Christmas Cove, St Thomas, US Virgin Islands

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sun 23 Feb 2014 13:48

18:18.72N 64:49.9W

 

Tues, Wed, Thurs & Fri – 18th, 19th, 20th & 21st Feb

 

Tuesday was to have been the day we hired a car and drove around the island, but in the end the price asked was deemed to be too high and so we opted to go for a sail in Ruffian for the day.  The plan now was to sail over to Dog Island and take a look at some of the National Park sites from the boat as it is prohibitively expensive to actually stop and visit these sites properly!  Sadly though we had chosen the very worst possible day to attempt this as the skies remained grey and we were soon enveloped by a big rain squall with big winds wrapped up in it.  Ruffian managed well in the conditions, but ploughing into mounting seas and heavy rain in the open cockpit of a 34ft Sadler was not one of our ‘to do’ list and so we all agreed to head back to Road Bay and find something nicer to do! We eventually arrived back and Iain & Fiona took this opportunity to anchor on the far side of the bay where the conditions were considerably better in that there was a lot less roll.  Sadly there was a trade off in that they could not access the wifi there, so we opted to remain where we were ourselves.

 

Wednesday was a make do and mend type day and we just got a few jobs done and generally pottered about and in the evening we had Geoff & Eileen from Ocean Gem over for drinks and Ruffian came as well and stayed for dinner. We last saw Geoff and Eileen in Marmaris, Turkey and Eileen had shared a taxi with us to Dalaman airport when we flew home in Oct 2009.

 

Thursday was a quiet day generally before we raised the anchor and along with Ruffian set sail at 1600 hours for the overnight 100 mile sail to The US Virgin Islands.  The forecast was not brilliant in that we were being promised 20 – 25 knot winds with some squalls boosting the wind to 30+ knots and 8 to 10ft seas. But the wind was generally going to be behind us all the way and so we opted to go with just our headsail in the knowledge that this would mean that we would roll a lot in the bigish seas, but it would be easy to manage to sail in any nasty squalls. Slower, but safer.

 

In the event the wind was a pretty steady 20 to 25 knots all night, except for one notable squall half an hour into my first night watch.  As it happened my attention was caught first by a loud crash and sudden loud flapping noise on the canvas dodger which on investigation with a torch turned out to be a very large flying fish who had hit the boom, dropped onto the dodger and was now flapping around on the side deck. Having sorted this out, I noticed that the starlit night seemed to have a slightly darker patch without stars….. so I turned on the radar in time to spot a big squall bearing down on us from behind.  I donned waterproofs and took all the necessary precautions just in the nick of time as it turned out to be one very nasty bastard. The wind gauge started climbing rapidly and the torrential rain battered us as the speed log started showing higher and higher speeds through the water.  The wind peaked at over 42 knots and we were roller coasting through the big seas at an unlikely 8.5 knots under just a small headsail.  But as ever, it all died down in due course and so when Sarah came on watch 2.5 hours later she was slightly disbelieving about it, as she had slept through it all blissfully unaware until she saw the evidence on the wind speed log.

 

The US Virgins came into view just before dawn and we arrived at Cruz Bay on St John’s Island where there is a Customs and Immigration office around 1000hours. It is a tricky place to get to by boat as there is very little space to anchor and the swell and wind meant that it was all rather unpleasant, so we went around the corner and picked up a National Park buoy and launched the dinghy and waited for Ruffian to arrive. We then picked them up and we all went into clear in through US customs. This went well until we asked a few important questions about going to Puerto Rico.  The officer dealing with Sarah and me was very pleasant and helpful and gave us a clear answer, but when we got back outside and compared notes with Iain & Fiona, it turned out that their less pleasant officer had given them a completely contradictory set of answers!

 

We did some food shopping and visited the national parks office to pick up some hiking and snorkelling guides and made our way back out to the boats.  Our plan now was to sail round to Lameshur Bay, St John’s but the wind and seas were now very unpleasant and so we opted to make our way to Christmas Cove on St Thomas Island where we were both able to pick up mooring buoys and had a very peaceful night with no rolling at all for a very pleasant change!