More Druif Bay, Water Island, St. Thomas
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sat 24 Nov 2007 14:28
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18:18.972N 64:57.631W
At 4:15pm on Wednesday, 11/21, we arrived at Druif
Bay on Water Island, which is just off the southwestern coast of St.
Thomas. We got the boat safely anchored and breathed a collective sigh of
relief. We made it.
We sighted land at about 10am that morning, and
earlier than that, Bill saw a couple of birds come by the boat and say
hello. We decided the birds were sent from St. Thomas to greet us in
an official capacity. See picture 1 below for our view of St. Thomas as we
approached from the north. Seeing land did seem a bit odd. For eight
days our 360 degree view was nothing but blue ocean and blue sky or
stars, and when land showed up it seemed out of place, an aberration of what was
normally a completely flat and symmetrical view of the horizon. Once we
got over the fact that the land was messing up what had been our perfect view,
we started to think about all of the nice things associated with land.
Like an anchored boat that didn't move, rock obsessively, pound through waves,
tilt when least expected or creak constantly. We dreamed of a full night's
sleep with no interruption, the ability to open the refrigerator without the
butter, parmesan cheese and various fruits and vegetables rocketing out
unexpectedly at us, and most importantly, sitting on the toilet without
having the toilet seat fall down on our back (a situation I have
fondly named the 'toilet sandwich'). After dreaming about all of
these good things associated with land, we started to reminisce about all the
'fun' we had over the past nine days. I asked Bill what his most
spectacular cabin fall was. He said he was undressing for bed in his cabin
when the boat zigged just as he was anticipating and braced for a zag. He
rolled over backwards onto his bunk and whacked his feet on the ceiling.
He said he hadn't expected a foot injury obtained in quite this way. My
favorite story is similar. I was also undressing for bed after finishing
my watch and had my jeans about half down when the boat zigged instead of zagged
and I also did a semi-upside down somersault / sideways slide across our bed
into the port side wall. Slam! I think I slept well after
that.
Ok, all fun aside. We arrived at Water
Island, and it was everything you would expect a tropical island to be.
Palm trees, completely clear turquoise water, sand, warm, beautiful, lots of
other boats all arranged in a completely picturesque way (see picture 2).
Don and Bill had their first Caribbean swim (see picture 3, Don inspecting the
boat to ensure no damage occurred along the way - none did ). We cracked
open a very nice bottle of champagne (purchased back in Baltimore just for this
occasion), watched the sunset and the Holland America cruise ship pass by on its
way out of St. Thomas (picture 4), and did all of this while sitting on our
calmly rocking, very quiet boat. Needless to say, after the champagne,
various scotches and wine (none of which were consumed during the nine days
and 4 hours we were underway), we all slept very well that night.
Anne
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