David Bailey can rest easy

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sat 3 May 2014 11:41

Mon, Tues & Wed – 28th, 29th 30th April

 

We stayed in Brewer’s bay on Monday but were in touch with Balvenie who were now sailing down from the BVI’s to meet up with us and to attend the carnival on May 3rd in Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas.  They arrived in Crown Bay which is only a few miles from us, but they had various things to do in town so we agreed to meet up the next day. The daily search for  good photos for the 365 project went badly when we were treated to a display by a group of terns feeding off frenzied fish who were in turn feeding off smaller fly right alongside us. This activity was followed up by a large pelican who landed beside us and when Sarah repeatedly waved her arms to try to get him to take off for an action picture, he merely paddled ever closer to see what why she was waving.  In the end he did take off, but then landed on our foredeck where he waddled up to the open hatch and was clearly considering leaving a deposit. I diligently photographed all of this and finally when he flew off I captured this too. We then downloaded the pictures to see what we had got and it is fair to say that the results might well have been a good deal better if I had not somehow changed the camera settings to ‘night landscape’!

 

On Tuesday we sailed round to Crown Bay and met up with Balvenie and we all went grocery shopping at Pueblo and we had BYO pizzas (nerve wracking to compete with a professional cook in Amanda….!) in the evening.

 

On Wednesday morning the excitement all centred around the arrival of ‘Allure of the Seas’ which you may remember me mentioning before as she is the largest cruise ship in the world (by barely 50mm). The problem identified by the local pilot was that there was a 45ft yacht anchored in the space where this huge ship needed to turn around (just like us last week) however this time they were determined to make the manoeuvre despite the fact that the owner had gone off ashore and was blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding here.  Having failed to find the owner on board the pilot went on out to the fast approaching ocean liner and as the Allure approached the anchorage, another patrol vessel came out to stand watch over the anchored yacht and presumably push it out of the way if required.

 

We did this time have some quite impressive photos of the ship bearing down on the small yacht and then using her bow and stern thrusters, they turned this huge ship in its own length with the towering stern missing the yacht by little more than a few feet. I later met the captain of the yacht and gave him copies of the pictures as he knew nothing about this and it turned out that he was just a delivery skipper and was going to make sure that the owner never sees these pictures – well unless he reads our blog….. and looks at our photo pages.