ARRIVAL IN ST THOMAS

Two weeks later we were in sunny St Thomas seeing our Phantom high and dry on popits in the belly of the freighter. We climbed aboard, watched as the sea flooded in, and backed out into the Caribbean.

When we arrived in early November the daytime temperatures were 88 degrees with little breeze. For the first couple of weeks we made good use of the AC. In addition to the sun screen we made for the cockpit in September, we made an another sun screen cover for the pilot house window for the morning sun. As we approach the Winter Solstice the Christmas Winds are beginning to blow making life more comfortable, but it is still 82 degrees at 9 o’clock at night.

So far we’ve stayed in all the Nat’l Park harbors on St. John and the BVI checking out good anchoring and snorkeling spots to visit when the kids come for Christmas. Actually there is pretty good snorkeling right here off Maho Bay on St. John. There are only about 20 boats moored here on any one night, but that number will increase as the holidays approach. Tonight is prime rib night here at the Maho Bay Campground, and is very popular with both the campers and us boaters.

Our days are filled with typical boat chores like cooking, cleaning, laundry and a few chores specific to boats such as battery charging, water making and the engine room, i.e. general maintenance. Grocery shopping takes major planning as we’ll leave in the a.m. to go over to Caneel Bay, then dinghying into Cruz Bay, then hiking to and back from several stores. Once back at the dinghy dock, we discard all cardboard and place the contents into ziplocks as a safeguard against bugs. We are then back to the boat and off to the next harbor early enough to get a good mooring for a swim and a restful night.

The other night Don was on the upper deck grilling with the deck light on. I’m sitting out back and I hear a lot of splashing in the water, so I get up and look out. There must have been 20 large (I mean 4 ft or more) Tarpon chasing Silversides (tiny silver fish) right next to the boat attracted by the lights. They are not good eating, but loads of fun to watch.

We met fellow Norhavn owners’ from New Zealand who are planning to cruise to the southern Caribbean and come back up in the spring. Most of the other boaters we’ve met so far are here for the winter. Others are travelers, like the couple we met from Canada who have been living on their boat for two years now. Everyone is so friendly and eager to lend a helping hand. They gave us a web site to find wind and wave activity called “windfinder.com”. We also have several more weather forecasting websites that we got from the Nordhavn web page. I’ll talk more about that when we start heading to the Spanish Virgin Islands in March.

Have a terrific Christmas Holiday!