Day 5 – cont.
We were lucky enough to be able to use a private mooring ball in Coral Bay. There are only private moorings there so the other option is to anchor but you need to be very careful since there are quite a lot of boats in this area. We also saw plenty of day boats – mostly power, but the Lady Lindsey from the Ritz was there as well – she’s a big cat day boat. This is where the current Virgin Islands cruising guide was misleading. They have Lime Out listed as being in Round Bay – which is where they may have been when they first opened? But they are in Coral Bay now. As you enter the anchorage, they will be to starboard in the corner - -you cannot miss them. Lime green floating houseboat. We picked up our mooring and got in the dinghy to go check them out.
PACKED with day trippers at around 2 p.m. so not very appealing. We decided to head to the dinghy dock and check out Skinny Legs instead. Also packed. Got ourselves a “to go” drink each – even though they were social distancing? It was not appealing. We walked back down to the dinghy dock and ran into another couple who looked very salty so we asked where the best place would be to get – you guessed it – ICE! She said we could take our dinghy over across the anchorage to where Dolphin Market was located and do a wet landing and head up the stairs on the sea wall.

Easy peezy, right? LOL.

Yeah…not so much.

That said…the thought of walking all the way around from Skinny Legs to the market did not appeal so off we went. Barbara and I climbed out of the dinghy into VERY mucky, yucky water. I don’t even want to know what was in it. We trudged to shore, masks in place and went into the market. No ice. Ice truck was late. Naturally. LOL. Back into the dinghy we get – no easy feat since Brian could not bring it in very close due to the water being quite shallow and NOT a “sandy” bottom! We went back to the boat and cleaned up and decided that now it was time to give Lime Out another pass, since it was close to 4 and they were going to announce last call at 4:45 – we figured the day trippers would be gone and we were correct.
About Lime Out….the “bar” around the outside of the houseboat with the stools? Is NOT open. There are floating raft “couches” that are attached and that is where you sit. You need to be able to get out of your dinghy and over to these and hoist yourself up – otherwise? Don’t bother unless you’re getting things “to go”. We tied up the dinghy and hoisted ourselves. They are great about helping you tie up your dinghy but they do NOT want you anywhere on the boat, not even for the purpose of tying up. They “float” your drinks out to you on foam trays in yetis that they take a deposit on and take a credit card from you to run your tab. The drinks and food were SUPERB. Well worth the hoisting onto the floating “couches”. We went back over to the store, sloshed through the muck again, and YEAH! The ice truck came so we grabbed four bags and some more provisions at the market and headed back to the boat. Just snacks that night since we had enjoyed our tacos so late.
Coral Bay looks fun and funky on shore - the anchorage itself is not super pretty - you need to look past the abandoned boat. The really moving experience for me? Catatonic 1 was on a mooring just behind us. I had a little cry and hoisted one in her honor.

I wish we’d had more time to explore. My buddy Melody says it's VERY cool on shore. We were down to our last couple of nights on the boat so we really couldn’t stay one more day there. We were up and headed back to Christmas Cove the next morning.