We recently chartered a sailboat out of St. Thomas for 10 days - July 15 to 25.
I was the Captain, and my wife the crew.
We had a great time. We sailed the boat from St. Thomas to St. John, and then on to the British Virgin Islands, landing in Cane Garden Bay, Tortola, Great Harbor & Diamond Cay, Jost Van Dyke. This trip we took it easy and often stayed a couple of days in each location.

Here's a picture of the boat... a Hunter 430.
She's 43 feet long, has two cabins, generator, A/C, microwave, all the comforts of home.
She'll cruise along quite nicely under main and jib at 6 knots (7mph) in a 15 knot breeze.


We spent alot of time anchored off of beaches that looked like this... ribbons of sand and clear blue water fringed by palm trees. Very idylic. This is the beach at Cinnamon Bay, St. John. Deserted like this most of the time.



The first night we had the best sunset of the trip.




Several hours were spent in beach bars we found along the way, sipping a Carib beer and eating conch fritters. This is at Foxy's bar on Jost.


I spent alot of time in the water.


We learned of a beach bash at the Soggy Dollar Bar on July 22nd put on by Mount Gay Rum. Free rum & coke for everybody, and remember that the coke is more expensive than the rum.


Spent some quality time with my honey in the hammock while watching the world go by.


I helped save this 25-foot blue boat from sinking. The boat's captain had borrowed it from a buddy and after anchoring it in the bay he and the crew proceeded to get pretty smashed. He anchored it stern to the waves and it filled up with water. It was just about to go under when we spotted it and I jumped out of the hammock and ran down to the beach, jumped in the water and swam out to the boat. Eight guys helped me haul it to the beach, and it took 40 of us to pull it far enough up the beach to bail it out. The engine was under, so they took it apart, pulled the plugs, and ran the starter to eject the water from the cylinders and then put it back together again. It started up, and we pushed it back out to anchor. Bow pointed into the waves this time. This was one lucky guy.



The same day we got back to St. Thomas we learned that one of the Charter company's boats had been dismasted. Fortunately nobody was hurt, but it looked pretty sad when they motored it back into the anchorage. Man, am I glad this didn't happen to us!

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We saw alot of nice things, did some fun stuff and made some new friends...
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