One of the wonderful things about cruising the Virgin Islands is the different experiences you can have. We love the fun of the TTOL flotilla with the kids, the two week down island trip in March, Cat Fight in October, and our Anniversary week in November. This is the one week a year that my wife and I spend on board by ourselves and just enjoy the solitude of a relaxing vacation. We slow way down and often stay at an anchorage more than one night in a row. We met while organizing a sailing charter, were engaged on Sandy Spit while on charter, and were married in the islands and spend out honeymoon on a charter and have spent every anniversary sailing in destinations all over the world, but feel our heart is in the Virgin Islands forever.

We arrived and picked Catatonic up at Crown Bay Marina just a few minutes from the airport on Saturday, picked up our provisions, and headed out the next morning. Sunday and Monday night we spent at Christmas Cove and were invited to dinner with Carolyn and Paul on Cattitude. Wonderful meal, wonderful company.



Next on to our favorite spot on St. John, Leinster Bay. We almost got up the energy to sail to JVD since the northern swell was up to do the Bubbly pools, but decided to continue to kayak, snorkel, and swim at Leinster instead.



The next day was all about sailing and beating up Drake channel, stopping in Road Town for customs and the onto Cooper Island for Thanksgiving. It was great just being two of us sailing up the channel close hauled in our cruising cat picking off monohulls one by one. I guess it was the cat fight left in us that caused us to change tacks just to prove that we could catch some of these monohulls close hauled. It was priceless passing the monohulls looking at all of the crew on board and the looks on their face was a little disbelief when they realized it was just the two of us on board trimming just right to keep Catatonic matching the course of the monos and the passing them!



Take out conch fritters from Cooper Island were the appetizers for our Thanksgiving meal. We didn't catch any fresh fish and struck out with Lobster in the USVI, so we had to resort to our backup meal of Whiskey Marinated Steaks from Omaha, plus grilled asparagus, and some stuffing.

Next morning was another dive on wreck alley with a great sting ray and even a goliath grouper in one of the wrecks. What a treat!

We had to make an unexpected trip back to Road Town to work on our autopilot with a Raymarine tech and ended up leaving Road Town Friday at sunset and didn't have time to make Leverick Bay, so we sailed at night over to the overnight mooring by the Caves. We ended up hanging out there until the end of our trip just appreciating the beauty of that location and watching a day in the life of one pelican that seemed call the caves its home.



We spent so much time just catching up, reflecting, and enjoying the moments. Didn't take many pictures, discovered new channels on the satellite radio, and gave Catatonic some extra TLC and found that my wife was the most trusted crew member I could ask for to send me up the rig to change a lightbulb!