Culebrita, Spanish Virgin Islands to St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands

March 11, 2014

We had a six hour trip ahead of us so we set out just before 7 a.m. this morning.  The trip really flew by – we spent the time viewing the pretty coast lines and watching the cruise ships coming into St. Thomas.  After we passed the opening to St. Thomas we were even rewarded with seeing 2 whales!  What an amazing sight!  They hung around and we just backed the engine down to idle and watched them.  We weren’t the only ones.  Once the news was out that there were whales in the area, a lot of the tourist boats came and watched too.  (Tourist boats are like the 50’ catamaran that is filled with 75 people getting ready to go snorkeling somewhere.)  Then we continued on with traversing a small passage way through St. James Island and then on to St. John.  You knew you were at St. John because it got really crowded with a lot of sailboats sailing and some mooring.  There were lots of other boats around as well.  We picked up a mooring ball in Caneel Bay and were set for the rest of the day. 

We took D-Time to shore and decided to follow one of the park trails to the park’s visitor’s center.  It was a little over a mile walk over a dirt and rocky trail.  Once we made it to the visitor’s center we also explored downtown Cruz.  It was a nice port town that has frequent ferry boat service to St. Thomas and some of the other islands.  We made it back onboard and started working on showers and cooking dinner.  Tim stayed up in the cockpit and the next thing you know, he was coming down to show us the amazing pictures he took of a rainbow in the sky, fish all around our boat and an amazing sunset.  I was like, REALLY?  We were with you all day and in the last 5 minutes of the day you take pictures of the most amazing things that none of the rest of us saw in person!  It was like he was on his own vacation, and sharing the slide show after his vacation.  Good pictures, Tim!

 

After dinner it started pouring rain and Daniel threw on his swimsuit and ran topside to work his magic at capturing some rainwater for the boat.  I hope it worked well because we’re down to about 30 gallons left right now and if it didn’t rain enough, somebody is making water in the morning!