where you want to buy jewelry, cameras, watches, etc. because it is duty free.  I got an underwater camera and I love it.

                                         I had to take a picture of the pirate ship for Rayne!

We did a few repairs here, shopping and seeing the town and then moved on to Christmas Cove, Great St James Island.

St Thomas history:
In 1917, the Danes sold their virgin islands to the US, the US was eager to have a military outpost in the Caribbean.  St Thomas had long been a useful coaling station and harbor for steamships and was well positioned to defend the approaches to the Panama Canal.  A major seaport and the capital of St Thomas, Charlotte Amalie was named after a Danish Queen.  The town still has many of the original buildings and mansions.  This town was used extensively over the century as a haunt for pirates and privateers, because it was declared a free port by the Danes, enabling the sale of goods, livestock, and ships aquired in honest trade or under the flag of piracy. 

Culebra Spanish Virgin Islands

Why everyone back home is rushing to get ready for their Christmas Eve parties at Grandmas.  Larry and I are headed to Culebra to celebrate Christmas.  We are expecting to meet back up with the Luperon gang and touch base, making sure everyone is alright. Culebra was a beautiful island and I could definetely picture myself living there.  US territory, beautiful snorkeling, great weather and the food wasn't bad either.  We spent a week in Culebra and decided to move on.  My camera was completely dead by now, so I didn't get as many pictures as I wanted to.

Christmas morning I woke up missing home and even the snow...a bit.  But then when I went outside...A full rainbow end to end!





Now, if I could get these two pics to go where I want them to go, I would be really happy.  Dang computer!

                   
                                                                  Paradise!....  Finally!

Puerto Rico

 A bit of history lesson on Puerto Rico:

Puerto Rico is approximately 110 miles long by 35 miles wide and covers over 300 miles of coastline.  13% of it is occupied by the US military and 33% of the population lives in the San Juan area.  The highest peak is 4,400' and the higher mountains are near the south and east coast.The northern part is green and lush while the southern coast is a bit more arid.  The island is surrounded by an irregular shallow submarine shelf, seven miles wide at the widest.  Two miles north the sea floor drops to over a thousand fathoms!  Deeper still is the Puerto Rican Trench where the ocean floor plunges to depths of 28,000', 45 miles north of Puerto Rico...that's over 5 miles deep!  Puerto Rico has held a commonwealth association with the US since 1952.  This basically means they are American citizens that do not vote or pay taxes.  The first non-Indian to discover PR was, of course, Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to the new world in 1493.  No attempt for civilization was made until Juan Ponce de Leon from Spain in 1508.  During the Spanish-American War  the US claimed PR as a war prize.

Now continuing on to my story:

After resting in Boqueron its time to move along the south coast.   I am excited to be fishing again and have high hopes of some awesome snorkeling and diving!  Our next big stay was is a town called La Paraguera on the south coast.  We snorkeled in Cayo Caracoles and on a place called Gilligan's Island.  It wasn't bad, but I expected it to have alot more fish than it did.

                         Cute little town of Boqueron, pirates and deck wenches included.

                                              

                                              And I did manage to catch a Little Tunny!

We did some provisioning in Ponce, a big city with malls and McDonald's, etc.  The Ponce Yacht Club was reasonably priced and there were hundreds of fishing boats there.  We like to anchor out and spend the money on other things.

I am not sure why I didn't care for Puerto Rico that much, I guess it was more like the US surrounded by water, but not as many people.  Maybe my expectations were too high, but I would go back and see the island again and spend time away from the coast.  The people were friendly and easy to get along with.  I would consider living here after checking out the whole island.  Prices were reasonable too.  I guess my favorite place was Coffin Island, a small island off the south coast were we took a hiking trail to a run down church.  The views were spectacular.  BTW at about this time my camera was dyeing.

                                                  Along the trail there were huge cactus.

           Maybe it was a lighthouse we saw not a church.  all these old buildings start to blend.

                                        From the top, we could see our boat in the distance.

                   Photos just don't do justice to the actual experience, but you get an idea.

Our refrigeration system wasn't working right and getting worse by the day, so while the other cruisers (we had meant 4 others from Luperon who had left a few weeks before us) left to go to the Spanish Virgin Islands - Vieques and Culebra, we had to beat north to Fajardo.  We missed out on Vieques where there was a place called Phosphorescence Bay - a glowing bay of water.  We will hit it on the way back though!

                                  Those people in Salinas sure have a strange way of living!

                                        A resort off of Fajardo, they cover the whole island.

                                                  They were alot of shipwrecks there.