Jan – Feb trip report - part 5

It is now Tuesday, we have been out for almost a week, and time seems to be flying by. We get an early start out of the North Sound, and make a downwind run with the destination of Cooper Island. About halfway there, a rain shower with a little squall line comes in from the south east, we pull in the headsail, leave the staysail and reef the main, maybe for only 15 or 20 minutes while this thing blows through. It was hard to find a dry spot under the Bimini top during this little rain storm, but it was over pretty fast. After reading the posts here we were concerned about getting a mooring at Cooper, and we understand it is not a good place to anchor. We arrive there at about 1pm, area looks pretty full, but finally we see one open spot, so we end up getting the last mooring. While there we see several other boats come by looking for a mooring, none to be found, so they just went onto other places.

Still early in the day, we have kind of planned on taking the dingy over to Salt Island, we have never been there before and it sounds like an interesting place to explore. I had asked this question (here on this forum) about making this trip by dingy - Cooper to Salt - with mixed opinions. Anyway, we now had good weather, I made sure we had plenty of water, cooler, VHF, paddles, etc…. and we just cruised over by Cistern Point, then on over to the nearest point on Salt. From there we just hugged the shore line right on around to the pier that comes out off the beach toward the western edge of the island. I estimate the trip took maybe 15 or 20 minutes at the most - and we basically “idled” the entire way. Our poor little dingy just did not have the ponies it needed to plane off, and if you can’t get on plane you just might as well idle along, else you just pushing a lot of water around and making a lot of noise. Only one time before when we bareboat charter we had a dingy that would actually “run” on plane, oh well…. In good weather this little excursion by dingy is no problem, you just need to plan on what your going to do if the motor decides to quit running.

We hiked around the island, checked out the salt ponds and cemetery, and the abandoned buildings that are all around. We were the only two people on the island, at least as far as we know, there were no other boats around. One of the concrete buildings looks like the goats have taken over it, it was almost full of goat dung--- I am guessing they like to run in there either when it storms or when it gets really hot.
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(photo taken at Salt Island)

The house looks like it is still in good condition, I hope there is someone who can come by and check on it occasionally, as it looks like it would make a great little “cabin” for getaways, etc.. Spent about an hour or two looking things over, then dingy back to Cistern Point where we tie off on the dingy mooring line because I brought snorkel gear with us. Turns out this is a very good snorkeling location, one of the better for the trip.

Back to the boat, shower and clean up, then over the CIBC for some of the two for ones. After that, we decide to have dinner on the boat, we needed to try to make a dent in the provisions, tonight spaghetti /meat balls, salad and garlic bread. If we eat aboard the boat, above all, it should be something easy to prepare.

Next morning, we get another downwind run at it, and we head on down for St John, and Lind Point. On the way, we watch out for Johnson’s Reef, although it is very well marked, and very clear on the charts, we understand that somehow, someway, a boat will still seem to find it on occasion. Anyway, there are several moorings at Lind Point, we grab one and dingy over to Cruz Bay to check back into US.

There have been several questions/discussions on this board regarding all the aspects of clearing in/out,etc… Here is our experience: First, our charter company provided us the forms during our briefing, and a good portion of the forms they have already filled-out. I asked “Skip” the owner of the charter company to explain this to me step-by-step, just so I would know where to dock the dingy, what to expect on the US side, etc…. So, it was about a 5 – 10 minute trip from Lind Point to customs at Cruz Bay. You just go around the point, stay to the left side of the bay, proceed right up to the western edge of the concrete dock at the customs building, tie up the dingy and walk in. In this case everyone on the boat needs to come inside customs (in the BVI the captain only may go in with the passports for others on the boat). We take our completed forms to the customs agent, maybe 5 minutes and we are finished. If we went straight back to the sailboat the entire process may have taken 25 minutes or so…. (I must say, there were very few people around, and no ferry boats, we may have just gotten “lucky” with the schedule.)

But we decided to dingy on over to the main part of Cruz Bay to check out a few of the shops, etc…
Cruz Bay is very nice, and there are a lot of great shops and restaurants there. It seems really busy and maybe even a little crowded, but I think that is because it contrasted so much to the “empty” places we had just been at for several days (think Honeymoon Beach, Moskito - other places in North Sound, Salt Island, etc…)

If you have been to the BVI several times and are considering a change of pace, maybe check out St John for a couple of days, at least for us, clearing customs did not take very long and was not much trouble at all. Francis / Maho bay area looked really good, and we stayed at Leinster on our first night – very pleasant - plus we were able to hike up to and explore the Annaburg Mill ruins there.
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(photo of Annaburg Ruins, St John, near Leinster Bay)

After leaving Cruz Bay we head over to Great St James island, spending our last night in Christmas Cove. Fish Key is located near the middle of the little bay, and is also a pretty good spot to snorkel around, we did see a lot of fish on the western side of the key. Time to gather all the stuff back up in the cabins of the boat, go through all the cabinets and figure out where we put everything so we don’t forget items when we leave the boat the next day. Just some basic re-organizing of everything.


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(last night at Christmas Cove)

Next morning we motorsail back over to Red Hook, to turn in the boat. Our boat briefer said to call them on the phone at least 30 minutes prior to arrival, which we did. During our boat briefing several days ago, they said they would send someone out to help us back into the fuel dock, not to try it ourselves, at least I think that is what they told us. So, they knew we were coming because we had just called them on the phone, they said to come on and they would be ready for us. Long story short, no one came out, and it is fairly windy. I just slowly proceeded toward the fuel dock, waiting for somone to come out.... Still no one comming in a dingy, so as I get on up into the bay nearer to the fuel dock we decide to just get on in there a little closer - then had to do a 180 to get the port side of boat to the dock (they advised us to put fenders on port side when we called earlier, fuel filler is also on port) and finally made it in no problems, but that is some tight area to maneuver in Red Hook. I still don’t know what happened that I had to bring in myself, when a little windy things can start to happen fast when you are not very accustomed to handling the boat in close quarters. In the end, I guess it wasn't that big of deal though....

So we top off with 2.5 gals of fuel (none of us were so sure about the low qty, so they went below and pulled up floor boards to check the tank again), and I certainly thought we would use more than that. I wonder what the gph burn rate is on that engine at 2K rpm? We pay for the fuel and the charter company has person to move the boat to slip, very good!

Our provisions worked out about right, just a few items left over, and the charter company worker told us no problem, she had not had to buy a bottle of ketchup in about 4 years, ha ha… We did have just a few unopened items, I am guessing that about every boat has stuff like that upon return from charter.

So we had a very nice trip, and the idea of going out of Red Hook on St Thomas turned out to be a winner. We just were not at all sure about switching charter companies from the one we had used twice before, or about the all the procedures we would have to deal with concerning customs in BVI and back to US. From our perspective, we saved both time and money by just sailing out of St Thomas, plus we had the opportunity to see some things on St John that we would not have been able to if we had not tried this option.

Again, we would like to say “THANKS” to all who post on this forum. The information is really helpful and allowed us to have a much better trip than we could do without the “local knowledge”.

M and K in Kentucky